Thread: Confused about soaking hones in water.....

The Norton 4K is porous, it's like a sponge.... you can pour as much water as you like on it and it will never pool on top of the hone, thus my inquiry about what exactly is the purpose then. My Shaptons and natural hones are a different story of course, those hones behave differently when you put water on top. As for lubricating the 4k Norton... I suppose, but I don't detect any difference over using it dry, and yet Norton claims you need to *soak* it in water before use?!?!

Christian

The only rule I have found to be true when it comes to this great hobby of ours, is this, "There are no rules" heck Christian if it is working for you, go with it, and then let all the rest of us bucket heads know about it.....

There is another aspect to the water though I just thought of after hitting the submit tab, the water does give you a visual indicator of the stroke that you are doing also....

The purpose of soaking stones such as the thirsty man made stones is so that the stone will soak up enough water that a little will remain on the surface as you are honing to wash away the swarf so that you don't clog the surface and hamper the stones cutting ability! The stone will still suck up the water after a good soaking but it should be at a much slower rate! Just keep adding a little water to the surface as you hone! If you do prefer to hone with a dry hone, just scrub it under running water with a green scrubby after each use or as necessary!

I have no idea. Does the addition of water change the surface of the stone/cause the surface to realign or move around any? If that's the case, soaking it may give the surface time to move around and then quit moving. I think somebody suggested something along those lines at one point in another thread. I think it was lt. arclight talking about shaptons?

Originally Posted by JMS

The purpose of soaking stones such as the thirsty man made stones is so that the stone will soak up enough water that a little will remain on the surface as you are honing to wash away the swarf so that you don't clog the surface and hamper the stones cutting ability! The stone will still suck up the water after a good soaking but it should be at a much slower rate! Just keep adding a little water to the surface as you hone! If you do prefer to hone with a dry hone, just scrub it under running water with a green scrubby after each use or as necessary!

What he said. This is exactly my experience.
If you only soak it for 10 seconds, you will have to add more water and more frequently while honing.

If you plonk a bone dry 1000 grit norton in a bucket of water, you can actually hear a high pitched noise when it starts sucking up water. And you can see air bubbles escape from the stone for several minutes.
The 4K is the same, only slower so without the noise and the big bubbles. but the same principle applies.

So has anyone tried to hone submerged?

Originally Posted by paulallen

So has anyone tried to hone submerged?

You mean just the stone and razor right?

I'd imagine tactile feedback and position would be very different and hard to manage... You'd have to have your hands and forearms pointing down into the water and then deal with the resistance of the water on the same as you make a stroke. Probably not good for some scales either.

Originally Posted by paulallen

So has anyone tried to hone submerged?

Actually, I have before:

I had an Black Arkansas that was ****ing me off, and I tried every other way of honing with it...dry, oil, lather, slurry, naptha, water+soap, soap only, spritzed with water, running water et al.

I took the damn thing, dunked it in the sink, and tried honing a razor like that. The stone still sucks. Also, honing under water is really hard.

Originally Posted by paulallen

So has anyone tried to hone submerged?

That would also get your whole razor wet, something that I avoid. I try to never get my tangs wet. As others said, feedback would probably be weird, and I imagine you would get odd pressures between the blade and the stone that would try to push the blade up. It would probably also be difficult to determine how much pressure you were using.

If a sponge is fully saturated, it won't soak up more water, thus the term saturated. I leave my 4k hones partially submerged either in a modified pond or in half of the plastic case that the Norton lapping stone came in. By keeping it partially submerged, it is held in a much more saturated state and it is much slower to suck the water down into the hone.