Thread: Making a new honing stone...

Beautiful!
Well the Pyrite would not be a problem cause its much softer than everything else you need for honing.
Have you tested it yet?

Pretty stone...kindof looks like a trouts skin.

Thanks,
Mac

Unfortunately in those includions was also something what when lapped made deep scratches to the surface therefore it had to go. i am waiting for my new bevel stone (Chocera 1000) and I need to buy a microscope or something I can use for comparing the scratch patterns from this one with my other stones. Test will have to wait and I will let you know.

I"m just tossing my two cents out there for the world. Thinking about the mineralogy and material properties, shouldn't all hones necessarily be sedimentary rock? My thinking is this:
Hard particles in a soft substrate is like sandpaper that refreshes itself. If you have one hard thing it is like a chisel or a knife or a grater. Think about this on an extreme level. If I have a stone with a profile like this /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ and it is a single hard stone that is harder than steel, it's gonna cut gouges in the steel equal to that, and never really smooth out. Think cheese grater. If those cutting peices are glued together with something softer, they will break off and smooth out. Where this "glue" is soft, like coticule, it will continuously refresh itself, and cut a lot faster with a slurry. When this "glue" is hard, the cutting particles will eventually smooth out a little, like a J-nat. When this glue is solid, or if the crystalline structure is solid, the grit has to be built in. All sandpaper is alumina or SiC or whatever, just different size pieces. Or DMT. The diamonds are the hardest thing known to man, and the way they get different grits is not by changing the hardness or mineral properties of the diamond, but the GRIT of the diamond they embed. So while Jasper (or quartz or tigers eye or cats eye or corundum or diamond or sapphire or ruby or hawks eye or feldspar or topaz or chrysoberyl or chromium or boron or beryl... you get the idea) is harder than steel, that is not important. Its the finish you put on it that will be important. Lapping with a DMT XX will give you a rough hone, lapping with a DMT C a smoother hone, DMT F a smoother hone yet, etc etc. And the grit will not correspond, ie, lapping with the DMT C (325 grit) doesn't mean your jasper hone will be a 325 grit hone, just rougher than if it were lapped with the DMT F (1200). My best guess for this success is if by trial and error through different lapping treatments you came up with a progression, or if you only made one rock, you made is smoother than glass (very literally) to be used as a very final polisher, probably around some astronomical grit, as it wouldn't do any honing, only polishing.

The evidence I'm guessing behind all this is:
-All man made rocks are sedimentary- SiC or alumina or something harder than steel, BOUND BY something softer than steel, polymer, clay, ceramic, etc.
-The exception to this is carbo stones, because carborundum is harder than steel, and we all know what a bitch it is to lap a swaty or a carbo. If you look closely at them though, they are not a single crystal, and I suspect they are sedimentary in nature, where the sediment is SiC powder (SiC is commonly known as carborundum)
-Grit and Hardness have no correlation- all DMTs are diamond, SiC sandpaper comes in all grits
-If something is harder than steel (roughly 7 or higher on the Mohs scale) steel will do little to wear it down, and it will EAT steel (try taking a coping saw to a DMT)
-If something is softer than steel (roughly 6 or lower on the Mohs) it will barely touch steel and steel will just wear it down. (try cutting steel wire with a knife shaped piece of shale)
-All confirmed location hones to date are sedimentary- Thuringens, Coticule, BBW, J-nat, the British Isle shales, Arkansas, Turkeys, etc.
-While Sham's hone MIGHT be jasper because it LOOKS like Jasper, until it is evaluated by a minerologist I'm skeptical. To me it looks like a sedimentary rock, just not with clear striations. If you want I can post pictures of limestone or a piece of shale I use as a paper weight, neither show striations, both are sedimentary. Olivia, please can you ask your brother about this?

You can sum up the entire first paragraph with the term RAUHTIEFE.
I'm sorry but I do not know the english term for that. Means something like rough depth but I doubt it exists.

Its a density issue, hence the numbers of different arkansas hones although they are all novaculite.

My brother said that the jasper or the agate won't do much more than a glass or ceramic plate when its lapped smooth.
Its too dense to hone.
He isn't much into razors though. Maybe its a bit different in our very fine ranges or Shams Jasper is one of the less dense kind.

but could you ask him whether the sedimentary is an issue? Because in teh Arkansas stone, density differences mean different mineral composition- possibly density/size of cutting particles? I know this is what differentiates Coticule and BBW, and makes some coticules faster than others, or some coticules smoother than others, etc.

And the jade hone posted on BB behaved exactly as I said it would... it polished incredibly well, but I bet if you say, tried using it as an 8k or a 10k it would take forever....

The arkansas is technically all the same stuff.
Comes from diatomees that sank to the bottom of the sea.
The minerals in their shells compressed and morphed.

I guess the turkish oil stone is a good example for hard particles in a loose bond.
Its porous though and not dense at all. Otherwise it would probably not hone at all.

I promised you the report on my hone from CWM Idwall. And my news is not good. All those tiny white speckels are bubbles full of something soft and sandy therefore as hone useless. All that work is wasted. Nevermind tomorrow is another day.

Thats sad to hear!