Thread: Reasons I feel hones have to be sedimentary

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

All roads lead to Rome.

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

yes but it doesn't lead to Rome.

We have a little bit of a conflict here....

Not at all. Its a saying and a parable. If your in Italy and you were back in the day all roads did lead to Rome. Of course the street outside my house doesn't go there. Har Har.

This is a most interesting thread! Lots of good techie stuff here.

I do agree with Khoas that there are stones much better suited to razor honing than others and I also agree with those that say many different substances can be used. Way back when one of our guys tried using cocoa powder on paper and it worked as a final polisher but it did take a long time.

One characteristic of steel that has not been mentined here is its plasticity and how using a very smooth honing surface will affect the razors edge.
Now that I have opened up pandora's box............

This was my point all along. I guess by HAVE TO I was wrong. Sure you can swim across a lake. Or you could use a boat. One is much much slower and labour intensive, but will work. Or, its common thought here that razors have to be steel. In theory, you can take any of these solid minerals mentioned here and make a razor from them and get a sharper edge... but its not practical. It would be infinitely harder to make, harder to hone (cus you'd have to find something even harder than them), far more expensive, etc. So while you CAN make a jade hone, if you wanted to make 80 jade hones for everyday use, it would be VERY expensive, be hard to manufacture, and would take forever, when compared to sedimentary/metamorphic from sedimentary rocks which lap quickly, can use slurries, and cut quickly. This is probably why hones are abrasive bonded by something, as opposed to the old barber hones which are pure, solid SiC. Works well as a the texture it is given ("Shiny" hones make good finishers, because the smoother the surface, the shinier it is, while higher grits feel harsher in the tactile sense), but is a bitch to make, a bitch to lap, and the quality varies a lot. (Swaty vs. Swaty clones, all were SiC, but the way they were manufactured and the exact recipe etc changes them)
The US spent millions developing a pen with pressurized cartridges that could write in space, in zero g, upside down, etc. The Russians used pencil. Both work. One is more efficient (practical, cheaper, simpler...)

So here is my argument rephrased. A coticule cuts with garnets that are within a certain size range, giving it it's grit. Naniwas, Shaptons, Nortons, all have little pieces of grit that do the work, most of the stone is adhesive to hold that grit in stone form, like grit on a sand paper. The glue breaks down releasing more abrasive to cut.

The solid crystalline rocks that are harder than steel will do whatever finish they are given. For example, steel files. Lets say you made a file out of quartz. If you make the grooves large, it will remove lots of metal= coarse grit. if you make small grooves, it will remove less metal =finer grit. If you polish it, it will smooth/polish metal = finishing grit.

Please correct me if I'm wrong...

Because last time I checked if you lap a Norton 1k up to 325 its 1k, if you lap it up to 1k its still 1k, and if you lapped it with 2000 its still only 1k. If you lap a Norton 8k up to 325 its still an 8k, if you lap it up to 1k its still an 8k, and if you lap it up to 2000, its still an 8k. Because waterstones almost always are bonded abrasive, and the size and percentage of abbrasive determines grit, not smoothness. With something homogenous, single-crystaline and harder than steel, ie a textured surface, ie a jade jasper quartz etc hone, the finish on the surface determines the grit, like a series of steel files getting finer and finer.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

Your exactly correct.

Like I always like to say the Grand Canyon was formed by running water with a little help from uplift.

The point is that over the years people have come to use (with razors) certain things they find work well, are reasonably fast and economical. But that doesn't mean you can't experiment and use unordinary means to hone your razor.

All roads lead to Rome.

One thing to note here: I don't believe it is the water alone that causes errosion such as is seen in the Grand Canyon, but rather the carrying off of loose sediment, which is material removal in and of itself, as well as the then transported sediment acting as a slurry to remove other bulk material.

If the water were pure flowing, I don't think the canyon would have turned out so Grand?

Which is exactly what I have been saying all along... *sigh*
In our standard, accepted hones, particles do the cutting, and they are cemented by something softer than steel. Just like the sediment in water is the abrasive, not the water itself.
With a "solid" hone (jasper, corundum, jade, etc... the non sedimentary, non metamorphic-from-sedimentary)I believe the surface would have to be textured, like a steel file. DMT for example, you never expose new particles, its always the exact same surface, so the texture matters. However thats a bad example because no one has an 8x3 diamond, so they had to texture the surface by gluing particles to it.

Originally Posted by khaos

Which is exactly what I have been saying all along... *sigh*
In our standard, accepted hones, particles do the cutting, and they are cemented by something softer than steel. Just like the sediment in water is the abrasive, not the water itself.
With a "solid" hone (jasper, corundum, jade, etc... the non sedimentary, non metamorphic-from-sedimentary)I believe the surface would have to be textured, like a steel file. DMT for example, you never expose new particles, its always the exact same surface, so the texture matters. However thats a bad example because no one has an 8x3 diamond, so they had to texture the surface by gluing particles to it.

Hey Khaos,
How would you explain, for example...my Surgical Black Arkansas and my Translucent Arkansas, are both lapped on a series 400/1000 grit diamond plate, yet both perform significantly different from each other?

Thanks,

Mac

No surface is "perfectly" smooth. There are always microscopic bumps and pitts. Even glass isn't perfectly smooth(just damn close)

I have polished knives on a leftover piece of 1-3/4" granite counter top with some oil on it.. the only grit would be the metal itself becoming slurry after being worn off by the microscopic roughness of the granite.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

One thing to note here: I don't believe it is the water alone that causes errosion such as is seen in the Grand Canyon, but rather the carrying off of loose sediment, which is material removal in and of itself, as well as the then transported sediment acting as a slurry to remove other bulk material.

If the water were pure flowing, I don't think the canyon would have turned out so Grand?

But what if that sediment is a result of the pure water causing erosion?

Boy, now I want to go watch Planet Earth again.