Thread: Abrasive Grit Comparison Sheet

I have spent a fair few years trying to compile a list of grit comparisons for my own uses: shaping, smoothing and polishing rocks, metals, plastics and wood; and sharpening everything from milling bits and lathe cutters to planes, knives and razors.

I have taken GREAT pains to make sure that any information listed has it's validity backed up by as reliable a reference as is possible, typically by a major manufacturer with reliable reputation, since the standardization entities themselves are decidedly loose in their determinations of compliance. I know there will be a few of the less reliable manufacturers that will use slightly different tolerances, but when dealing with those companies, you can expect a bit less accuracy since the cheaper price you pay does not cover reliable quality control.


Recently Olivia forwarded a list to me that had some very good information and I was able to track it back to one of it's points of origin and have added some excellent tolerance info relating to the FEPA grit ratings that I had not been able to find without her help......Thank you Olivia!



If you have something to add or find a discrepancy in the provided information, PLEASE let me know so that I can correct it as soon as possible and prevent the dissemination of inaccurate information.....We ALL know that there is ENTIRELY TOO MUCH wrong information being passed off as correct. Personally I am a close tolerance kinda guy and find few things more infuriating than laboring under the assumption that you are doing things correctly only to find out later that your time has been wasted due to bad information.


Now that my rant is done, I hope everyone finds this information useful.

Feel FREE to post this on any other forum or pass it around as you see fit so long as no money changes hands.....Information Should Be FREE!

So glad it was useful!
... and I must admit that I already posted it elsewhere *shrugs* LOL

If I run into some more, i'm going to send it to you.

Smokinbird,

I hope you don't mind, but I just posted your chart over on the Knife Forums in one of my threads. Perfect timing.

Great Job!!!!

Originally Posted by jendeindustries

Smokinbird,

I hope you don't mind, but I just posted your chart over on the Knife Forums in one of my threads. Perfect timing.

Great Job!!!!

Absolutely perfect!

I intend to post it on a couple other forums as well.....I have seen lots of partial comparisons, but I have never seen any references to back them up, and I just don't trust everything I read.

Thanks for this, man. I'm curious, where did you get the Shapton info? I emailed them asking for the micron info and never got an answer.

Speaking of which, does anyone have any idea about the Naniwa micron sizes? I called them and the rep I spoke to said he didn't have any idea about the microns, and was surprisingly unhelpful--he didn't offer any ideas how to get the information at all. This is very strange in Japan. Customer service is typically amazingly helpful...what's up with these hone companies???

Originally Posted by JimR

Thanks for this, man. I'm curious, where did you get the Shapton info? I emailed them asking for the micron info and never got an answer.

Speaking of which, does anyone have any idea about the Naniwa micron sizes? I called them and the rep I spoke to said he didn't have any idea about the microns, and was surprisingly unhelpful--he didn't offer any ideas how to get the information at all. This is very strange in Japan. Customer service is typically amazingly helpful...what's up with these hone companies???

I had a friend that speaks Japanese call them at 0285-72-7755 after I had the Glass stone info from their web site.

Since this was word of mouth and not a written and published table, I would be thrilled if anyone can correct me if they lay their hands on something in writing from Shapton.

I just emailed Naniwa to see if I can get anything useful from them.....we'll see.

Originally Posted by Smokintbird

Absolutely perfect!

I intend to post it on a couple other forums as well.....I have seen lots of partial comparisons, but I have never seen any references to back them up, and I just don't trust everything I read.

Hi, it appears that Olivia took the jis tables from one of my pages... I can't give you a reference for the data to proove its accuracy, but I spent about a year with a kanji dictionary and yahoo.co.jp searching before I found a Japanese industrial abrasives manufacturer that had a detailed JIS chart showing both the old and new JIS down to this level of detail in a gif image that copied into text format:
http://members.cox.net/yuzuha/jisgrits.html
(I did not list the old JIS standards to that detail since the sedimentation tube method is obsolete but I did list a partial comparison of the old and new JIS on my Shapton grit page http://members.cox.net/yuzuha/jisgrit1.html The yellow numbers on here are purely theoretical and I calculated them for comparing Shapton's grading system to other stones and micron graded powders etc. )

Alas, I can no longer point you to the original site where I found the JIS information because the PC I had all that on died several years ago.... I also no longer have the complete details of the old JIS standard (you can download the standards from the JIS organization in English or Japanese but they charge a considerable fee to do so).

One really interesting thing to note on the detailed table though is the maximum size. 8000 grit can have a few percent 6 micron particles, which can put some dandy scratches in mean 1.2 micron finish. Also the 3% tails are interesting... The 3% below .6 microns is not very important but again it allows 3% to be between 3.5 and 6 microns and still be listed as 8000 grit!

BTW, I discovered that some of you also hang out on knife forums but some of you may not.... you can still find some useful stuff in the useful links sub forum of the kitchen knife forum over there... http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/759892/
http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/759541/
for example.

Lots of sources for stones anyway Might find some razor discussion in the "kitchen" and "keeping sharp" forums too.

Originally Posted by yuzuha

Hi, it appears that Olivia took the jis tables from one of my pages...

Certainly not, but your page might be the source for the guy who gave it to me.

Originally Posted by yuzuha

One really interesting thing to note on the detailed table though is the maximum size. 8000 grit can have a few percent 6 micron particles, which can put some dandy scratches in mean 1.2 micron finish. Also the 3% tails are interesting... The 3% below .6 microns is not very important but again it allows 3% to be between 3.5 and 6 microns and still be listed as 8000 grit!

Pam,

Welcome to the SRP!

That's some good stuff there, and you put it in a very understandable language.

You may have answered a question or two that is somewhere around here - The random scratches in the edge of the razor that Olivia was posting about could be caused by this percentage of fluctuation.

Originally Posted by yuzuha

Hi, it appears that Olivia took the jis tables from one of my pages... I can't give you a reference for the data to proove its accuracy, but I spent about a year with a kanji dictionary and yahoo.co.jp searching before I found a Japanese industrial abrasives manufacturer that had a detailed JIS chart showing both the old and new JIS down to this level of detail in a gif image that copied into text format:
http://members.cox.net/yuzuha/jisgrits.html
(I did not list the old JIS standards to that detail since the sedimentation tube method is obsolete but I did list a partial comparison of the old and new JIS on my Shapton grit page http://members.cox.net/yuzuha/jisgrit1.html The yellow numbers on here are purely theoretical and I calculated them for comparing Shapton's grading system to other stones and micron graded powders etc. )

Alas, I can no longer point you to the original site where I found the JIS information because the PC I had all that on died several years ago.... I also no longer have the complete details of the old JIS standard (you can download the standards from the JIS organization in English or Japanese but they charge a considerable fee to do so).

One really interesting thing to note on the detailed table though is the maximum size. 8000 grit can have a few percent 6 micron particles, which can put some dandy scratches in mean 1.2 micron finish. Also the 3% tails are interesting... The 3% below .6 microns is not very important but again it allows 3% to be between 3.5 and 6 microns and still be listed as 8000 grit!

BTW, I discovered that some of you also hang out on knife forums but some of you may not.... you can still find some useful stuff in the useful links sub forum of the kitchen knife forum over there... http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/759892/
http://www.knifeforums.com/forums/showtopic.php?tid/759541/
for example.

Lots of sources for stones anyway Might find some razor discussion in the "kitchen" and "keeping sharp" forums too.

The JIS information in this list did originally come from your page first!

I have since referenced most of the information from http://www.metallographiebedarf.de/d...oesse_fepa.pdf
and from another manufacturer, though a firefox crash before I thought to book mark it has kept it out of the references...

But, they both corroborate your figures nicely.