Thread: The Art of slurry...

I have noticed a ton of questions recently on Slurries and various finishers, and I have been meaning to write this for quite awile... Keep in mind these are just tricks I use, you can try them out for yourselves and see if you can get them to work for you..


When do slurries work??? what stones do they work on???

Simply put I have used slurries on every stone I have except two types, Barber's Hones and Arkansas stones...

They work from Bevel set to Finishing...

They are also pretty much not needed, but learning to use them can make life much easier and more interesting...

I use mainly two ways of raising slurries...

First choice is my DMT 325 I do about 5 figure 8's and I get a slurry and a clean, flat stone, to work on...
Second choice is a 4x1.5 fine Arkansas stone that works really well to raise a fast slurry on just about everything...

Pretty much I start on the 1k's with a fast cutting slurry for bevel sets, yes the synthetics can use slurries too OMG
Back when I first started really honing, the Norton 4/8 was THE stone.. Some really cool guys like Lynn even had these mysterious wondrous stones called Eschers and Coticules
But I remember learning that by raising a slurry on the 4k Norton I could do way more with that stone..
Then I added the 220/1k to my arsenal as I started restoring razors and learned that a bit of slurry on the 220 made the chores of "bad edges on wedges" go by faster yes, but the bevel came out much smoother too...
I of course started playing with slurries on the 1k and those work too...

I learned about "training" naturals with my first Coticule, and I have used the system of raising a very light slurry for the first 20 stokes on every natural finisher I have added since..

When I got the Shapton set I even played with light slurries on that 1k, and had some really fun times with the Naniwa SS's and slurries...

Japanese stones are a whole different animal with slurries and it took about 100 razors before I got really comfortable using them on my Nakayama...

Coticules of course have been covered extensively along with their Belgium Blue brother..

Even the Chinese stone can be slurried up to get different effects out of them...

I tell you if you have a Thuringen and you haven't tried starting with a slurry and diluting out to clear water you are missing a buttery smooth edge..

But really like I said in the beginning, slurries are not necessary or required on most stones, but they do add an interesting twist to honing...
One other thing they can help you with, is the proverbial "Brick Wall" when a razor stumps you on a stone, and you can't seem to get traction on a hone just try a light slurry on that stone and see if that doesn't help just a bit


I hope this helps some...

Note: that I put this in the advanced section, slurries are a tool, you should learn first how to hone, then start playing with them..