Thread: natural duel stone a llyn melynllyn and dragons tongue

Originally Posted by Leon

This is interesting. Why do you feel hitting the linen will ruin the edge?

I feel that if I do leather only, then I can feel the stone's edge a bit more. I find the webbing/fabric pretty aggressive in smoothing it out. If I can strop on leather only and get a really nice shave, then linen/leather is only going to make it better.

As an aside...I've done some slurry testing, water testing and oil testing.

Here's an update on my findings:

On water, 50 strokes is way too many to finish. There's a harshness that I've found that is not to my liking. I'm thinking that between 15-30 on water is plenty depending on your steel.

Slurry: I feel that a very light slurry works, but anything thicker is not to the stone's benefit. So far i've found that a light slurry with 10 strokes, and then another 15-20 on plain water works nicely.

Oil: I've only tested two edges off the oil. I did a regular honing through the Norton 4/8, a couple strokes on a Naniwa 12k, and then 10 strokes on water, followed by 20 on oil. I've enjoyed this edge very much, so now I'll try and vary it up a bit in terms of stroke count.

Really though...I'm just having loads of fun testing it out. I've got a little chalkboard on my backsplash in the shop, and it's filled with numbers and squigglies.... It kind of looks like a bunch of math equations!