Thread: spyderco ultrafine bench stone

are they any good as a touch up stone for between strops,being ceramic they wont need lapping and i should not be able to kill it
i know it will cut slower than a wetstone,but just how slow is slow

I've got a Spyderco UF, and yes, it'll probably work as a touchup stone. You do need to lap it at first, and it takes a lot of doing. I've read that the final finish they put on it is what determines its grit equivalent, so you may want to lap the backside (the one without the sawing/lapping/whatever marks from the factory). It's a super-hard stone, great for breaking in a brand-new DMT325 plate. Otherwise, invest in a couple of sheets of wet-dry sandpaper, around 325 grit, to flatten it. You might also want some finer grits to smooth it, and at the very end, some diamond or CrOx spray and another flat hone to put a fine finish on it. I used my Charnley Forest, which is also very hard, to do this.

Once you've got it flat, you're right, it probably won't need lapping ever again.

I think Spyderco sells mainly to the knife market, and their factory flatness may be fine for knives. I didn't think mine was flat enough for razors; it certainly wasn't as flat as any of my other hones.

I've gotten the best results from mine by putting a little CrOx on it then honing. No more CrOx than it picked up by rubbing it on my CrOx-treated strop. You can't do this with softer steels, though, because the edge will be too fine to hold up. It works with American steels (Case, Genco) and I imagine it'd work with a Thiers-Issard blade. Keep your lap count low if you try this. Less is often more.

Best wishes

Originally Posted by roughkype

I've got a Spyderco UF, and yes, it'll probably work as a touchup stone. You do need to lap it at first, and it takes a lot of doing. I've read that the final finish they put on it is what determines its grit equivalent, so you may want to lap the backside (the one without the sawing/lapping/whatever marks from the factory). It's a super-hard stone, great for breaking in a brand-new DMT325 plate. Otherwise, invest in a couple of sheets of wet-dry sandpaper, around 325 grit, to flatten it. You might also want some finer grits to smooth it, and at the very end, some diamond or CrOx spray and another flat hone to put a fine finish on it. I used my Charnley Forest, which is also very hard, to do this.

Once you've got it flat, you're right, it probably won't need lapping ever again.

I think Spyderco sells mainly to the knife market, and their factory flatness may be fine for knives. I didn't think mine was flat enough for razors; it certainly wasn't as flat as any of my other hones.

I've gotten the best results from mine by putting a little CrOx on it then honing. No more CrOx than it picked up by rubbing it on my CrOx-treated strop. You can't do this with softer steels, though, because the edge will be too fine to hold up. It works with American steels (Case, Genco) and I imagine it'd work with a Thiers-Issard blade. Keep your lap count low if you try this. Less is often more.

Best wishes

oh well thats that idea out the window,i was trying to get out off lapping,i may as well just buy a decent hone.i was looking at the Naniwa stones but unsure what grit to get for touching up,or could you recomend a better one
thanks dave

Bad news for you, Dave, no matter what stone you buy you'll have to lap it flat before you use it. Waterstones are much easier to lap than ceramics or novaculites (Arkansas, Charnley, etc.), and the synthetics behave the same for everyone. The Norton 4/8k is probably the best-documented hone on this site, and all the wisest honers agree that until you can coax a comfortable shaving edge from an 8k, a higher grit hone won't do you a lot of good anyway.

The Naniwas are also quite popular.

Barber hones are good little tools, but are quite a bit smaller than bench hones. It's easier to learn, and also to hone, on the full-sized hones. Also, if you develop a detailed interest in grit sizes, you'll never find two people who agree on what barber hones have what grits. In fact, you'll seldom find a single person who'll agree with himself about it, at least if he's honest.

Coticules are seductive things, and a good one is a wonderful hone. The catch is that they are naturals, which makes them highly variable. Unless you can buy a proven one from a seller you trust, you may have to buy several to get one you really like. And by the time you get a bench-sized one, you'll be in for several hundred dollars.

It's easy to drop several hundred dollars on a single natural stone. It's way easier to know what you've got with synthetics.

Folks really pile on here when someone asks what hone they should buy. Prepare yourself...