Thread: I Found It Over There

Or would it be HCAD? (hone crafting aquisition disorder)

From what I've found Dennis the cut is more important than the lap.

If you can make a clean cut, then the lap is more or less straight forward. If your cut isn't clean then that causes you a lot of work.

The wet saw, and diamond angle grinder are good places to start. A table wet saw for tiles can be had pretty cheap. They don't cut deep, but they have a table so they cut true. This means you can't make wide stones but you can make long ones. They tend to be able to do 1 inch depth at the cheap end. And if your stone is true you can double cut from the other side to make a 1 7/8 inch stone.

The width of the stone can only come from a deeper cut. A 4 1/2 inch grinder can do about 2 inches of depth, A 9 inch grinder can do about 3 1/2 inch depth. A 16" sthil saw can do about 6 1/2 inch depth. With a steady hand and good technique all can cut true, But it takes care and practice, and you have to be able to steady your work piece. The problem with a grinder is doing a double cut is very hard, so you want the total depth in 1 cut to be as deep as your finished stone.

The best tool for me is the 9 inch grinder with a wet/dry disc. The cut is about 4mm in width with this blade. The 4 1/2 inch grinder only has a 3mm cut and is better to true the sides of a cut hone, The wetsaw is more capable of this provided your cut rocks fall under the cut depth restriction.

With clever angles you should be able to cut multiple hones out of a good sized block with only a few cuts.

Your first cut should be to get the stone to sit at the correct angle. If your rock has a grain you need to look for this and cut the stone so it offers the grain to you. This means you will cut with the grain.

Your second cut should split the stone, This is cutting the faces of the hones. A bigger rock may be split multiple times in this manner. Do not cut all the way through the rock. Leave at least an inch on the bottom if you can so the rock can have multiples cut at the same grain angle.

The removal of the hones from the rock is done by laying the rock on it's side, then cutting that 1 inch stub from the face the rock was sitting on. You should now have slabs that can be cut on a wetsaw.

From this point it's a case of making them look pretty, and doing the standard flattening and finishing you would do to a worn antique hone. The honing face should be near to true, so for the most part it'll be pretty fast.

there is a series of wet sanding machines available that I have been thinking would be the thing for lapping. I don't have one, in fact I have only ever seen pictures of them. There are a ton of different belts available for them and are available in silica carbide and diamond as well as several others that I don't recognize. The medium size units are around $1k and the big big ones around $7k so you would want to hang in at the medium level, unless either you hd sales like no ones business or a wheelbarrow full of cash to dispose of. I am hand lapping in the kitchen sink right now, and probably will be for a while as my budget for toys has been cut off. I do however have some toys that I could and may sell as a fund raiser. If you get a wet sander let me know how it works!

good point on the truer the cut the less lapping there is to do. Some times i will try to regrind a face just to make lapping easier, however it can also make it worse and with all things in life that require any skill, practice always helps. I am finding little things that help all the time, but can be so long winded to try to point out one little thing. Renting tools can be a big help. If you can go down and rent a 10" wet saw and see how it runs. Often you can get weekend deals, and the price is an easier payment than purchasing.

1k for a wet sander is out of my budget, can buy a lot of stones for that with the guarqntee theyll be good

That is why I use the dia flat lapping plates!

I found this, would this work? 7 in. Portable Wet Cutting Tile Saw
I guess the thickness of material would play a role in ease of use. I figure maybe if you can make one cut a chisel and hammer could reduce the thickness to a manageable size.

those will work. they are limiting as to how deep and how fast you can cut, however when I am playing with rocks time is not ever really a factor. I use an MK brand tile saw MK Diamond - MK-370EXP Tile Saw and that gets my slices off of the 2" thick slabs I cut with my Stihl saw. If my tile saw was bigger and heavier built it would have less wobble in the cuts and my slabs would lap faster, however I am not really trying to get commercial productivity. At this point I'm having fun.

Thats where I stand, I want to do this for fun, not like im starting a quarry, but I do want some good ways to get results without investing 12 hours in 1 stone, and also to do it without dust.

a lapping plate and a rented wet saw would be the way to go. It has been a few years, but I recall $30 for the weekend for a 10" wet saw. If I could, I would rent, however I do live 100 miles past the edge of the earth, so I will leave that part up to the guys in the more developed areas.