Thread: I Found It Over There

True there, might be a good plan. I may go hoard up some good stones, then do the rental and knock em out all at once and give that a shot.

Originally Posted by Iceni

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

A video would be nice! I know they are not easy to make. Thanks for the instructing post.

Originally Posted by Iceni

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.

You mean cut along the layer correct?

yeah, You should be looking to make the honing face on one layer. If the stone has tight layers this is very hard, Likewise if the stone is just a layer-less block it's unimportant. When you have layers that you can easily pick between, and you can cut so you can only see 1 layer then you should try to do this. It'll help reduce the chance that the inclusions in the stone will appear on the honing face. And it looks better and you get an even surface in terms of hardness/grit.

Ok cool, its how ive been doing it but just wanted to make sure. Ive seen some hones where the layeres look opposite of that and always seemed like that was the wrong way

This is what I have so far from my stack of rocks. There were some that got culled due to crystal inclusions, and one that has a fissure. I still have a bunch more lapping to do. It is impossible to capture in the pictures but several of them have a pink tinge to them in spots.

They look nice...did the first you made had also these pink tinge ?

The pink tinge is new. About a month ago I cut some of these rocks and made two hones. One I sent to Florida and the other I have been using along with an earlier hone. The new ones in the picture are version three and are not that aggressive but so far seem very fine. Currently there are five different hones that I have made that I am very happy with. My issue is that the rock changes so fast that in a very small area I will take three rocks that look very similar on the outside, but when I cut them they are all very different. Sometimes there is ever large changes just cutting one rock. The color changes and how the rock reacts to steel changes too, the grit is mostly consistent, with the exception of if there are crystal inclusions. Crystal within the rock will make it not a good hone for razors, they are ok for heavy knives and big chisels, in part due to the crystals are very small but bigger than a sparkle.

Great looking stones Shaun. Would be interested to test one...

If they work good I call dibs on a big one haha, the one you sent seems okay, I just need better tools for lapping, the black areas are softer and I end up with indentions.

I need to try to find some intermediate stones