Thread: I Found It Over There

Slicing up bacon. Looks yummy!

I've had some stones like that that I thought were going to be really great. Mine turned out to be lousy stones, COARSE and SLOW, the dreaded combo.

Originally Posted by bluesman7

I've had some stones like that that I thought were going to be really great. Mine turned out to be lousy stones, COARSE and SLOW, the dreaded combo.

It's a quartzite so it may be slow but I don't believe too coarse will be an issue.
I'll be lapping one soon, we'll see if it belongs on the bench or in a frying pan.

I've got way too many damn projects.

I got a couple of those bacon slices from Joamo and I have been meaning to write a review but haven't quite gotten all the info I wanted yet. So far I have gotten one flat and lapped to 80 SIC on one side and 180 SIC on the other. With that configuration it makes a good mid range to finish stone. Actually quite good as a finisher. The edge is very smooth shaving and crisp but not at all prickly. It is kind of a hybrid character.

My intention is.to see if I can get all the way from bevel set to finish with 4 sides of the same stone but have just not gotten that far yet. Lapping goes really slowly with this stuff. It must be really.hard. It is rather slow so far, on par with arks, but I am waiting on some coarser powder to really rough one side and I will probably go to 1k-2k W/D on one side also to see just how far I can push the envelope at both ends.

I would definitely recommend it to those of you who have been infected by that, ..."Hey, a rock!...hmmm...I bet I could hone on that!" bug.

I'll report back once I finally feel like I understand the limits of what it will do.

Another project once I get out from under some of the others.

Not sure exactly what this thing is but it is a big ol' honkin' thing. This is just how I found it.




14“ long and 4" wide. I'm hoping it will make a gigantic natural bevel setter but we'll see. It seems coarse but it is definitely hard. I'm not sure how coarse it will be after lapping.

Not that many rocks form in layers like that. Sedimentary rocks do especially shale, sandstone, limestone. It's probably one of those. Slate does also but it's metamorphic and it doesn't look like that.

I was pretty sure it is sandstone. That should make a good bevel setter I hope.

It depends how large the particles of sand are. It could be too coarse and it also depends how cohesive it is. If too much sand comes off as you use it that's not too good either.

I guess you'll find out. That's why they have Eboy specials.

We'll see. Definitely not trying it out on any high end restored gems as a test run.

A few months ago, visiting the copper etcher in the town in which I just moved in, I noticed, on top of the pile in which he leaves his fresh prints to dry flat, a large green-blue stone among the cast-iron weights that serve as ballast there. The stone was rectangular, cut to the format of a razor- or knife-sharpening stone, and of impressive dimensions: 28 cm long, and 7 cm wide, by nearly four centimetres thick.
I asked to have a closer look at the stone. It was smoothly cut on all sides, but the two largest faces were left rough. The colour and veining left me to believe that it could be a Thuringian stone. I said a few words about it to the craftsman, and then continued watching him work.
Of course, it had stuck in my mind, and yesterday, I visited the etcher again. I watched him print from a copper plate, and then talked again about the stone, and its honing potential. Long story short, I left the workshop with the piece of rock. The etcher had lent it to me for me to flatten and prepare it if I could, and try it.
Here are some pictures of the stone before flattening:






There is a mass of pyrite at one end on one side, and the brown vein that terminates into it indicates that there is an entire layer of the stone which is only pyrite. There are also tiny pyrites in many places.




I remarked that the veining was not parallel to the faces of the stone—or rather, the faces not parallel to the veining:







I flattened the side opposite to the pyrite concretion. To flatten the stone, I “simply” used a diamond lapping plate (DMT Dia-Flat 120 µm—SUCH a pleasure to use after having struggled with abrasive paper for so long) set in a tray, with water just covering the diamonds. — After it was all finished, I poured the “slurry” into a bowl to let it sit, with a view to keeping the powder as an abrasive for polishing.


[To be continued in a next post.]