Thread: I Found It Over There

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.