Thread: Natural Stones: Japanese vs. Jasper vs. Novaculite vs. Chinese Agate/Faux Jade?

Spin off from another thread where the chinese jade was asked about. I'll re-put the Japanese stone stuff in here (that I put in another thread). My original intention is to point out that if someone is being thrifty, biggs or owyhee jasper is a better rock to consider than the chinese green hones on ebay.

First stone - vintage ozaki mine barber hone, the microscope says it's at 200x, and I don't think I believe that. It is very close up, though.

200 strokes total, 150 of those on clear water. This hone never sees a DMT or anything of the sort - it is never lapped or flattened after it was initially, and tomonagura for slurry is a fine shoubu or ohira stone. This stone does best on clear water and lots of strokes.

Pictures are same edge, just light angle depending.



Shave was excellent. Really excellent. The edge with this many laps on clear water is very similar in sharpness to chromium oxide powder, no weepers, though. Can't ask for more from any natural stone (this one is my best, despite many that are prettier).

Here is the stone, courtesy of a request I made to alex gilmore years ago where I requested all of the money to be spent on effect and none on looks. You can see your reflection on the surface of this stone, as it should be on any good finish hone that never gets lapped, but it still has enough cutting power to polish an edge.

Cost of the stone: $165

Here are two similar edge photos from the jasper this morning. 200 laps on the jasper after this shave, no leather on the jasper yet at this point.

First hundred laps with moderate pressure for a finisher and last 100 with very light pressure.



Bright polish to the naked eye again, mirror with no view of scratches. Close up, less aggressive scratches than the japanese stone in general, more of a polish, but some stray scratches here and there.

Didn't shave with it yet, will report back tomorrow. Before seeing any leather, though, the edge catches and severs a hair, which for me signals a likely good shave. If I can't get a hair to catch on a razor (my hair, my test), then the shave is usually dull feeling. If it's just barely catching after stropping, still usually represents a dull feeling shave.

And the slab of jasper that did it. no slurry on a jasper in my experience. The particles are sharp and slurry is overly strong like it is on a novaculite stone, though it's not as damaging as novaculite. I haven't tried japanese tomonagura.

Cost $16 including shipping. I had to form the smooth edge on the right side with a diamond hone. If buying a jasper slab, three things are the most important to me:
1) known type (this is owyhee)
2) flat and polished
3) big with an edge that will be easy to lap into a smooth edge that can be chamfered. Neither of those are necessarily common. You want something thin that can be mounted, because cleaning the edge of a bigger thick stone might be difficult, jasper is very hard.



After the shave tomorrow, I will prepare the edge with the green chinese stone.

The degree of Polish of the bevel is not in and of itself, an indicator of a finishing stone. It is a byproduct of a fine stone that can produce a straight, fine edge by producing fine even stria.

The photos of the razor from the Jnat show a much straighter edge, than the photos of the Jasper stone which show a much more chippier edge.
While the jasper may be capable of polishing the bevel, it may be inconsistent in grit purity or grit size causing chipping in the edge.
It would be interesting to see photos of both edges.

It is the edge that matters, not the bevel. You can polish a bevel with rubbing and polishing compounds on a strop to a mirror polish, but it will not yield a comfortable edge and shave.

If cost is the only issue, film is the most consistent, best value.

Right, I understand all of these things, of course like anyone else would. However, I think you're jumping to conclusions about the jasper's edge, and the other hones might or might not illuminate that.

The edge shown hasn't been stropped, and will look cleaner once it is stropped. I've also shaved off of this jasper once, and this is the second razor it's honed, so in time it will settle in.

As for bang for the buck, are we talking about restoring a few razors, or maintaining a record for decades? A quarter inch of jasper is a lifetime's worth of hone. I've never used a honing film that had the feel of a stone (be it aluminum oxide, chromium oxide or diamond honing films), and while the jasper is a bit more skippy than a smooth feeling japanese hone or an escher, it has decent feel with water or a light cutting fluid type of oil base. In maintenance of a shaving razor (where honing is every couple of months, perhaps as infrequent as once every 6 months for an experienced user), the jasper would win out over the honing films on vintage razors that were made of the plainer carbon steels (which are probably not used by modern makers because they take more skill to grind and have a higher tendency to warp or crack).

Cost isn't so much an issue for me, and shaving isn't what brought me to jasper (carving tools and chisels and planes did) - I have spent about $10k on various stones over the years between woodworking and shaving, i'm just interested in the actual shave experience, especially as it pertains to an experienced shaver who never will bring their razor to anything more coarse than diluted tomonagura.

Anyway, I'd wait for the additional data before coming to a conclusion, stones that polish more than cut (including novaculite) often make wire edges and all sorts of bits on the edge of steel that are held very weakly, only to leave a smooth edge once it's stropped off. What's shown in the jasper picture would be easily removed by a vintage linen. Half of my razors have significant spinework, so I don't generally use any pastes or powders.

Can you explain what you mean by photos of both edges, do you mean the opposite side of the bevel?

Here is the jasper edge stropped. It appears about the same.



And just as a side bit of information, here is a japanese razor that I have that just refuses to get as sharp as I'd like a razor to be to shave. It actually looks better on the edge, maybe than both razors, but the bevel doesn't look as good. I don't remember what I honed it with last, probably a less fine japanese stone than what was used in this thread. I've given it several hundred laps on the hone in this thread (the japanese hone) and it just has a ceiling that isn't that great.



I don't know why it refuses to shave. I thought it was overhard at first, and nearly threw it in the can, but before I did, I tempered it to medium straw, which for a vintage carbon type steel should be somewhere in high 50s hardness. It must be alloyed with something that moves the temper temperature up, because it doesn't seem any less hard. It's branded "OPARL 77", with "best silver steel" in the hollow. It's junk, but it does help illustrate the point that at these levels of keenness, the shave tells more than the picture of the edge. It's a shame that it's junk because it's a very classy looking razor.



The sharpness, with my hanging hair test, that this razor has is just barely catching a hair. Often when I've bought razors that have been professionally refurbished, they are somewhere in this ballpark, sometimes worse if they're not perfectly straight, which suggests a quick honing routine and no true test of shaving. Well, I don't often buy professionally refurbished razors, but I will do so if they are the same price as one that hasn't been cleaned up.

I almost dumped this razor on the classifieds without having honed it (it was NOS when I got it). I'm glad I didn't, it'll go to the garbage can when I can deal with the fact that it cost me 45 bucks and is worthless.

One last comparison, I am not a RAD kind of person, at least not any longer. The next picture is of my daily shaver. This razor was last honed about 4 months ago, has hit a vintage linen probably 15 times, and has about 100 shaves on it. I'd expect if I used the linen on the jasper honed razor for 3 or 4 months the edge would become as refined as this.



The white spots on the edge might be skin or something, don't know. This picture is taken at the same magnification, but the bevel of this razor is much thinner than the others.

In other threads, I have said that when you find the right strop and linen, it's not necessary to hone very often, and this is why. This razor gets the japanese stone mentioned in this thread once every 3-6 months, and I generally don't shave with any others. I hone it to "normalize" it and make sure the edge is free of any accumulating defects, but it's noticeable that keenness is slightly off for the first week or two until it's hit the linen several times again. The linen has something in it, but it's not abrasive as you can see, as it hasn't necessarily removed much scratch depth. The polishing that the linen does is evident right at the very edge (some of the scratches just disappear into blackness), and perhaps some of that is from the strop, too, and also on the primary grind back from the bevel you can see quite a bit of black signifying polished area.

There's another thing that I think that isn't often discussed here, and that is the importance of finding a system that doesn't just blast away metal from a razor, as in this case green chromium oxide would not improve this edge, and it might do the opposite. Green chrome is slightly finer shaving than the stoned japanese edge in the first post, but at this point with about 100 shaves on this razor, it shaves better than it would off the stone again and at least as well, perhaps better, than green chrome (graded powder) would make it shave. at four months, I'm normally thinking that it will be time to normalize this thing again with the stone, but after looking at this picture, I think I'll wait a while until there's actually a problem that needs to be solved.

It is the best made razor I have ever seen of any type, it's exceedingly finely ground, absolutely perfectly straight, with extra weight from spine work in the spine and a nice heavy spine in general, and the tempering couldn't be any better. The few very vintage dennert razors that I have seen all display this skill in the grind, the cutler who made them must've been very proud of his work. This extra effort to not blast metal off of the edge has a lot to do with wanting this to be the razor that I shave with 6 of 7 days for the rest of my life without putting significant honewear on it. Hopefully that'll be another 50 years or so.



Some of this additional talk doesn't really illuminate much, we all have specific things we're looking for when we hone and shave and maintain a razor. The dennert razor, a vintage linen and a horse leather strop that is broken in and reflective are what I look for, but the pictures themselves illustrate why at this level of magnification, the relative differences are interesting but not always representative of the shave quality.

Dave, How do you prep the Owyhee Jasper prior to finish honing with it?
I use a piece of one inch granite counter top that I had cut for baking gread on for a flat surface. I use various grits of wetpaper on that surface to lap with.
Would you think that a final grit of 1200 that is well worn would give a sufficiantly polished surface?

I think that would do it. It's hard to get them lapped so everything is coplanar. If they have any saw marks in them or anything, it takes forever to get them out. I usually get most of them out and then just use them after that, with a focus on flushing the surface of the stone often to make sure any lapped particles don't remain on the surface.

The plainer the stone, the better. It might be my imagination, but I think the green part is a bit more dense and I like it a little better, but both the greenish and tannish parts work well.

I didn't think my jaspers absorbed water at all, but one of the prior posters was right. Mine will absorb water ever so slowly. Not like a synthetic hone, but just a tiny hair faster than the stone would dry off if it didnt' absorb anything.

I kind of like to break my stones in with razors if possible (not so much with an arkansas stone, but you can do it with the jasper) so that I don't get heavy handed with a tool and make a very very slight dip in the middle. That's more a concern on wide stones like the jasper pieces, but once they settle in, I wouldn't want anything smaller. If you have a spyderco fine or UF, that might also make a nice thing to burnish the surface with.

I think you'll be pleased. There isn't anything to lose except time, the stones are almost free. Even if you get some that are a bit too porous for razors, they make great edge aligners and polishers for knives, etc.