Originally Posted by
DaveW
As a piggish buyer of new stones, I do think some generalities can be drawn of new stones from new makers. It's a whole lot harder to look at a stone of vintage and tell much without using it. Here's what I've seen:
* the norton stones that I've gotten recently have not been too impressive. They are not as nice, to me, as the naturalwhetstone dark gray trans, the black from dans or the trans from dans, nor the black from halls (though I've never gotten a halls stone that's flat new).
The dans stones are the safe option for a new user, but they're also expensive. The seconds make good razor stones and dan's lapping process is the finest of the current makers, so the combination of the stone quality and the lapping process is ideal, or close to it.
Naturalwhetstone's black trans also comes flat (like the dans), but the surface is a bit more coarse and has more loose particles on it and takes longer to break in. When broken in, it's a very good fine and dense stone.
I lap some soft stones and not others to do an ark progression. I keep a cheap soft agitated, and agitate it with a diamond hone - it's a faster stone than a 1k waterstone. I use a washita as the next step and don't generally agitate it, never going further than rubbing two of them together. Final stone is a never touched (only clean the surface with light oil) true hard stone (black, trans, etc), which is why the washita is not kept too excited - a properly settled in black or trans will cut very slowly and make a very nice edge.
I don't use waterstuff on my oilstones because you never know when they'll end up in the shop. I use either light food grade mineral oil or WD 40, depending on how much cut I want. Thicker oil suspends the razor further from the stone and makes it easier to do the finest work, and sometimes I just use oil from start to finish. WD 40 is a bit more handy in the shop when you want little separation of the steel from the stone.