Thread: A good 12k Hone

You are right on track with a Norton 4/8k and 12K super stone.

I have been honing for over 40 years and have a whole slew of stones, synthetic and naturals, don’t know how many.

My go to set up is a Chosera 1K, Norton 4/8K and a 12K super stone.

About good 12 k hone , from the naturals , i would recomand you to get a quality turkey oil stone - the darker is , the beter and finer, they are . Look especialy for the kind of stone called black Lidyte . It is ordinary used by the gold sellers, to check the quality of the jeulery . A good stone of this kind , turkey origin not India , is amazing finisher , even the Esher thuri canot give someting more to the edge . I have 3 hones of this stone , and they are stunning finishers - they give very smooth and very crisp and sharp edge . I get 2 more of them the last week and im very hapy with them . They required a perfect lapping and they work with water mixed with liquid soap or dish washing soap . You can use carosene ,or beter WD 40 . The oil makes them slower , i prefer water . You will not be sorry about those stones , they work amazing and the only thing is that , they required presure - light to moderate . Without presure are slower like all hard stones . But they are many times faster that the chnese 12 k .
Lidyte is actualy a black JASPER - Basanite .Very consistant , fine and abrasive - you can see the metal tracs on the surface of the stone after few strokes . They are not expensive stones , but they are polishers anf finishers of highest class .
Black Lydite is called "Touchstone"

My go to for touchups is a 12K shapton pro,serves me well.
Back in the day I went nuts thinking naturals were the way to go,I had them all, Jnats, cotis, thuris, Eschers,I never became a master of any of them.
Buy a 12K syn that is an absolute known grit rating,takes all the varibles out of the equasion.

I would first get a CrOx pasted paddle or paste the back of a hanging strop, I used one after a Norton 4k/8k for a full year before I got into finishers. I've got or tried just about all the naturals except a JNAT and I gravitate to my C12K the most often

Originally Posted by RusenBG

About good 12 k hone , from the naturals , i would recomand you to get a quality turkey oil stone - the darker is , the beter and finer, they are . Look especialy for the kind of stone called black Lidyte . It is ordinary used by the gold sellers, to check the quality of the jeulery . A good stone of this kind , turkey origin not India , is amazing finisher , even the Esher thuri canot give someting more to the edge . I have 3 hones of this stone , and they are stunning finishers - they give very smooth and very crisp and sharp edge . I get 2 more of them the last week and im very hapy with them . They required a perfect lapping and they work with water mixed with liquid soap or dish washing soap . You can use carosene ,or beter WD 40 . The oil makes them slower , i prefer water . You will not be sorry about those stones , they work amazing and the only thing is that , they required presure - light to moderate . Without presure are slower like all hard stones . But they are many times faster that the chnese 12 k .
Lidyte is actualy a black JASPER - Basanite .Very consistant , fine and abrasive - you can see the metal tracs on the surface of the stone after few strokes . They are not expensive stones , but they are polishers anf finishers of highest class .
Black Lydite is called "Touchstone"

Sorry guys for getting off topic, but I seriously think we should make something like an SRP wiki page about the Turkish oilstones. We don't know where it comes or its history, only speculations, allowing many sellers to use the name for absolutely any stone that may or may not look like one, while they don't know what is it.
And, no, Turkish oilstone is a type of Novaculite, not Jasper. SRP is probably the leading site on information about hones among other things, and, two or three posts saying that the stone is a type of Jasper will make it real, given the limited information we have about them.

Of course, I meant no offense to anyone.

Sorry about the Jasper thing , all i know that they are amazing / Turkish oil stones and the famous Lidyan are mined in Greece and are diferent kind of novaculite , like it seems .they are type of stones , that can be difered as Creetian stones .Very mutch alike the wite creetian hone , but mutch finer in grit size . Samekind of use and hardness - very hard and abrasive stones - like the finer Arkansas version but harder and finer .

I have shaptons from 220-16,000, I love them. My razor honing leaves a lot to be desired. But they have taken my knives to a whole new galaxy of sharp.