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Hi there gentlemen
After a few weeks of thinking about it i have decided to try and hone my own straight. So i will be buying a Norton 4/8k water stone combo for me learn with on my muhle. If that is successful i would like a finishing hone, maybe a 12k grit but can anyone suggest a decent brand/make?
Naniwa superstone. I love mine.
I use a lynn mellilynn and a dragons toungefor final finish of a coti. use 100 licks on the fabric strop and 150 to 200 on leather and it tone down for a fine shave
Start with your Norton stones, and when you feel comfortable with them, get a finer one. The technique is much more important than the grit numbers.
And, if you need something finer, use some 0.5 micron CrOx paste on the back of your strop. You can't beat the feeling of good Chromium oxide, and, it's easy to use.
And, as you learn how to hone, you can then get your Naniwa 12ks, Chinese stones, Thuringians, Coticules, Japanese naturals etc.
I have to agree. A big mistake folks make is they start out and are just beginning to figure things out and they go rock crazy and buy a slew of hones. You need to work with one and be able to extract every bit of performance out of it including working with difficult razors and different techniques and then and only then you move on to the 12K and do the same with that.
You know the old saying about being a jack of all trades and a master of none. Well, you can be a jack of all hones and a master of none.
This is exactly what I did when I got started, and it impeded my progress rather than fast tracking it. If I had it to do over, and knew what I know now, I'd have stuck with the Norton starter set until I was proficient with that before going hog wild. Whether I would have went hog wild anyway ....... we'll never know. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
It didn't hurt me one bit to use a 4/8 Norton for a year before getting anything else. If you can get nice shaves off the 4/8 then your ready to feel the difference when you add other finishers into the mix.
All good advice. Buy a few cheap razors and go at it!
I think a lot of people put a lot of money down on hones and then try to learn how to hone on crappy razors. There are some very nice razors that go for $30-50. When you are looking for something to learn on it should be a good blade with no geometry issues. Save the junk razors for a challenge sometime after you get your honing routine worked out. I too think that the Norton set was a good place to start.
The Naniwa 12k is a great consistent quality hone. That said learn the 8k first. Polishing poor work on lower grits will still mean a poor edge.
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
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by RusenBG
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.