Thread: A Charnley? Or something else?

i have a small CF...very pretty....a dark green(grey) stone... (but not black)
the edge of the blade is matt compared to Naniwa 8k-12k but work smooth
I have used CF with water...but i think the best perfomarce is with oil( can appreciate better the difference with nani 8k-12k)

Originally Posted by yohannrjm

Wow! That's some serious shine on that stone!

How did you get it to that point? Finer and finer abrasives, or a chisel and elbow grease?

Also, even with this shine, do you still see the 'texture' of a type of grain on the surface, or is it smooth like glass?

Thanks for posting this.

Both actually! I used loose grit SiC up through 1500 grit, then I took a Suehiro Gokumyo 20k (Any high grit synthetic will work) and raised a very slight slurry on it with a diamond plate and used this to wet lap the Ark. Next I cleaned and dried everything and then burnished the Ark a bit by rubbing the SG20k on it dry. After this step I cleaned everything up again and oiled the stone and went to work with a wide chisel with a convex bevel for about 20 - 30 minutes all told.

The surface is pretty much like glass, it only has a very few pretty much microscopic "barely there" pinholes visible under a very bright light source at an angle. These are so small they can't be felt with finger or blade. I have looked at the surface under very high magnification (more than 300x when displayed on my 50" television screen) with my scope using raking light to show surface texture and it looks pretty much completely flat at that level also. The dust on the surface is the most visible feature.

The edge produced is sharp enough so that the razor's spine can be kept completely flat against the face even for WTG passes, yet super smooth and comfortable.

I took care of some of the conditioning of the hone last night. I got myself a cup of tea and patiently kept running a 1 1/4" chisel over the stone. Unfortunately, I don't have any really wide chisels.

Anyway, I just took my time with it, and by the end I already had a very reflective surface on the hone. I could see my reflection in it when it was held directly in front of me. It didn't even take that long.

A wider chisel would have made this a piece of cake.

The proof is in the honing performance, though. I'll check that out in the next day or so.