Thread: Looking for a Translucent

I would like to get me a good quality Arkansas Translucent stone. Any recommendations such as websites. Thank you.

Natural Whetstone, Dan's, and Hall's are 3 reputable distributors. Google should easily find them for you.

Natural Whetstone has quality stones as does Dans, I own both. Never tried Halls but have read theyneed more lapping than the others. No matter where you get one make sure to tell them it's for razors and you need it dead flat. It might still need some lapping but not much.

I've had halls, norton, dans, NW...and some other vintage trans stones, as well as some independent offshoots.

I like the dans trans the best of all of the new ones, the NW "black trans" which is just a dark gray trans the second best.

I've never bought a large dans stone at regular price, and the black and trans 2x8x1 stones I've gotten from them averaged about $100 with extremely minor cosmetic issues.

I only ever had one halls black stone, a huge one - 12x3x1, back when they were cheap (that was $90 shipped from a place that I think was called "knife merchant" - who no longer has them). It was so far out of flat as to be unusable. I lapped a part in the center about 10x2.5 and got on with it and eventually sold it at a great loss (that sounds nutty now, doesn't it?). I like the dans black better, and I believe halls was sold to someone else and now the prices are high. At the prices they want, I'd just go to dans instead. Dans has more and better stock and is deadly consistent.

The one last option is a norton HTB 83 (or whatever their 8x3x1/2 trans is). It's $79 all the time, needs very minor flattening and they sometimes show up used on ebay for about $55-$60.

Still, buying one stone, I'd haunt the specials page on dans.

Excellent advice Wid, exactly the kind of advice I am looking for. Thank you.

Dan's translucents sounds like they have a good reputation. Thank you.

Originally Posted by jelajemi

Dan's translucents sounds like they have a good reputation. Thank you.

Both of their hard types are tops (the black and the trans), as is their surface treatment. Unfortunately, there's nothing on the specials page at the moment.

Dans black easily equals (or bests) the translucent from Natural Whetstone. Not saying they are a bad stone, they are a quality stone too.

This type of comment always cracks me up, lol. In a different thread, not a couple days ago, someone made the exact same comment but with the stone distributor names switched.

With all due respect, did you take a stone from each place and go through the exact same preparation for both honing surfaces and test identical razors honed one on each stone type with multiple blind tests before arriving at this conclusion?

I ask because I own a NW "black" translucent, a vintage Pike white translucent, and a vintage maker-unknown black, and with all 3 prepped the same way I can't tell the edges apart. All 3 are outstanding.

I think differences between Arks are more or less down to density.

Have you tried a Dans?

As far as testing using the same method of preparation, indeed I did. Both done with sic power then taken up to 2K using wet/dry sand paper. Then using a chisel to burnish each. You can question my finding, that's OK. I'm happy I can amuse you.