Thread: Is this a Translucent Arkansas?

I do not know exactly what kind of stone, but the stone is good. I have tried it with water and oil. Maybe a different result.

Same here...fast Cutting, quite fine and usable in the pre-finish area....

Originally Posted by mikael86

I never used one. What makes them so great?

For razors they work as a nice prefinisher (the finest ones that can be found will finish a razor, though, but they are not common). For tools, they can work legitimately as the only stone you use, along with a strop, and impart a very good edge, almost as good as a trans if used properly with steel that is agreeable to the hardness of the abrasive (that's a fairly big deal, I guess, when the abrasive and the steel hardness are similar - works to our benefit with razors, too).

And they are great knife stones, with water and a drop of dish soap or Smith Honing solution, will put a wicked edge on a good Carbon Steel knife, even a not so good one.

Harder than Chinese Algebra, lap with loose silicon carbide and finish on wet and dry. Loose grit from Gotgrit.com, is not expensive.

Ok I'll be on the look out then. What should I look for. Some of the soft ones are uniform in color and some of them have a lot of patterns. Are they equally good? Or is it more of a stone to stone deal where you can't tell before you try it?

Originally Posted by mikael86

Ok I'll be on the look out then. What should I look for. Some of the soft ones are uniform in color and some of them have a lot of patterns. Are they equally good? Or is it more of a stone to stone deal where you can't tell before you try it?

mikael86 I've posted this one before.this one is a very fine washita. you can shave off of it with a brisk strop up with a linen.or use a pasted strop to give comfort to the edge.cheers.

Originally Posted by mikael86

Ok I'll be on the look out then. What should I look for. Some of the soft ones are uniform in color and some of them have a lot of patterns. Are they equally good? Or is it more of a stone to stone deal where you can't tell before you try it?

If one looks like the pores are sparse, it should be fine cutting (you can often see in the pictures that stones like that have some translucence at the corners, they look waxy).

If the stone is butterscotch and completely opaque or with large even pores like a labeled lilywhite, it's usually chosen for its ability to cut faster.

If you see one with gray or pinks or anything else in, usually those are soft arkansas stones (the exception being a very few pinkish washita stones from the pike company, but they are extremely rare and labeled "rosy red").

the ones that are a trick to identify are the perfectly white ones with no labels, because they don't look a whole lot different than a perfectly white soft arkansas stone, and a soft arkansas stone is inferior to a washita by a fair amount.

If you're looking for razors, look for stones like blistersteel posted that have very tight pores, or stones that have less of a butterscotch-ish color, and that have a bone or waxy color.

That's been my experience, I could be wrong. i've been through maybe 20 of these stones, and those are just characteristics I've noticed. I didn't have any stipulation while I was buying, I bought what I thought were probably washitas indiscriminately, and got a whole range of stones. Of the 20, by chance probably 3 would make decent razor finishers (one confirmed, I have used it to finish razors).