Thread: Apache Black Gila

Nope.. I know Keith trimmed his to delete a horizontal one, but mine doesn't have that. Nothing has spread or let go or chewed an edge.

Originally Posted by kcb5150

Nope.. I know Keith trimmed his to delete a horizontal one, but mine doesn't have that. Nothing has spread or let go or chewed an edge.

Good deal. Terry mentioned them possibly being an issue to me, and to keep an eye out. Knowing you are using it without issue is a good thing though. This one has many very fine fissures running longways, but nothing horizontal...probably like yours.

Still going!!

Yeah, nothing bad has happened. Just don't drop it. Things like turkish oilstone are a rat's nest of fissures but hold pat as long as you don't have an accident. I have two lengthwise fissures in mine and they do no harm.

Well, it's done. Or as done as it's going to get for now lol. Five and a half hours of work though, and I've got some decent equipment that an average person doesn't have. Again though, I want to stress that I voluntarily asked Terry to send me these stones unfinished. If he'd had his way they'd have come at least flat lapped, if not finished. It was a bit labor intensive to do, yes...but I've got a much better feel for the character of the stone. I also ran razors over it at varying grits of polish to look at what the scratch pattern was like, and how it cut. Right now it's been lapped on a DMT Coarse, then lapped against an Apache Red, and finally against an Apache Strata. Again...it's not flat from end to end, but there's a large center area that is flat. More than enough room to work a razor on.

Soooo....here's some pictures (and even a video lol). Watch your volume...it's a bit noisy.


First...I got so frustrated lapping this thing with the diamond plates...I decided to go back out and try something different with my grinder. When I've worked with mammoth tooth in the past, I've found that you have to run very slow speeds, with very high pressure. The Gila feels oddly like the mammoth tooth, so I thought why not?? It did work, though not as efficiently as I'd have liked. Once I got back in, it was lots and lots and lots of lapping. But since the majority of the work had been done it went a bit more quickly.


Here you can still see the cutter marks I was unable to get out with the grinder. I mean...it would have done it...but my patience for the process was growing thin, and if I wasn't careful the belt would knock chips off the edges (particularly in the corners). I was able to put a really nice narrow diameter radius on all the corners though, even the bottom. It's quite comfortable to hand hone with now, lol.


This shows a few passes with the XXC DMT plate. You can see how NOT flat the piece is still. You can also see one pit in these two pictures. I have some 5 ton epoxy and I'd saved a lot of the powder from the initial dry lapping...so I may mix the two and fill it in with its own grit. Much like you would on a set of burl scales that had an inclusion. In running a razor over it you can't feel it...but it would probably make me feel better lol.


Here you see, I'd actually got the piece mostly flat. Flat enough that I wanted to move forward anyhow. It will probably take a month of Sundays, a little at a time...to flatten it edge to edge. Once I got to that point I actually flattened the new Apache Dark Red I got along with the Gila, and then used the slurry generated to do more work to the Gila (on the Coarse DMT). I've found using slurry like this more quickly refines the surface than moving up grits on the DMT plates...not to mention the stone doesn't stick to slurry, nor pull out the diamonds like it can do in the higher grits.


From there I went to lapping directly on the Apache Dark Red (the DR is supposed to be a coarser grit Red than the standard Apache Red. Terry thought it might be a good finisher for kitchen knives...or even a mid range for the razors). This helps refine both the surface of the Gila, but the Dark Red as well.


From there I went to my Apache Strata. The Gila WILL generate slurry off the Strata, which I found interesting. It's a thin, milky slurry...but it's definitely coming off the Strata.


This is the Gila post test honing one of the Gold Dollars I'd finished. 10 laps refined the scratch pattern of the Apache Dark Red to a very fine series of crosshatched scratches.

More in the next post (reached the picture limit on this one).

Loose sic on granite or float glass can get you close to true in brutal situations before trading off to an alternate medium (which is advisable anyway imo as stray grits can embed). Only real thing you need to do is get a feel for how much pressure you need/don't. You will learn what I mean. There is a real touch sweet spot on that.

Please don't put a ton of stock in these pictures. Anyone who has one of these $10 500x USB scopes knows that the slightest change in edge angle only changes everything in regards to what you can see. I can make a 1k King scratch pattern look like a 15k Jnat by rolling the scope just a bit. That said, these are the two pictures:


Apache Dark Red 500x, after 50 laps to establish a consistent scratch pattern.


Apache Black Gila 500x, after 10 laps.


Here you can see the actual part of the Gila I managed to get flat lol.

Anyhow, there you have it...as far as I got tonight. Time to catch a shower and shave, then crash for a bit.

Until tomorrow guys!

Originally Posted by kcb5150

Loose sic on granite or float glass can get you close to true in brutal situations before trading off to an alternate medium (which is advisable anyway imo as stray grits can embed). Only real thing you need to do is get a feel for how much pressure you need/don't. You will learn what I mean. There is a real touch sweet spot on that.

I need to pick up some SIC. I have a few pieces of glass and granite I can use to get close. You think something like a straight 220 grit or so would leave an acceptable scratch pattern to build off of with the plates and such? I'd like to get the entire thing flat before I get the surface too far refined. I don't want to drop a bunch of money into half a dozen grits of SIC lol.

I would think you only need one grit of it to do the heavy lifting. Look up lapping apache strata on YouTube. A nice example of how painless it is. Just don't put that on your dmt unless you have a dead one you keep just because it is flat

Originally Posted by kcb5150

I would think you only need one grit of it to do the heavy lifting. Look up lapping apache strata on YouTube. A nice example of how painless it is. Just don't put that on your dmt unless you have a dead one you keep just because it is flat

Good to know. I took a moment and got a better picture of the actual edge of that razor after another 10 laps on the Gila (20 laps total). The above picture just did way too crappy a job of showing the level of refinement 10 or 20 laps on this stone gave.


This is 20 laps on the Gila with plain water, after the Apache Dark Red I posted above. You can clearly see the difference, and even how the edge cleaned itself up.

I'm very, very impressed with this stone.