Originally Posted by
DaveW
There may be diamond embedded in the stone if it continues to cut. When I look at a picture of the stone, I see what looks like possibly:
* quartz
* novaculite
Something in that range of hardness. Those types of abrasives tend to work a swarf with a razor until the striations from the prior step are gone, and then they stop cutting for the most part and polish. The more the prior stria are removed, the more they polish because they just don't dig in to flat metal that much once it gets to a certain hardness (since the abrasive particles and the carbon steel structure are similar hardness around 60 or low 60s).
That makes for something very useful for an experienced honer.
I don't have a clue how long it takes to tone down a novaculite stone with razor honing, because I've always used tools on one instead, but if you used loose diamond on a novaculite stone, even 0.5 micron, it would continue to work steel long after the novaculite was tired, and it would embed in the novaculite and cut the razor. There are some folks (garrett hack is one) well known in the woodworking community who don't like novaculite hones, but they like them if they sprinkle some diamonds on them and "revive" them or some term that they use. I personally like to let a stone break in indefinitely, but we all have our choices.
I'm not an expert by any means, but I like to understand things, and I guess over the years, I've probably spent about $10k on various sharpening mediums, maybe a little more, and I've been through everything from iron oxide to chinese agate. There was a post earlier about doing things just to be a jerk, and sometimes I may seem like that, but it's because I want to dispense with the pleasantries, say things as i see them and wait to be proven wrong (I have no problem with being proven wrong, because i'm not an expert).
That's my frame here, one to warn anyone who is new about things that are relatively new and purported to be semi magical, and two, to find out what really "is", if you know what I mean. If in the end I was wrong every time, but we have a very clear understanding of what things are, that's fine with me.
The fact that the stone may not agree with every razor just bare and in use is more what I expect, and that's also why I said at the outset that the truly easy to use historical stones seem to work on everything short of defective razors. The best japanese barber hones and the y/g thuris come to mind. The gok 20 comes to mind. Most other things are very good hones, but fall a bit short of the stuff that truly commands the big bucks. The y/g's command it because of consistency.
I've dropped off the hone forum a little bit because as time goes on, I am no longer acquiring razors, and I would imagine that my honing (or use of any abrasive that's as hard as steel) is dropping to something every maybe 300 shaves? I'm fixated on the vintage linens and about how much they reward experience, and stones thus matter a little less to me because once that edge is established on a razor, the linen maintains it forever if you use one correctly, and any stone does nothing other than to move the bevel down, because you'd hate to remove the linen edge.
We are all fixated with the stones when we're new, though, and I'm not by any means saying I'm done buying. I've bought probably a dozen more stones in the last year, because I can't resist them even if I'm not using them much. I can find other places to use them.