Video: How Much Steel Hardness Affect Honing ?
Recently a gentleman commented on honing video in my YT channel, I was honing Towa Tungsten Steel razor on A Maruoyama JNat… The person inquiry was “is it really the steel hardness or the stone cutting powers that causing the slowness”.
In that particular case, it was a combination of both, the stone has a reasonable cutting powers for a finisher, however with such hard steel and the stone surface smoothed out; the Maruoyama stone and the Nakayama slurry turned into a slow finishing combination, also the color of the base stone made it look worse than it was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHqZONkBe0Q
The gentleman question encouraged me to compare the hardness of different steel alloys of common razors, I didn’t pick any exotic Steels like Tamahagane, Tungsten Steel or even Swedish Carbon Steel; I intended to show that even with common European steel you can make some abrasives fail or behave differently.
In the comparison, I have used a super polished light Nakayama Asagi as base stone, and the slurry was 100% natural Saudi Pottery Clay, produced in the central region in AL Majmaah to be exact ( currently, the only information I have is that they find it 10 meters under the ground as veins ).
The razors I choose:
Henkel inox
Solingen Silver Steel
Spanish Carbon Steel “Koken by Fabricacion Espaņola, in other word it is a cheaper version of a Fily”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvLNmpg8HrA
This is sometimes the hidden reason behind the conflicting opinions about one type of abrasive.
Happy Holidays,