Thread: Vermio; The Black, Greek hone

I just received this bad boy yesterday. It's my first natural stone. I have a 5, 8 and 12k Naniwa SS. I picked it up for specific reasons. A) didn't see much about them on here B) I want to play with slurry, felt left out C) It was relatively cheap, not a 800 natural japanese stone that was used by someone whose skills would make me look like an infant smashing two stones together. I'm also inexperienced at honing, trust me this is all necessary information, hehe. I got the 3" x 5-3/4" size, comes with a free slurry stone (score!) of the same material. Pre-lapped by the seller (dunno if it's rude to mention them? google's your friend and so are PM's, to be on the safe-side) though I was quite skeptical, I have burned by "professionals" in just about every industry and occupation. When I unboxed the stones, the top of the hone looked reasonably flat and it was pretty apparent it was lapped. The bottom and sides are pretty rough, you can see the saw marks and the bottom looks like it was cleaved off fairly roughly. I figured, at least the corners are rounded and it feels hard, but lighter in weight than I anticipated. Might as well try what they have done so far, running low on sandpaper as it is anyways.

The test, I had a little bit of a rough shave on my Case razor, I didn't hone it very well. Probably only my 6th time honing a razor, growing pains to be expected.
*Throughout the process I checked with TPT after 5-10 strokes and practiced with 5x loupe for giggles, started to be able to see clearer once I already moved to vermio*
1) Rub blade on side of hone, dull it out.
2) Broke out my 5k, used a little 1000 grit to build up a little slurry. Used swooping X's as outlined in gssixgun's tape vs no tape video, have had toe sharpness problems.
-Helpful for me, slurry helps to see the edge contact with hone. Overhead lighting always puts my head shadow over hone.
3) Went straight to the vermio, supposed to be 12-14k. Built up a slurry to skim milk-ish thickness, it is a light gray/white. watering it down in increments to try to polish bevel, reasonably successful
-Insert a consecutive stream of swearing, can see this working soooooooooo well and feels reaaaaaally nice.
-Suddenly wondering if I screwed up, I used the saw pattern edge of slurry stone, maybe should have used smoothest side?
-Had one stroke where it felt like I was using 220 grit sandpaper, got into a groove and accidentally tried to hone my stabilizer.
4) Test shave, so -bleep- great!

In conclusion, I love this stone. It just "feels" right. As an engineer, it annoys me to no end that I cannot quantifiably describe how nice this hone is for me. I think it's a really good beginner hone. I have problems keeping a good stroke on the longer Naniwa's, because I'm too stubborn to just use half of it and I want to be able to do it. I am thinking of lapping this stone with even finer grit, maybe confirm what seller used, so I don't back track. Lapped surface is blacker than rougher surface, kinda interested how polished I could get it. Would theoretically make it smoother hone or am I just going to spin wheels and make a rock look purtty?


I used the side facing camera to create slurry. The sides facing up, down (contact w/ stone) and left seemed smoother. Better, maybe? Looking at you j-nat experts


Some slurry, looks grittier than it felt. I may have slurried more?


This is just a jpg from seller's sight, forgot to take more pictures of non-lapped sides of hone....
I hope this helps/was interesting