Thread: True Hard Arkansas

Wow, that is a beautiful, gigantic stone-can you tell us her measurements?

Thanks guys,

Measures 10"x3"x1" length,width, height respectively

Cool looking stone!

That's pretty! It's also a bonus that the banding is so symmetrical.

I too am a fan of the arks earning their smoothness naturally with use.

I have no idea what the difference is between a translucent and a "true hard Arkansas." I'm not familiar with that term. Would someone please explain the difference?

"The Translucent Arkansas (extra fine) stone can be slightly more aggressive than the Black Arkansas stone. It is also very smooth to the touch and will help you achieve a keen edge your knives and razors. As you noted these large stones are more expensive – especially in the Translucent Arkansas grade. The reason behind this is that it is a more labor intensive product for us to come up with these large bench stones. We encounter more natural variations in the stone such as cracks that makes it more difficult for us to cut our products we manufacture out of this material. We do not cut a large volume of the Translucent Arkansas stones in the larger size stones........ If you are interested in this size of stone – I will need to confirm with my production manager and confirm if we will have this size available. It may take some time for us to come up with one if you wish to order this stone."

Taken from my email with Dan's whetstone. Those are Kim's words.

"The True Hard Arkansas (extra fine) stone can also be slightly more aggressive like the Translucent Arkansas stone in comparison to the Black Arkansas stone. The True Hard Arkansas stone is also known as the colored Translucent Arkansas stone. It is just like the Translucent Arkansas stone with the exception that it may have some of Translucent with some other colors such as white or black color streaking in the stone. We cannot guarantee any specific colors in the True Hard Arkansas stones. It is also is very smooth to the touch and will help you to get a razor sharp edge on your knives and razors. We do not intentionally cut this material especially in the larger stones. We also classify the Black Arkansas stones under the True Hard Arkansas category and will substitute the Black Arkansas for the True Hard Arkansas when it is available..........."

Again Kim's words from Dan's whetstone company.

Don't think anyone will be able to better describe the differences than that.

If you were interested on how their black stacks up

"The Black Arkansas is the finest stone that we manufacture. It can be finer than the Translucent Arkansas and True Hard Arkansas stones. It has a very smooth and glassy feel to the stone. It will help you to achieve a razor sharp edge. As you have found that there are companies out there that are marketing the Black Arkansas stone that are not genuine Novaculite stone products and they do not perform the same as our Black Arkansas (novaculite stones) do. They tend to be a softer material and do not produce the same time of finished edge."

Again Kim's words from Dan's whetstone company.

Thank you for that in depth analysis of the finer intricacies of these stones.