Thread: Arkansas Adventures...

Yes, its a newly mined standard 175 x 50 coticule from Ardennes. I think gravel road is probably close to what it felt like to draw a blade across it. Or perhaps more accurately, like drawing a blade over sand paper, or a coarse carborundum type hone. Not very glassy at all, and it seemed to grip a blade like no other stone I've used before.

When I first got it I could hone an edge up on my Norton 8k, test shave it, then take it to the coticule and notice a sharp drop in shave quality. Now that it's been meticulously burnished it puts a pretty solid 8K-is edge on a blade that's more comfortable to shave from than my Norton hone. Provided using less than weight of the blade, I lift up a slight bit to keep the stone from sucking the blade down to it. It's still got that coarse feeling and I suspect might wreck an edge if it were allowed to.

Today's test:



A Torrey straight that I had to do a little work to save, honed up with the olive Arkansas. I couldn't resist the urge to play with that big Yellow Nagura some, so I probably did 100 strokes or so on that first. I kinda wish I'd thought to shave test it at this point, but it wouldn't have told me much so it's just as well. Then I made a medium slurry atop the Arkansas with the nagura, and started working the edge and diluting the slurry. Finished up by washing the stone and doing a few hundred strokes on pure water. Not that it really needed all of that, but like I said earlier I was playing around some.

The shave test...well it's definitely an Arkansas edge. But I think I chose a poor test razor. That one arrived in a lot of razors that had 2 good blades and this one, which was cracked. I had to take about a quarter inch of steel off. And while it shaves now better than it ever has, I just don't have skill with a thin 4/8 (or less) blade. Rough calculations put the edge at 17 degrees so I know it didn't get too wide, I just have trouble finding the angle. So it didn't clean up as much as I like to see on the first pass. Or the second. and I had to take a third stroke at some areas. Mostly around the neck, which led to mild irritation.

I had a Morley worked up on the Grey stone. I've found that blade really seems to like Arkansas stones and Welsh slates. But I managed to ding the edge and will probably have to hone that out. I didn't like how it looked after giving it a good stropping.

Well, we know it wasn't the stone's fault.

Yep, all my questionable shaving technique and not the stone. I've got a second Morley OTW that looks in good shape, so maybe I'll try again this week. I'm pretty content with how all my other blades shave, so I don't want to mess with them. The only blades I have left are kinda thin like that old Toorey. There's no point trying something smaller than 5/8 as a test bed, since I'm still not all that proficient with a small blade.

I mentioned earlier that I had cobbled together a sort of Nagura set from (mostly) Western stones. Bear with me a moment, and if you're heavily into Jnats avert your eyes from this post. It may get a little sacriligious.




You've been warned.

So I took the dinged Morley and decided to play a bit. My Arkansas one-stone solution:



Nothing was used but what is pictured to work out the ding and hone up the blade. Starting with my Naniwa 800 grit Botan Nagura, I rinsed the stones, worked up a thick slurry, and ground away the chip. That's the little pink stone on the far left. This stuff actually can break down a bit and get a fair polish, but I was using this for heavy lifting. So once the ding was out - only took a few minutes - I did 20 light laps and washed the Arkie off. Didn't really do any dilutions with this stone. Pink milk, remove scratches, set bevel, move on. Next phase: Coticule Tenjou Nagura. That's the yellow one next to the pink one for those unfamiliar with coticules.

This one actually had a bit of heavy lifting of it's own to do. Garnets don't break down like the material found in Jnats or the stones I use following this, so it'll only get a polish around 4-6K. But the important thing at this phase really was to eliminate the deep cuts made by the Naniwa Botan. And the coticule does this rather well. So I cut this phase a little early as well, and only diluted from a thick milky slurry down to a medium slurry. More than enough to rid the blade of the Botan scratches.

From there we get into the good stuff. Rinse stone, break out the The Dragon's Tongue Mejiro Nagura. Little black stone just to the right of the razor. This somewhat overlaps the range of the coticule on the low end with a milky slurry and brings us up close to the 8K area of polish by the time the slurry is faint. Pretty nice, if I do say so myself. Also rather convenient because anything missed by that little yellow rock will be cleared away at the beginning phase here. A little bit of overlap/redundancy breeds success, so I started with a milky slurry and diluted until it was barely noticeable that the water wasn't pure.

And the final phase - Black Welsh Slate Tomo Nagura. That's the last one on the far right. This stone can overlap a little, so rather than start off with a milky slurry I started somewhere around the middle. Besides, this little fellow is hard and doesn't like creating slurry too much. I'd have been there an hour or better just trying to slurry the stone if I wanted that milky consistency here. Same general method. Several dilutions until it was only just barely visible that the water was cloudy.

For the final phase, I rinsed the stone off one more time and flipped it to the polished face. 200 laps on pure water, and we have a smokin' Arkansas edge. 1 pass with light touch up was more than enough to clean away a day's growth. And it'll only get better the next time it's touched up. Not half bad for a little over a half hour's work.

Not sure if that counts as setting a bevel on an Arkansas stone, but where there's a will, there's a way!

Many roads to Rome. Thanks so much for sharing yours! Congrats on an awesome shave too!

Enjoyable read. Thanks.

Originally Posted by Marshal

Yes, its a newly mined standard 175 x 50 coticule from Ardennes. I think gravel road is probably close to what it felt like to draw a blade across it. Or perhaps more accurately, like drawing a blade over sand paper, or a coarse carborundum type hone. Not very glassy at all, and it seemed to grip a blade like no other stone I've used before.

When I first got it I could hone an edge up on my Norton 8k, test shave it, then take it to the coticule and notice a sharp drop in shave quality. Now that it's been meticulously burnished it puts a pretty solid 8K-is edge on a blade that's more comfortable to shave from than my Norton hone. Provided using less than weight of the blade, I lift up a slight bit to keep the stone from sucking the blade down to it. It's still got that coarse feeling and I suspect might wreck an edge if it were allowed to.

I also have a newly mined washboard coti - I have a theory about what is going on with them- I am on travel right now- would like to start new thread about these when i get back and take picture.

sticking to this thread- i experiment a lot with coti slurry on the soft ark. its swiss cheese surface is ideal to hold slurry and make a power cutter for ding repair etc.

I've got a few theories of my own, so I'll be keeping an eye out for that thread.

Agreed that coticule slurry on a soft Arkie works pretty well. But with the pores filled and the surface burnishing quickly from all that abrasive rolling around on top of the stone, I'm on the fence about how much it's helping the cutting action. Might just be more fun to swish around the yellow mud and watch it turn grey from all the metal it's grinding off. I need to find my crystolon type hones and resurface the soft stone to play with it some more.

Tonight's experiment - full Arkansas progression on a new (to me) Morley clover stamp.



Talk about a hard fought battle. Left to right, Soft Arkie, Hard Arkie, True Hard Arkie. Morley needed full bevel set and (small) chip repair at the toe.

To start, all my stones, these included, have been surfaced differently on each side. The 'back' side tends to be rougher, the 'front' is burnished, or just more fine. So starting on the back of the Soft Arkie, I started to wear away the chip in the toe. Only took about 5 or 10 minutes, I figured at this point surely the bevel was set. I was mistaken. But I didn't realize it just yet. Flipped to the front side of the stone and got to work. It felt kinda sticky on the pad of my thumb after a hundred laps or so. But not quite right. I didn't listen to that little voice, and moved on to the hard stone. After 10 minutes, maybe less, I decided it was time to check if it would shave arm hair. Nothing. Felt dull on the thumb pad. Back to the soft stone. But not the fast cutting backside. I'm a glutton for punishment.

After a good 10 or 15 minutes on the face of the soft stone I realized I was only half there, and I could've had this finished twice over if I had just used the rough back of the stone. Because this type of work is specifically why I left it coarse. 5 minutes later the bevel was set. Flipped over to the face of the soft stone, TPT felt sticky all along the edge. Looking good. Moved on to the face of the hard stone (No need to use the coarse side). A few hundred laps later it was taking off arm hair nice and easy. Now we're making progress right? Well, no. Moved on to the back side of the True Hard which is currently just as sent from Dan's and after 100 laps did another little shave test. Wouldn't cut hair. No logical reason for this, just wouldn't fly.



Back to the soft stone. Coarse side, because I learned my lesson earlier. This time there was a lot of back & forth between the soft and hard stone and finally it dawned on me what was happening. 1: Lots of distractions. 2: I was using tape. And not replacing between stones because it didn't look too worn. Not at all like it gets when I'm using Synthetics, but that was enough to throw things off.



At this point I took a few hours away from the stones. Needed a break, dinner, and to sort out distractions. Came back to it and started at the ground up. Changed tape half through bevel setting, when I flipped over to the face of the soft stone, when I jumped to the hard stone, and again when I jumped to the back side of the True Hard. Stropped after the Soft Arkie, Hard Arkie, and again after the 'coarse' face of the True Hard. Thumb pad test was a go at each stage. Everything checked out under the loupe. Arm hair test passed after the Hard and coarse True hard stones. Flipped the True Hard to the burnished face and did some plain water laps. Little bit of palm stropping at the mid point. When I was done with water laps, I made a nice slick shave lather and finished off with 150 strokes.

If this thing can't pass the shave test tomorrow I will be surprised, because it feels like a pretty sweet edge. Don't have the will power to shave test it tonight though.