Thread: Dan's Whetstone True Hard

(I can hone a razor on a pike washita, by the way, so the concern here has nothing to do with honing razors, they should all easily be fine enough with a properly conditioned surface).

Learning a bit here. Thanks for sharing all this info. Question, the soft is not the same as the black or thrans right? Its a different animal?

The soft is a stone with lower density and more pores than anything we're discussing above. It's a faster cutter and less fine.

The hard that dan's sells is between the three truly hard stones mentioned above, but I'm sure you could hone a razor with one that was settled in, especially if you have a good linen and strop.

DaveW beat me to it. All types are same material. Soft has most pores and lowest density. Hard is in the middle. Then we have True Hard/Translucent/Surgical Black with the least amount of pores and highest density. It's all Novaculite, but the larger pores make a soft stone much more aggressive and fast cutting.

Thanks for the explanations. Now I might be pushing my luck but here goes, And sorry to the OP for the question, What is the difference between one of these and a Thuringian if they are both very hard and are rated about the same if you were to think in grits? I know, No grit sizes when talking naturals. Just trying to get a grasp on this all.

Thuringian is slate, thus more analogous to Welsh or Vermont slates than Arkansas stones.

Thuringian waterwhetstones are slate stones or more precisely mud slate. These slates
consist of quartz – which is the abrasive material, clay, mica (glimmer) and chlorite.
The soft waterwhetstones were found in upper-Devonian age deposits.

Pulled from:

http://strazors.com/uploads/images/articles/escher.pdf