Three Stone Set from Best Sharpening Stones

Some of you may remember me posting about getting the 8x3 surgical black from BSS a few weeks ago. I took a chance on a less-expensive vendor (nothing against Dan's; they're an awesome family business that I hope to buy from when funds are a little looser). Anyway, with some flattening and burnishing work on my part, it's giving up some awesome edges, and I'm very satisfied with the purchase.

Well, my neighbor whom I posted about getting into straights was so taken by the whole arkansas honing demo at my kitchen table, he promptly went home and ordered the whole set, all 10X3X1/2: a soft, a hard, and a surgical black.
http://i767.photobucket.com/albums/x...psba3kesbg.jpgIt could have been the Knob Creek guiding his debit card out of his wallet-I wasn't there.

Anyway, they were "mostly flat" (which is about like horseshoes and hand grenades for arkies lol!). There are a few slivers of daylight showing under the ruler here and there. So the work begins:

As you can see, I've already gridded them with a sharpie (harder to remove), and I just got in a batch of fresh belts from Pop's. I plan to flatten the soft and the hard maybe a little with the DMT 325, and maybe some to finish on a 400 or 600 grit belt if it feels like it's going to eat the DMT for lunch.

The surgical black I will treat like I did my 3x8, and lap it on a flat platen with 2x72 belts once flat from 325 and a 400 grit belt. 600, 800, 1000, and 2000 should get it in pretty good shape. And I also got in a bottle of .5 micron diamond spray that I can further burnish it with along with the usual progression of tools and knives.

I expect these 10x3's to be more of a bear to get truly flat and lapped-we'll see. I'll show you the finished results hopefully before next year! Aaron

Bear in mind all of those stones are made of the same %99 Novaculite. Calling it 'soft' is a misnomer. It's still pretty darn hard. I would spare the DMT the pain, cause the Soft and Hard are gonna put about as much a hurtin' on it as the Black.

Best stones are pretty good. I got a soft and Hard stone from them. Dan's is great, but not the only option for Arkies.

Bigger stones, more surface area to disperse the pressure. Yeah, they'll be a bear to flatten. My battle with my 12 x 2.5" stone ended in a truce - I stopped lapping it and decided to be happy with 'close enough' after a few days of work. Still gives a killer edge, even if the stone is a bit convexed.

Yeah, Marshal-I found out pretty quickly after about 5 minutes at the sink that my DMT was going to be an expensive paperweight long before those guys are flat-didn't even faze em. I just spent over an hour in the shop on low-grit belts (popped a few too), and made a little progress. I'll get back on them tomorrow.

A 60 grit belt, to get in the ball park, It will leave suprizingly, a smooth finish. Wear a good mask, and set up a fan to blow the dust away from your face, you do not want to breathe that dust.

Then go to Silicone Carbide lose, 60 grit and a steel cookie sheet until flat.

Use the sharpie, pencil will just wash off with the slurry.

Once you are flat, the rest of the grits go quickly, after 500 grit Silicon Carbide, you can go to Wet & Dry.

If you use a diamond plate, you will, trash it. Got Grit.com, $15 will get you 60-500 grits, enough to do several stones.

I just love to see more and more people getting into using Arkanstones to hone razors. Makes my heart melt. Especially since a few short years ago people would have called you names for attempting to do so.

Steel-I'm a teacher, so I'm used to being called names. :D

And Marty, I was using 50 and 80-grit "hogging" belts from my son's knife-making supply. It may be unorthodox, but when flattening stones like that I spray the belt while moving with water to cut down on the dust and make sort of a muddy slurry (but yeah, I wear a mask regardless!). The belts will eventually pop from being weakened by the dampness, but I can tell when one is about to go and just get out of the way! I popped 4 before giving up. I ain't doing the cookie sheet thing-my arthritic left shoulder doesn't need the stress. And as I said earlier, I quickly realized that the DMT plate wasn't up to the task.

I'll just keep going with the belts. From my last surgical black I did this way, I know that once flat I can progress pretty steadily up in grit-looking to go to 2k on the surgical black and start burnishing. The rest I'll leave off at 400 or 600 for cutting power.

Thanks for the ongoing tips-this is definitely a figure it out as I go kinda deal (with a lot of help from the experts!).

When I've come across really damaged or out of shape Arkies, I resort to silica sand and concrete. I've removed severe damage on quite a few Washitas and a couple Blacks to remove glue damage or even edge chips. Works on all the SiC or AO or stones I've found also. Yes, works much slower on the harder stones as with all things Arkansas.

Well, after popping half a dozen aluminum oxide belts and not much to show for it, I ordered an assortment of silicone carbide belts. Most of the low grit belts I had on hand were ancient anyway, bought along with an entire knife-making operation from a deceased maker's family a few years ago.

I'll get back on the case after my new SC belts come in from Amazon Monday.

I would assume it's the belt age. I haven't broken a belt. Horror Freight is right at the bottom of my development where the commercial area starts, so I usually get their foulest belts (but they're fresh and the tape joint is on them, too), and use the drum on the end of the sander. I don't know of any other fast way to work them - used by hand on any paper, they just batter the abrasive in a hurry.

I wonder if a knapper could chip them off uniformly.

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Originally Posted by DaveW

I would assume it's the belt age. I haven't broken a belt. Horror Freight is right at the bottom of my development where the commercial area starts, so I usually get their foulest belts (but they're fresh and the tape joint is on them, too), and use the drum on the end of the sander. I don't know of any other fast way to work them - used by hand on any paper, they just batter the abrasive in a hurry.

I wonder if a knapper could chip them off uniformly.

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Yeah, some of those old belts sat in a moldy, unventilated shop for years before I bought the whole shop with all tools and accessories for my son's knifemaking. But the carbide ones came in today from Amazon, so I went at it again. MUCH better results!! I finally flattened all 3 hones on the 120, then started on the progression and beveled all edges and corners:
*Soft up to 600 to keep some cutting power
*Hard up to 1000
*For the Surgical Black, I finished both sides: on the "rough" side I went up to 1000. On the fine side I went up to a 2000 grit belt, then tried something interesting for further refinement and burnishing. I sprayed the belt with .5 micron diamond spray and "burnished" it some more on the belt before hitting it with a chef's knife and large putty knife. This gave the surface a near mirror finish.

I gave my neighbor back his hones along with my most recent rescale of a no-name blade that I had finished up to a Norton 8k, stropped and test-shaved right before he came over. The shave was a good 8k edge, but I wanted him to have some room to experiment. I also loaned him my Nani 12k with some instructions, and the advice to shave 1st off of the 8k edge, then seen if he could improve on it with the Nani. Strop, test shave, and only THEN should he start trying to refine it with the SB. We'll see how he does. Of course I told him we could sit down again and work on technique if he doesn't get anywhere.

Well done. I usually use as coarse as I can reasonably use - cheap 60 or 80 grit. Sanding those stones is like sawing wood. The tooth size in a saw has to match the thickness of the cut and the hardness of the wood or you can end up sawing slower with a more coarse saw (and it feels bad, too, just like it would feel terrible to sand a stone with a 36 grit belt).

Diamonds in the black isn't bad policy, it's something garrett hack has been advocating for years. I've never done it because I value the ark surface, but half micron would actually be a good match for razors. You can always lap it off if you don't like it. I keep some diamond powders for the jasper stone since it has almost no cutting power unless it's slurried (and it's like slurrying a ceramic mug when you do slurry it - harsh and hard).

If you find stones with a ton of sway and extra thickness (some of the suitably old washitas, etc, were 1 1/2 inch thick), you can track down a coarse belt for one of your grinders and run the high parts of the sway off in a couple of minutes. It's like getting something for almost free if the stone is very cheap, as they often are in that condition, and you're usually still left with a stone thicker than the later boxed stones.

Good thread. Interesting read. Thank you.