Thread: Poor newbie's hone set

Originally Posted by Barbu

Thanks Marshall, you saved me a headache playing with novaculite. I've decided to just try my Steelex 1/6 with very light touch and maybe reducing the soak time and finishing on the Naniwa 12k that's in the mail. After all the Steelex/Woodstock is more expensive than a King, I know it doesn't mean much but makes me wonder how good it is. I can't put it aside without triyng it at least once, I don't know if anyone has ever tried it on a razor. Somebody has to bite the bullet, right?

The steelex stone will be fine. Essentially, you're doing this:
* you're going to learn the stone, and you'll be like the deer hunter who hunts with a rifle that shoots a 2" group. When you get good with the rifle, it's plenty accurate to spare. If it's a little loose, you might have to get used to its quirks
* The other thing you could do is buy 10 sets of stones and be like the guy who takes a different rifle to the woods every time. His rifles are good, but if he doesn't have that much experience with each one, the first guy gets more deer and questions less in the woods

The stones you have will be some kind of alumina, and closely graded. They will work well at what you find out that they do well.

The fact that they're alumina means that while some folks may not like the gap between a 12-15 and 4-5 micron abrasive, the abrasive is strong enough to bridge it, and I'd expect that it's actually strong enough that it will be just as fast to make that jump (and spend some extra time on the 6k) as it would be to go through a progression.

You might need something else to finish the edge. Technically, you can get a shaving edge off of almost anything, but you're really trying to get a comfortable shaving edge that's very keen. Lots of stuff will do that.

If you tire of this stone, I'd keep the arkansas combo in mind. It's gentle on edges and can cut or burnish depending on how you use it, and the sharpness will rival anything natural unless a razor is soft (in that case, you don't want the razor).

For now, it's better to be the guy in the first bullet point above, or on my day of randomness, as they say in bluegrass jams (beware of the guy who only owns one banjo - he probably knows how to play it pretty well). In woodworking with hand tools, they call it familiarity with tools, and it's a pretty strong thing if you don't let your head believe that you don't own 14 other things that you should have.