Thread: Arkansa stones

I want to thank every one for their responses.
I have ordered a 6x3 surgical black from Dan's. Now comes the learning.

Thanks again

Dan's has a nice selection of stones at the annual Blade Show. I bought a light transluscent stone there but wish I had gotten a larger one. The gentleman at the booth from Dan's claimed the black were slightly finer and the lighter transluscent ones were faster cutters. According to the info referenced earlier on Dan's site their representative was not giving good information.
That is not cool.

Originally Posted by JP5

Dan's has a nice selection of stones at the annual Blade Show. I bought a light transluscent stone there but wish I had gotten a larger one. The gentleman at the booth from Dan's claimed the black were slightly finer and the lighter transluscent ones were faster cutters. According to the info referenced earlier on Dan's site their representative was not giving good information.
That is not cool.

No reason to suspect anything. Dan's did state that the black was their finest stone at one point. Functionally:
1) there's no real difference between the two, but the advice you got from the rep isn't bad advice
2) the level of fitness that you'd get from either would be dependent on your conditioning of the surface of the stone (that is, breaking it in).

If a stone is very translucent, you can always assume that it is almost maximum specific gravity (and fineness). If it appears to have pores and doesn't pass light well, then it may not be quite as good, but will probably still be good. There is a noticeable difference between a marginal norton trans at 2.6 and a dan's stone that's right around the maximum (2.67). A norton trans at that density struggles to pass light as well as a more dense stone.

Almost everyone else's black stone falls short of dan's stone, so if you are shopping used stones or new stones, and you're not looking to pay what dan's wants, I'd stick with trans stones. Even if they're smaller. It's a safer bet. Some of the worst black stones out there are REALLY bad and will never finish a razor.

You'll probably find the one from Dan's to be pretty flat, so hopefully no lapping, just burnishing. Congrats and have fun.

Originally Posted by RedsFan75

You'll probably find the one from Dan's to be pretty flat, so hopefully no lapping, just burnishing. Congrats and have fun.

I thought that I had read that Dan's stones were as already lapped. I hope this is true.
But as to burnishing, I'm not sure how to do this. Some one said use a meat cleaver. I would think the skarp shoulders would scrape rather than burnish.

Originally Posted by RedsFan75

You'll probably find the one from Dan's to be pretty flat, so hopefully no lapping, just burnishing. Congrats and have fun.

Yeah, mine was plenty flat. It just needs burnishing if it was going to be a razor finisher. Otherwise it is good to go as is.

I used my woodworking hand planes and chisels, chefs knives and cleavers, and then a piece of tool steel I had. I ran a lot of steel over it, keeping it wet, took a while too.

Originally Posted by JP5

Dan's has a nice selection of stones at the annual Blade Show. I bought a light transluscent stone there but wish I had gotten a larger one. The gentleman at the booth from Dan's claimed the black were slightly finer and the lighter transluscent ones were faster cutters. According to the info referenced earlier on Dan's site their representative was not giving good information.
That is not cool.

I don't know and am just bringing this up but I wonder if since the stones are natural that both claims may be true depending on where they were harvested. I would think that the layers would change as they were mined therefore the properties would change as time went on.

If the rep stated that the batches that you were being offered acted that way I would believe him/her.

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said he gave bad info. He probably told me what he thought to be true at the time. If he had explained the difference between the two I probably would have gotten a black stone instead. Oh well. They had good deals on them anyway so.

Originally Posted by JP5

Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said he gave bad info. He probably told me what he thought to be true at the time. If he had explained the difference between the two I probably would have gotten a black stone instead. Oh well. They had good deals on them anyway so.

It could still be true, but the difference might be minimal. I'd say if they're within a couple of hundredths on average, you call them approximately the same. If they differ by a tenth (in specific gravity), you'd actually be able to tell that when you used them. I've had barely translucents (two) that were right around 2.6 or ever so slightly below, and at that, they start to have tiny pores on them that you can see. It takes longer to break them in, and if you lap them, you start over with that.

Those were norton trans. I think Dan might be eating Norton's market of natural stones, because the supply of natural stuff from Norton seems to be less consistent these days. They changed the name of their HT stones from Hard Translucent (in print on the side of the stone) to Hard, which is what they used to use in the old days. Soft and hard, and then washitas were a separate schedule with subgrades of their own. They still have the washitas, but they don't mine them (nobody else has "real" washita stones other than Norton). I'd speculate, but it's only a guess, that Norton stopped labeling their stones Hard Translucent because it's not that easy to supply long clear trans stones economically and maybe they were processing what they had on hand at the time instead of mining more. I vaguely recall hearing that the mining and processing are in different geographies, so it may not be trivial to keep a constant supply.

And there is the economic reality that novaculite must be a small portion of Norton's revenue, and probably the biggest hassle in terms of supply because it's a natural product that's variable.