Thread: vermont green slate whetstone

Yeah, he basically did it as a favor for me in off hours. He had to set up his equipment to cut bench stones and I had to tell him the properties I needed in a hone so he coild sift through pieces. It was time consuming.

Got mine last week and tried it on 5 razors. Nothing special compared to my Dota Creek, Zulu Grey, and black Ark convex stones. The black Ark is without question either dry or with mineral oil.

To revive this thread I contacted a slate quarry in VT, asked if the could cut me a 10x2x1 specifically a nice piece for sharpening. Minutes later got a reply back, no problem, shipped cost $38. Two week lead time so I'll post some images when it arrives. At that kind of price it's a no-brainer just to try it out.

Yeah, they are really variable. I have had pieces that mimic your experience and pieces that have just been awesome. And it has been pretty even which is a downer to buy random bits of it.

Well I finally got my Vermont slate hone, 10x2x1 inches. The lead time was a little longer than expected at around three and a half weeks but that really isn't too bad, they seem to engage in fairly large and high value building projects so for them to take the time to make this for me, which probably doesn't make them much money if any, is something I appreciate very much. The stone is finished impeccably, the stone is diamond lapped on both sides to what they call their 'honed' finish and I can tell you it is absolutely silky with no perceptable scratches on the surface. All edges have been chamfered also. In addition it is also laser-beam flat. If it hones as good as it looks it will be an absolute bargain for the $38 with UPS shipping I paid.

nice looking stone! I'm very curious to find out how it performs.

Yeah, me too! Please report back on that.

Had a little bit of time to play around with the stone tonight. I used my trusty Dovo Best Quality 5/8 which I've owned for around ten years to test out the hone. As an aside, I have been playing around with a convex Norton 8K which I made a few weeks ago, this razor had been finished on this stone and just stropped on clean linen and leather. Anyway, I mention it because it meant that when I hit the slate, I knew I was going to be immediately affecting the very apex, and a check under the loupe showed I was, a similar effect to adding a layer of tape to finish. I created a light slurry using a diamond card and honed with x-strokes diluting down to plain water. The stone had a very smooth feel all the while, no popping, no rolling on gravel feel under the blade which I have experienced with the black Welsh slate stone. The cutting speed on slurry is remarkably fast imo, the edge of the bevel was a fine, even, matte finish after around 20-25 passes. Once you transition to water the cutting of course slows down, it seemed to be about in the average range for slate speed, maybe a bit faster than the purple Welsh although this is a much bigger stone than the one I had so you gain efficiency due to sheer distance traveled. The apex ended up very clean and straight, with a polish starting to be created moving back from the apex but with a few errant striations which seems par for the course for slates. The stria themselves seemed within the same size range as the rest of the more regular scratches so I'm not going to lose sleep over them. I could definitely go for more laps to further refine which I will be doing as I test more, hopefully the polish will come up more and start to erode away the tops of the very fine scratches left from the slurry even further. I went to the bathroom and gave the razor a good 80 laps on clean leather only, no linen. I took some hair from my wife's hairbrush and got between a HHT3-HHT4, better at the heel which is just something I always get so must be a quirk in my honing technique. I'll most likely do a bit more work on the hone in the morning before my shave, so far seems fairly good considering the relatively low amount of effort I've put in tonight. I'll try get some photos through the loupe also (15x Bausch and Lomb Watchmakers loupe).

Edit: Tried to get a pic through the loupe, you can see the transition from the convex 8K to the slate at the apex, not very good detail however. Maybe time to invest in a cheap microscope of some kind?

I'm going to be getting a few more Vermont Slates in the coming weeks, I got the quarry to cut me three stones, a pure green slate, a purple slate and a gray slate along with slurry stones. Dimensions are 5 x 2.5 x 1 for the hones and 1 x 1 x 2.5 for the slurry stones, nice handy 'barber cut' sized pieces. Just going to be left in the sawn state so I can lap them here, came out cheaper too. Will post pics when they arrive and hopefully I can do some comparative testing. I've been shaving off the mottled slate using both the Dovo and an old Joseph Allen wedge and shaves have been really good so far, the wedge took while to hone up but this razor has a non trivial amount of bevel reveal so takes more work anyway. Takes a bit more time max out the edge on water after working on slurry but the slurry on this stone is fairly fast so you save some time in the initial honing.

Am I right to understand that you are moving from an 8k synth that is convex along both the x and the y axes to a flat piece of VT slate? And why the need for slurry at this stage?