Thread: Arkansas: Translucent or Surgical Black?

Holy crap! That’s monster stone. Definitely give any and all lubricants a try as well as burnishing to varying degrees. Really easy to walk it back to a 400-600 grit finish. Also be careful not to slap the stone with the razor come off the spine during a stroke, the cutting action is so slow you’ll never be able to correct a mistake with a hard ark set up to finish razors. Best to walk the edge back to your prefinisher if that happens.

Chamfering a primitive is very easy. Get a chunk of old garden hose and wrap it with sand paper, it will easily mold into all the odd spaces.

Originally Posted by biglou13

how do you chamfer primitive ? i am jealous!!

Not sure yet. I have some wet/dry sandpaper and a DMT 325

Originally Posted by Rugger007

Chamfering a primitive is very easy. Get a chunk of old garden hose and wrap it with sand paper, it will easily mold into all the odd spaces.

What about one of those sponge-like sanding blocks?

Originally Posted by Pedigree

Not sure yet. I have some wet/dry sandpaper and a DMT 325

I think you will render your 325 dmt useless on and ark. I usually use granite slab plus grit, Or grit plus wet dry sand paper. I’m thinking start there, then the detail work with cut strips of rubber hose and sandpaper like rugger007 said. Part of me thinks that as long as the wavy edge is below the he honing surface you would have to do less detail work I hope some makes a video of chamfering a primitive edge ark / stone.

Great, now I want a foot-long primitive Dan's surgical black (at a crazy good price like that!). With the top flattened and burnished and the sides cleaned up a bit, that is gonna be 1 sexy hone. I guess you just arrange towels around it to stabilize?

Oh, and yeah, kiss your DMT goodbye if you use it on that beast (though everybody needs a well-worn DMT 325, come to think of it).

I think the primitive cuts from Dans are the best value available in an Ark and being primitive cut, it really adds some character to an amazing stone that is usually very vanilla.

Here is my new primitive I picked up as a self Xmas gift

It is much easier to flatten a stone face, than to flatten the edges.

A Surgical Black will finish the same as a Translucent if the density of the stones are the same.

Most new stones are flat enough, to easily bring to full flatness in a few minutes. What you don’t want is an unsurfaced pocket, a stone does not need to be dead flat. But it is not difficult, if you use the right equipment.

60 grit loose Silicone carbide on a steel cookie sheet, ($15 for a 60-500 progression). You can flatten on glass or piece of marble, but neither are flat to begin with, and as soon as you start grinding on either of them with loose grit, they quickly go concave.

Precision Ground Granite surface plates go out of flat, simply by flattening tools with sand paper on them, the grit gets under the paper and grinds the stone.

But as I said, Dead Flat is not important, just be sure to remove any pockets, as those will continue to introduce parts of the stone that are not smooth as the surrounding stone wears.

A small or thin stone will hone a razor just fine for multiple lifetimes. There are very nice Surgical Black stones 8x2 or 8x3 .50 in thick at $60-80, that will work just fine. And Vintage Small 4 &6 inch Translucents are available for half that price or less in the wild,$ 2-20

It is how you finish the stone that matters, you only have to flatten and finish the stone once.

Bevel the edge with a Garage Sale file, it will trash the file.

I have never flattened a dans stone. They come dead flat, at least to my measurements. I rarely flatten any stone except to clean it or refresh the surface.

Originally Posted by Rugger007

I think the primitive cuts from Dans are the best value available in an Ark and being primitive cut, it really adds some character to an amazing stone that is usually very vanilla.

Here is my new primitive I picked up as a self Xmas gift

Well said and an absolutely beautiful stone! Wow.