Thread: Anyone still use the Spyderco UF?

Is anyone still using the spyderco UF to finish their straight razors?

Yup. My Spyderco 306UF. A real beast to flatten... hours upon hours upon a DMT D8C... and worth it.

Yes, sometimes. There are so many fantastic finishers available now, and this is one. I use my white Spyderco with light mineral oil which keeps the stone clean -- just wipe off the swarf in the oil when finished. If it is not going to be used again soon, I also wash off the stone with soap and water.
I flattened my stones by rubbing silicon carbide grit between two Spyderco stones, the UF and the slightly coarser one. It didn't take long to have both surfaces flat. I use the technique for making optical flats -- change positions between the two stones from top to bottom and then rotate them frequently. The silicon carbide fractures down to a very fine grit, leaving both surfaces of the stones very nice for finishing razors. Use either water or oil as a lubricant with the silicon carbide grit.

Everyone has lapped theirs? Has anyone kept it like it was bought?

For knives the Spydercos are fine as they are, but for razors I prefer a flatter than factory surface.

Yes, I've been using the Spyderco UF ceramic stone since 2014. They work fie for both razors and knives.

Funny this should come up. I pulled mine off the shelves of hones in the basement as part of some experiments I've been doing, which started out as seeing which hones/stones performed well under running water, and then progressed into something I got into ten years ago - lapping really hard hones to see if they can be made to act as if they contained much finer abrasive particles than are actually there. My UF was lapped to 2k, and I've refreshed that now. The upshot of it all is this, using pairs of identical model razors I have honed them under running water with a Naniwa 3k, Belgian Blue, coticule, 2k-lapped translucent Arkansas and then tried combinations of Thuringian, Guanxi, Escher, Shapton 30k, SG 20k and now the lapped Spyderco UF. I was surprised that none of those except for the UF added anything good to the transArk edge; in fact they made it worse both under the microscope and in the shave. The UF is certainly sharper (can't even feel my face is being shaved), and it feels like baby skin (the transArk feels like a shaven man's face - duh!) but it is getting just a tiny bit stingy with the aftershave. Now that was all done on pairs of old TI Eagles, and might not hold true for other razors. But right now, I'll use the 2k-lapped translucent stone as my usual finisher, with the (also 2k-lapped) Spyderco UF in reserve for those razors that seem to need it.