Thread: Is a Full Sandstone Progression Possible?

A recent stone ID thread has me thinking about sandstone as a possible honing progression. Can it be done from start to finish? And how might the result vary according to how the stones are lapped, or used with water vs. oil, etc.?

I think if you had a hollow ground razor so you didn't need to remove a lot of material to get a bevel set and something like queer creek with a few diffferent hindostans of varying characteristics you probably could do it. I suspect it would give an acceptable shaving edge after a healthy stropping but not some world beating edge.

You know sandstone is (of course) grains of silica sand glued together. Sandstone can be very fined grained or very course and the cementing material can make it so it can fall apart in your hand (we call that friability) or be like concrete and everything inbetween. So, it's gonna depend what you want to do and the best combination to produce the right material for the job.

Thanks for the replies. I suppose a lot has to do with the matrix holding the grains of sand together. From my experience, I've tried a Pike's Lake Superior stone with oil, a Queer Creek with water and a Queer Creek with oil, a Dalmore Blue with water, a Hindostan with oil, and a Rozsutec stone. Among these, I have appreciated the Lake Superior stone for its aggression as compared to a Queer Creek, and the Rozsutec as to the finish. As suggested above, the Rozsutec edge is not the finest, but it will do the job. The overall look there is quite interesting, like frosted glass compared to the others. The Queer Creeks and Dalmore blue I found to be duds so to speak.

All of the stones I have lapped between 220x and 400x. So perhaps lapping some more aggressively and others more finely might yield different results?

Originally Posted by Brontosaurus

All of the stones I have lapped between 220x and 400x. So perhaps lapping some more aggressively and others more finely might yield different results?

And therein lies the devil in the details. Figuring out that magic combination is a real trick and can be like finding El Dorado.

That's what I've been thinking as well. My bet is with the Lake Superior stone, the Hindostans, and the Rozsutec. Maybe lap the Lake Superior stone coarser, keep the hindostans as they are, and lap the Rozsutec finer. (Have to wait a couple of months to do this.) Of course, it would be nice to find a North American sandstone on the level of a Rozsutec to keep things "local" given the other two. Middle-West or near the shores of the Great Lakes, and heavy on the finer matrix rather than the sand particules...

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

And therein lies the devil in the details. Figuring out that magic combination is a real trick and can be like finding El Dorado.

Also, keep in mind it's not just the sand but the cementing material (matrix) is usually made up of silt which is a combination of quartz and feldspar so in addition to considering the size and shape of the sand particles it's also a matter of the amount of matrix and it's composition and how much of it there is.

Gets complicated eh?

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