Thread: A compendium of hones and their grits

Someone please add the blue/yellow escher and shapton 30k to the list.
I seem to be more interested in honing than shaving. I have a sickness.

- Bob

As people suggest stones with sufficient information to identify and list, I will put them on the list.

For the Chinese 12k stone, the brand name would help, since purchased new they must have a brand name.

The prices were what I found at Japan Woodworker (minus tax) but I am happy to put in a range.

Paul

The problem with figuring out the name of the Chinese 12k sold by woodcraft is that I don't read Chinese...

The english says "Natural polishing stone quarried in the Guangxi province of China". I leave the Chinese translation to someone who can...

That's enough information.

I will list it as "Woodcraft Chinese 12k."

There may be more of these coming so we may need to do a special section on them.

Okay, I have an idea and want some thoughts. I was thinking we could try to apply the wisom of crowds idea here. For you who haven't heard of this, the idea is that individual guesses as to something combined will be more accurate than any of the specific guesses. One story that is often cited is that of Francis Galton, who observed a game at a county fair. People had to guess the weight of an ox, and whoever got closest (or had it spot on, something like that) would win. Galton kept track of the guesses and the average of all the guesses was within a pound of the ox's true weight, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts.


Anyway, I thought I could cobble together a webpage of sorts which would allow data entry, and show average grit scores. Same for cutting speed and hardness. What do you guys think? I wouldn't want to do it without Paul's OK though, I wouldn't want to steal away anything

It seems to me that the surface of a hone coarse/fine is not necessarily 1:1 related to its cutting speed or aggressiveness, especially when comparing hones from different manufacturers. The Spyderco "fine" was estimated in this thread once as a grid 8000 and once as 1200. I think both estimates are pretty much correct, because the 1200 estimate most likely refers to the cutting speed of this hone, while the 8000 estimate refers to the coarseness of the hone, which in turn was estimated after looking at the surface of the razor's edge after honing.
Using the Norton, since most of us know this one, as a benchmark, we will have to establish first the reference of the grid number (coarse/fine or fast/slow cutting), before we can make a useful comparison.
Just my 2 Cents.

Originally Posted by RobertFontaine

The problem with figuring out the name of the Chinese 12k sold by woodcraft is that I don't read Chinese...

The english says "Natural polishing stone quarried in the Guangxi province of China". I leave the Chinese translation to someone who can...

It is as you said "Natural water polishing stone".

I'm not sure how you're doing your rating. I came to belgian blues from decades of using Arkansas, DMT, Lansky, Crystalon, and India stones. I was blown away by how fast the blue was relative to the same grit arkansas stone. I think it cuts way faster than a Norton 4k (its equivalent sort of) and leaves a better finish. We need to come to some understanding of slow vs. fast cutters.

Cutting speed is how fast metal is removed, isn't it? Anyway, since there have been no replies to my averages idea I threw together something quick, you can check it out here.

I filled in the grits for the Nortons and DMTs and also speed and hardness for the Nortons. You can't fill in any data for the Nortons as they are the baseline data everything else relies on.

Any feedback at all would be appriciated.

Fantastic job Bjorn! Looks really good.

Bookmarked.

Thank a lot !!