natural beryl stone. has anyone own one, or tired?Natural Beryl Polishing Stone Graver Sharpening Tool - eBay (item 110464215713 end time Dec-30-09 06:26:54 PST)
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natural beryl stone. has anyone own one, or tired?Natural Beryl Polishing Stone Graver Sharpening Tool - eBay (item 110464215713 end time Dec-30-09 06:26:54 PST)
Sham I think TheBigSpendur has one.
This one is exceptionally pretty though.
Its a very fine and hard Quartz.
Probably similar in effect to your jasper.
Yes I have one. Pretty green stuff, Beryllium Aluminum Silicate. There's a picture of it around here somewhere. Its very hard, much harder than quartz. The problem with the piece I have is its very odd shaped and as I ground it down I kept uncovering tiny vugs with Beryl xtls in them. Not good for honing. However from what I was able to learn it has honing potential as a very high grit honing medium.
I suspect the "beryl" is a reference to the color not theQuote:
Originally Posted by hi_bud_gl
mineralogy of the material. If it is a clean solid anything
with a nice smooth grain it may be a fine polisher no matter
what a mineralogist might say.
I do not think it is jade or jadite which would be "Bonus".
For the price you should know more... IMO.
ho ho ho!:roflmao I have nothing to contribute here, but I am waiting to see if you give in and buy this stone.
You are thinking hard about this stone, aren't you Sham? It looks like low grade jade to me, but it might be worth the price if it was a great finisher.
Now Joe! Why do you tease him this way? You know he cant help himself!:rofl2:
A little exerpt from Wikipedia
The mineral beryl is a beryllium aluminium cyclosilicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2(SiO3)6. The hexagonal crystals of beryl may be very small or range to several meters in size. Terminated crystals are relatively rare. Pure beryl is colorless, but it is frequently tinted by impurities; possible colors are green, blue, yellow, red, and white.
There is no mention of the smallest size particle measured, but the Moh hardness number is 7.5-8, for refernece diamond is 10, knife steel is 5.5 (although carbon steel is 6-7). the shape of the crystals gives an idea what kind of finish you will get, similar to Diamond spray.
Emerald, aquamarine are all gem varieties of beryl. The stuff is massive and usually mined in Pegmatite Quarries. There are no xtls in the massive stuff like say a coticule which has tiny garnets or diamond which has tiny diamond xtls unless you go down to the molecular level of course.
If you go to some of the inactive mines like the Strickland Quarry in Connecticut or the Dixon pegmatites in New Mexico you can pick the stuff up by the truckloads. You will rarely find complete xtls and like the chunk I have you will come across cavities with xtls in them however its not the xtls that do the polishing work its just a very hard rock.
For those who are interested, here is a picture of the rock hi_bud_gl linked to in the first post
Attachment 34665
Thanks to on line dictionaries I now know what xtls and vugs are.
For 250 $$ you can buy a vintage Escher or a beryl hone. I'll stick to the former for my honing.
And what if, ya already have alot of vintage Eschers, but no Beryl hone? LOL.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kees
I think Sham just wants to add some color to his massive collection...Beryl, is kindof a xmas-y color, no?
Beautiful hone Sham...ive seen it on ebay for some time...even added it to my watch list for awhile.
Be cool to hear how it hones.
Many thanks,
Mac
If I had to make an educated guess from the pictureQuote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
I would call this a "Chlorite rich quartzite". If it is, it
would hone a lot like a black Arkansas or perhaps a
translucent Arkansas hone. The green chlorite mica
may help keep the grain size of the quartz fine and
available as a cutting media.
I do hope someone with a lot of comparison hones gets to try
one of these. The differences between the possible mineral
compositions are large. However, that does not matter
when the proof is how good a hone it makes.
P.S: I do not think the green is kryptonite which would fog
old style film but who knows in this digital world :)
IMO, that's a pretty big gamble (he says he has 10 now, maybe make an offer?), but then again, I don't have HAD...
Quote:
Originally Posted by niftyshaving
Its very difficult to tell most minerals from just looking at them. But if it was quartzite it would have a grainy appearance if you had a rough surface. Beryl is totally different and comes in all shades of green and other colors too.
Yes it is very difficult to tell just by looking.Quote:
Originally Posted by thebigspendur
And as a long time field geologist I know
that quartzite, chert and flint can come in all
shades of color, texture and grain size.
It is a beautiful stone no matter what it is.
I used to polish my gravers on a small Beryl slab - worked perfectly. I now prefer ruby for my gravers.
Any chance of a pic or two? I'd like to see those stones.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alchemist
I thought sharing my experience with the beryl sharpening stone might help someone (as your hints on this forum help me).
I wouldn't even have looked at it if wasn't asked to sharpen a problem knife you see on the photo. The knife is heavily etched and previous sharpening brought the cutting edge to the very etching, better seen on the close-up photo.
The edge looked even, but was blunt, hardly shaving forearm, and tearing paper. As per the manufacturer, the blade is of "French High Carbon Z60 steel".
Attachment 85697
Attachment 85698
Because of the etching I had little room for resharpening and no room for experimenting. I went through my stones looking for one that would be agressive enough to form a burr, fine to cut off bare minimum of metal, and hard not letting abrasive particles dragged onto the etching in fear of scratches; ideally it should have been cutting, polishing and producing no slurry all-in-one.
I picked Translucent Arkansas and Spyderco ultra fine ceramic bench stone.
I hardly started with the Translucent Arkansas, when noticed it gave a mat surface to the edge, encroaching upon the decorative etching; should I have continued, I risked grinding off the bottom of the engraving.
I switched to the Spyderco ultra fine ceramic stone, which is finer than Translucent Arkansas, and it seemed to be both cutting and polishing well. I formed the burr alright, but to my surprise couldn't thin it off; I tried again from start, but as soon as I began alternating blade sides to thin off the burr, it just dulled the edge.
It must have been due to the 'Z60 metal' used in the blade, as I am regularly using ultra fine ceramic for thinning off the burr on other carbon steels, Muela molybdenum-vanadium and damascus.
Puzzled, I searched for another hard ultra fine stone (and BTW that's how I found your forum) and decided to give Beryl a try. The eBay seller 'merlintools' wanted for the biggest beryl stone about $270, but took my offer of $200. With natural stones, the bigger the stone, the better is its quality. I also bought a smaller one for lapping, but this wasn't needed. The stone I got required no lapping, though its surface had circular saw marks which you probably are able to see on the photo, of no effect on sharperning.
Attachment 85699
"Natural Beryl Polishing Stone Graver Sharpening Tool"
To maintain even angle, I used the stone on a wooden wedge, the idea borrowed from this guy on youtube:
Sharpening II 012 - YouTube
Attachment 85700
I was sharpening on the beryl with a drop of honing oil, blade back first; a tangible burr formed after 40 laps of one side of the blade, then I did the same amount of laps on the other side, thereby shifting the burr to the opposite side, and then thinned the burr off by lapping sequence 20 laps one side - 20 other, 10 one side - 10 other, 5-5, 4-4, 3-3, 2-2, 1-1, and finally, did 20 laps more alternating sides.
At this stage, the blade was splitting a daughter's hair.
To finish, honed with Inigo Jones Welsh slate (Dragon's Tongue), no slurry, just soapy water - 40 laps alternating sides.
Attachment 85701
From this experience, I can confirm the seller's claim of Beryl grit as 8000 (Japan), i.e. about 1-2 micron, which is 3 times finer than Translucent Arkansas, and 2 times finer than ultra fine ceramic, of like hardness.
I then tried the Beryl stone on another hunting knife you see on the photo next to the wooden wedge support, in the sequence: edge first on Ceramic FINE (5 micron) bench stone, then back first on Translucent Arkansas (4 micron), Beryl (1-2 micron), and Welsh Slate hone (Dragon Tongue), with the same satisfactory result.
