light bulb test

Some of the older guys here, will probably laugh at this but I found a way to designate where some of my hones fit into the series of honing. I buy them from flea markets and antique shops and sometimes I have no idea exactly what grit they are or where they fit in. A light bulb blew out over my bench today and I got the idea of rubbing it on a couple of the stones to see if I could tell what grit they were. I still do not know exactly but you can tell which one is the smoothest by the feel and scraping sound or lack of it. I know it is a really crude test but it helps. Works for me !

Hmmm. Its so crazy it just might work! I bet the very thin glass and large volume act like a drum head and amplify vibrations. Also because it is so smooth you can probably see scratches very clearly. I am going to try this! Great idea, worth a shot.

I think you are right about the drum thing. It acts like a sound box. I didn't look for scratches.

I'm glad you've found another test that may be useful. I prefer to use either razors (I have some junkers that I've beveled so I can see scratches) or other metal because it is metal that I want to cut with the hones. This is benificial as compared to the glass method because some hones may feel like they'll be great for razors but will require too much pressure (better for knives) or cut too slowly (good for finishing knives) to be suitable for straights.

Not to be negative about your test at all; the more tests the better, especially when you can employ random things you have on hand.

Very interesting, I think that just may be helpful to some degree...

Yea, it is not the defining answer for sure but it helps a little.
I am an inventor so eventually I think I can come up with a better way. I think I can..I think I can.. I think I can.

how about making a lightbulb out of steel. that should work perfectly :)

Gugi,
I am guessing you have tried a few stones with this method. i know it might be hard to put in words, but how does an escher for example compare to others you have and does the feedback differences between known stones you get make sense to you?

ok fair enough, i was hoping to get credit with just a joke..

it's rather easy so i just gave it a try on the following 4 hones: naniwa 8000, naniwa 12000, escher, nakayama
when dry i couldn't really tell much difference
when wet the naniwa 8000 was feeling smoothest, then the naniwa 12000 and the escher and the nakayama felt similar to each other.

if you blindfolded me and let me pick a finishing hone based on that feedback i probably would've picked the naniwa 8000, or now knowing how the two naturals felt on the test, i think i'd make sure to pick one of them just because those are the edges i like best.

still rubbing the metal (aluminum) part of the bulb instead of the glass produced a lot more variation in the auditory feedback, the nakayama was loudest, then the escher and the 12000 naniwa and then the 8000 naniwa.

i just sold my swaty this past week and too lazy to look for the other barber hones.

also things may be very different with coarser hones which i didn't try now. may be tomorrow.

OK here is the thing. I have a patent on a handicapped device, and being handicapped myself is what brought me to that. Otherwise I never would have thought of it. I have several other devices that I have not patented since the cost is around fifteen thousand dollars to get a patent done. (yea that's right, it is that expensive.) If you can find a company that will make, market, and sell it for you you will get two or three percent of the profits. Any major company can take it from you by just changing the slightest thing. To start with you have to have an idea and then take it to marketing or just some close friends and hope someone says " Here is what I would do. Since there doesn't seem to be any thing out there for this purpose, I was hoping to spark something in myself or someone else and they would try something else and with a heck of a lot of luck, who knows. Edison by the way had over three hundred failures of trying to make a light bulb. He said "I have not failed, I have learned three hundred ways not to do it". His wife just kept saying, "Thomas, please turn out that light and come to bed". LOL

Incandescent lamps are being phased out by our ignorant government,in favor of CFLs (compact fluorescent light) which contain heavy metals. Please do not try this with a cfl. Also please use gloves and safety glasses when you do this with an incandescent lamp.

i think the basic idea is very good, actually, and it's a matter of figuring out if there's an easy way to make it work.
basically what is important for us in a hone is how it removes hard steel. typically people like to look at it, but our ears are much more precise instrument than our eyes, so if we can hear it that would be quite nice.
the question is how to suppress the signal from the irregularities of the surface and use the one from the scratching of the metal.

Maybe light bulb + piezo (transducer) + oscilloscope could be a solution... I could give it a shot with both my digitizing agilent scope and analog tek.

Two things I see as a problems. One, this can tell you how aggressive a hone is, not its grit- I imagine louder being either more aggressive or rougher, and softer being either less aggressive or smoother. I think the aggression of the hone is probably going to be more consistently associated with loudness rather than the grit. Just a thought (sound loudness is dependent on amplitude, pitch is determined by frequency).

The other issue I foresee is resonance. Different "drums" like a lightbulb all have a resonant frequency and near this (practical resonance) your results won't be very accurate. Lets say for argument there is an inverse linear regression with r^2 of .9999 (ultra good) between loudness and grit (louder=coarser). One would expect a 100 grit hone to be the loudest and a 30k grit hone to be the softest. If the stone resonates at 19k grit, one might buy a mystery hone off the bay and hear it as VERY loud. One assumes it is a low grit and tosses it aside. What if it was actually an 18.5k grit Charnley?

Just some thoughts. This would be awesome if you figured it out Mackie.

I may never figure this out. Heck, maybe none of us ever will. Problem is when I get something like this in my head I can't get it out. There has to be a way to differintiate the grit of stones. I can look at it under magnification and I can tell the particle size but not what grit it is. That is why I tried the sound test. I thought maybe the scraping sound It made would give a clue. It would be very helpful to a lot of people if someone could sort it out. I'm not any good with electronics. That is my weak point and that is probably how this will eventually be done. The people who make stones know but we need a simpler method.

Accidents DO happen. Please wear saftey glasses so if the bulb breaks it will not get in your eyes. Can't shave if you get blinded.