Cutting a Stone

I've had the Shapton Pros and Choseras cut by a professional here in Taiwan, and I am also working with someone in the US who is cutting glass stones.

One thing's for certain - if you plan on cutting the stones by yourself with less than industrial equipment (or even with it!) be prepared for a lot of work and possible chipping, cracking or outright shattering. The upside to the risk is a custom stone that fits your needs.:)

I have a Swaty that I got frome a barber. He said some little kid was in his shap and his father did not control him. He pulled out a drawer and picked up the stone and droped it before the barber could stop him.
It was in two pieces with a jaged edge and some small pieces missing. I cut it along the broken line with a wet tile saw and epoxied the halves together on top of a piece of glass and then laped it on sandpaper. So yes it can be done quite well.
By the way, the barber kicked them out of the shop.

Now I went Gorilla on a full set of Nortons for ArronX and myself..
I bought like 6 of the cheapest Hack saw blades at Home Depot the 24 tpi IIRC and set the stones on the edge of my bench and started cutting.. The 220/1k went pretty easy took 2 blades the 4/8 was much much harder but it cut also... I smoothed up the cuts and chamfered the edges on a 120 grit belt sander then re-lapped the stones...
They look great and work great on those big smilers, and I hardly ever use them :)

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Originally Posted by jendeindustries

I've had the Shapton Pros and Choseras cut by a professional here in Taiwan, and I am also working with someone in the US who is cutting glass stones.

One thing's for certain - if you plan on cutting the stones by yourself with less than industrial equipment (or even with it!) be prepared for a lot of work and possible chipping, cracking or outright shattering. The upside to the risk is a custom stone that fits your needs.:)

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Because of the tempered glass used for the glass stones and the fact that the glass shatters and as Bruce pointed out, is only held to the ceramic by the bonding used, the final workable pieces I believe do need to be bonded to something. Unless the substrate chosen to bond a cut Shapton glass stone to was translucent, you'd be saying adios to the markings. This would then involve a large element of trust on the part of a buyer since at that point there would be no identifiers at to what grit the stone save for the tactile feel.

Just some thoughts that may help.

Chris L