As promised I will post the pictures
of the natural and the diamond stone
I ordered from 330mate.
http://i46.tinypic.com/35lf96d.jpg
http://i50.tinypic.com/11hz0g7.jpg
http://i48.tinypic.com/102qahl.jpg
The stone is quite hard. I used the diamond stone
to generate slurry. By itself very little slurry is made
while honing. The stone feels smoother than my 8000 SS Naniwa. It feels like my planes blades are gliding over
the stone.
I am not sure how fine it is for one I am not yet
really good at using this natural stone and I read
that natural stones will not give the mirror finish, but
produce a mist and haze. This is exactly what happened
when I honed my plane blades.
The stone is 19cm long, 1.5 cm thick en 6.5 cm wide. At one side there seems to be a lot of a certain metal which I think is ferric oxide(iron). I looked carefully and it is really a thin layer that I could easily remove with some sanding, but I will not bother as it does not interfere with sharpening(no particles).
The plane blades and a chisel I sharpened all became very sharp, but how sharp I don't know. My highest grit waterstone is a 8000 Naniwa SS. I do think this natural stone is finer than the Naniwa.
Unfortunaly I did not clean the diamond stone(2sided, coarse and medium I believe). Now the course side has little pieces of rust. Does anybody know how to remove the rust without damaging the diamond stone?
Feel free to ask any question(s).
Regards,
Sharpman