Thread: A Discovery on lapping Shapton Pros and Naniwa Superstones YMMV

I do love the performance of the super stones, but they seem to want for lapping more than any other hone I've tried, and I've tried far, far too many.

One other thing I run into, more so with the 5k and above but especially with the 12k, is that a line of the honing plane running parallel and nearly adjacent to the long edges gathers swarf and gets rough much quicker than the rest of the hone. I can feel the roughness by passing my finger over the surface, so surely it'll affect things on the blade, and only lapping fixes it...I've tried to rub with soft scouring pads to just take out that swarf and it works but the surface still doesn't feel as it did when it was prettier. Never had this happen with a harder waterstone.

Originally Posted by kwigibocity

I do love the performance of the super stones, but they seem to want for lapping more than any other hone I've tried, and I've tried far, far too many.

One other thing I run into, more so with the 5k and above but especially with the 12k, is that a line of the honing plane running parallel and nearly adjacent to the long edges gathers swarf and gets rough much quicker than the rest of the hone. I can feel the roughness by passing my finger over the surface, so surely it'll affect things on the blade, and only lapping fixes it...I've tried to rub with soft scouring pads to just take out that swarf and it works but the surface still doesn't feel as it did when it was prettier. Never had this happen with a harder waterstone.

My 5k shows swarf relatively quickly while my 3k doesn't load up near as fast. I don't know how to account for that. I haven't encountered that roughness issue that you describe but I lap the swarf off often in the midst of a honing session so maybe I would have run into it if I didn't or I just haven't noticed it.

I think using an arkansas as Glen suggested or an iyo as I do or something else as a scrubber when things get dirty is a nice quick easy way. You dont have to pick up the hone or mess with the plate. My plate is in a stone holder and I found myself postponing if I had to reset everything for full lapping mode.

Since I started razor honing I have refined and revamped my whoule approach in several ways. Using the scrubber(neither rubber or slurry in the proper sense because I rinse the milk when i dont want it) is one of the big ones as I used to let things get quite loaded and only removed what would wash off with a bit of finger rubbing ;always a lot of gray left behind.

iirc what Blaireau told me the polymer will always aquire a slightly new form so lapping/ drying and later rewetting would not necessarily cause it to return to its former flatness

I hone standing up directly in front of the kitchen sink with the lapping plate sitting under the faucet ready to go. Refreshing the stone is quick and easy. When I'm removing swarf I just do a couple of swipes with the water running so I'm not removing much more than the swarf. I like honing standing up because my arm hangs naturally from the shoulder and I am not in tension while doing the stroke. As far as the instability of the polymer, I wonder how much is really being removed with a pencil grid ? Probably very little.

Togi- aji: a term I learned just last week means Sharpening Tastes.

what you look for in a stone you use and how you use it is simply a matter of preference

Originally Posted by kevint

I think using an arkansas as Glen suggested or an iyo as I do or something else as a scrubber when things get dirty is a nice quick easy way. You dont have to pick up the hone or mess with the plate. My plate is in a stone holder and I found myself postponing if I had to reset everything for full lapping mode.

Yep works great, I use that for extended honing sessions, I never do more than 8 razors at a time but a quick little scrub down and rinse after every other razor keeps the stones clean and more important to me cutting the same for every razor (I do this is for every kind of stone not just the Synthetics)... I also shift the order of the razors as I move from stone to stone so one razor is never the first razor on the fresh clean stone every time...told you the OCD is not a bad thing in this hobby

Originally Posted by gssixgun

I never do more than 8 razors at a time

Because of the PITA lapping I started doing two at a time some of the time. I was thinking about guys who do honing for hire the other day. Those who have multiple razors to hone like Lynn and like you Glen. To me that would be a burden and I would eventually hate honing. The way it is now if I want to go hone a razor I do it. I honed a Red Point last night and a TI Super Gnome this afternoon because I felt like it.

I go back to work tomorrow for four days and I may or may not hone a razor again until Wednesday when I start my three days off. I like the hobbyist approach. I hone when I want to with no one wanting it yesterday. For me it would cease being fun if I had deadlines and expectations to contend with. I take my hat off to you guys who have the patience and fortitude to do the multiples of razors that you do.

I'm with you Jimmy. I've often considered honing for hire but quickly talk myself out of it. Like you I like honing when I want to and don't want to be driven to it, although, and Carrie will confirm, when there are a bunch of recent purchases waiting to be honed or restored I gotta get them done ASAP! There have been times when I hone way more than a few razors at a sitting (I stand when honing also) but in the last month or so I've been backing off. This weekend may be different though. I've been taking a casual pace and now I feel like I gotta get 'er done and work through the pile of restores and honing I have piling up. And that means lots of sanding scales and lapping hones in the process Over all I really do have fun and it takes my mind on a nice journey into peaceful bliss!

Lynn does triple or more than what I do, he really is a machine...

The one true benefit I see though is the fact that you really get to compare razors in a true random sampling...From assessing the edge, to the honing, to the shave....That is part of it I love, and honestly the second I stop loving it, will be the same second I start turning down the work

Originally Posted by kevint

I think using an arkansas as Glen suggested or an iyo as I do or something else as a scrubber when things get dirty is a nice quick easy way. You dont have to pick up the hone or mess with the plate. My plate is in a stone holder and I found myself postponing if I had to reset everything for full lapping mode.

Since I started razor honing I have refined and revamped my whoule approach in several ways. Using the scrubber(neither rubber or slurry in the proper sense because I rinse the milk when i dont want it) is one of the big ones as I used to let things get quite loaded and only removed what would wash off with a bit of finger rubbing ;always a lot of gray left behind.

Originally Posted by gssixgun

Yep works great, I use that for extended honing sessions, I never do more than 8 razors at a time but a quick little scrub down and rinse after every other razor keeps the stones clean and more important to me cutting the same for every razor (I do this is for every kind of stone not just the Synthetics)... I also shift the order of the razors as I move from stone to stone so one razor is never the first razor on the fresh clean stone every time...told you the OCD is not a bad thing in this hobby

So you two use a harder stone to sort of wipe down the shaptons while your using them to get rid of the swarf build up?

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Regarding the comments on fun vs work as far as honing goes, something that stuck with me from my college psychology courses that I've observed in myself and others lots of times-- They gave some monkeys a hasp latch to play with in an experiment. They monkeys liked the latches, and they would sit there an open and close them over and over. I guess it was the monkeys idea of a really good time. After a while, they put the latches on a trap door, and the monkeys had to open the latch to get their food, which was under the trap door. The monkeys didn't play with the latches any more after that. When you gotta do it to get your dinner its just not as much fun as it used to be...