Thread: A quick slurry study

I get to spend some time on an SEM from time to time, so I figured I'd snap a few photos of the grits of some finishing stones to see how they look like before and after honing. I am not aware of other such studies so I figured it might be interesting for you guys.

I got a new Nakayama which I used to hone a Bismarck, and decided that will be the first stone to investigate. I collected samples of the slurry freshly raised with Atoma 1.2k diamond plate, and slurry after the razor was finished. I really wanted to see how much of a break down the slurry does while working it with a razor. Here are the results for the particular stone.

The stone: Iwasaki Choice Nakayama


Raw slurry:



Heavily worked slurry:


Today I had more time on the SEM so I decided to snap some photos on Escher slurry.
I had two samples raw slurry , freshly raised with Atoma diamond plate, and worked slurry, right after the razor was honed.

Escher raw slurry:



Escher worked slurry:



My impressions from the images:

Jnats slurry has flaky structure, and the break down happen by flaking off, as well as braking down. The flatness of the grit explains the shallow scratch pattern left on the bevel.

Escher looks very similar to Jnat, the grit is flaky although to my eye not exactly the same type.

What do you guys think?