Thread: How do I determine grit on an unmarked/unknown stone?

Hello Friends,

Newbie here...
(As if you couldn't tell)

I recently got a set of stones which have no markings and some are double-sided (coarse/fine) and some one grit in different levels of coarseness.

Is there a way to test/measure the grit?

I know one company's measure may be differeent from another, btu is there any way to determine before sacrificing any razors?

Thanks for patience and comments!
Joe.

If you have a plane blade or other piece of tool steel that has been polished and observe the scratch pattern it leaves on the shiney surface. Maybe a a knife made of similar steel would work. Rub the flat shiney surface on your hone and it will quicly tell you how fine or coarse your hone is. If you have other hones of known grit you could get a relative idea of where your mystery grit hone fits in. Hope this helps.
Mike

I know I'm pedantic but..... I would say you can't find what the grit is, but you can find another stone of known grit that it cuts like. Whatever... The important part is you need to compare the edge feel (or the scratch pattern, but I think edge feel is more important) to another hone that you are familiar with in order to get an idea of how your mystery hone will behave. I usually take a junk razor and see what the hone does, but a poket knife or plane blade (if you know how to hone those - I don't, so I don't use them) will work too.

When you say you got a set of stones with no markings, that makes me wonder where/how you got them. I'm not being snoopy, I'm just wondering if you simply got a random set of hones that in all likelihood are all way too coarse for use with razors. Razor hones are a very small subset of all hones out there.

To reduce this to the most basic, you just use them and see what happens then compare the result with a known stone.

If you don't have various hones to compare them to the mystery hone, you can also use sandpaper. Than compare the scratch patterns to each other, preferably with a microscope, or lupe.

Pictures please! That may help us a lot.