Thread: Difference between US and Mexican Norton 4K

Originally Posted by Utopian

Oops, I misread Josh's post. He said the pores would make the hone feel more coarse. I did not catch that on first reading and I'm not sure that I agree. I'm not sure I don't agree.
If the material that exists where the pores aren't are identical in both hones, would the presence of the pores change the feel of the stroke significantly? I tried to think this through and I kind of see it both ways.

I think they would, but I'm not sure either. It seems logical that those pores are a lot larger than 4K grit particles, so you would feel all the indentations as roughness. I don't think I could tell the difference between a 4K hone and a 5K hone by touch if both had flawless surfaces.

There's been a lot of discussion about barber hones and how difficult it is to tell the grit size by the way the hone feels, and I tend to think that would extend to this instance.

It does seem, based on this limited sample, that there is a difference between the pre- and post-move hones. I'd be curious to know what causes the voids or indentations in the first place. :hmmm

Josh

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

To add more complexity to this, I recently got two new Nortons, one a 4K and a 1K/220 combo and both are marked made in Italy.

Haven't the 8K hones always been made in Italy? Gotta love globalization.

Josh

No, the 8K half of my 4K/8K is marked as made in the US, as is the 1K side of my 1K/4K.
But in my case, the 1K/4K was a winner from the beginning, whereas the 4K/8K needed a couple of good (s)lappings to get a nice smooth feeling. Both the 4K and the 8K side had some embedded grit in the beginning, but I don't know what caused it.
It's also possible that this was due to the bad sandpaper when I first lapped it.

As soon as I lapped thoroughly with my norton flattening stone (my first non-sandpaper lapping method) the issue was gone if I remember correctly.

So made in Italy vs made in the US has no significance in my arguably limited statisical set of 2 samples of 2 years old

Just to clarify, my hones have been lapped with DMT plates for the past year, so I don't think lapping had any negative effect on mine.

My latest Norton that came yesterday & had a piece of paper that read "4k made in Italy; 8k made in US". THe plastic box says "made in Mexico", though...

The 4k side is a lot smoother feeling than my previous one (Mexican), but the 8k side did have some grit that needed lapping out (the only thing that ever touched it was my DMTs). Seems fine now, though.

Moved this from 'Advanced Honing Topics' to Hones, as I feel it is a more appropriate forum for the topic. In case you have it bookmarked or whatever.