Thread: Home made Hone...

You are absolutely right about the intestines thing. I don't even want to think of getting an itch like that.

Most of the inhabited or at least explored earth has been searched pretty thoroughly for gold nuggets or diamonds. In the UK there are plenty of promising placer areas, but the pre-Roman Celts had all the good stuff. So little searching for good honing stones has been done, though, that there must surely be plenty of undetected deposits, and this thread may well be about one of them.

The trouble is, without knowing the characteristics of the stone, we don't know what it is good for honing. It might be suitable only for the most basic beginnings of restoration work, and how often do most people do that? Not many sandstones are really fine, and while the grain size of natural stone can be deceptive as a guide to honing properties, they do bear a quite considerable relation. An ondulating surface of the best honing stone in the world can put a bad edge on a razor.

The faults in a honing stone are basically:

Grains too soft or rounded to work well on hardened steel

Grains which come away too easily, so that the stone quickly becomes concave

Grains which don't come away easily enough, so that you ended up honing with a surface of excessively rounded grains.

We can only know whether this is a agood razor hone if we have a really flat piece, and we can only have a really flat piece if we put in the time, trouble and possibly money a really good razor hone would justify. If you fancy breaking into this vicious circle (or is it out of?), successive grades of silicon carbide paper glued to plate glass would probably be the cheapest way to go.

Actually alx you idea was interesting to read because i had the same idea, gives me hope that my imagination is to far gone! And that my ingenuity hasn't outgrown it's usefulness. I think i will start however with the belt sander before going to the open road, I am looking forward to putting everything Caledonian said to the test after i have it flattened. But i admit it will be too course for my razor i think.

ok i have one piece decently flattened, I got out my Popeye arms as someone said and scrapped it on cement, then went for a walk to get the mail with it tied behind me rubbing on the road, i would have been quite the spectacle in my small town of 350 people! it's smooth but not perfectly flat, not good enough to try a razor on, but i put a good edge one of my stainless steal knives, estimating 600-1000grit, i can see the grey water so i;m getting an idea of how fast it's removing metal. I'll try to get some pictures for you guys who might be interested when i have a break...an interesting experiment but the time spent is much more worth then the money to buy another hone!!!

its not the time spent..... its the quest of having the story to tell......

Next time try anglegrinder with either carbide or diamond disc. Helps cutting and also rough flattening. My advice dust mask and Full shield/face vizor otherwise trust me it is not pleasant when the grit is rotting out of your face.

Depending on the rock, you might have better luck finding a chunk that can be split clean, which would leave you with a relatively flat surface which could then be lapped normally. Gotta think like a caveman.

if you have a place that makes headstones you can get them to cut a pice in half and it would get you 2 flat pices to start with.

Yeah there was a large outcrop of rock, and it naturally split flat sided, so i looked awhile until i found 3 pieces that were rectangular, with one really flat side. But even then it was jagged.

Just be careful...the rock may have different types of stones or a different textures because of the garnets. The grit of the stone may be different at different parts of the stone.