Thread: Translucent Prep

crap incriminating evidence i plead the fifth lol

I should get my translucent Arkansas stone this week. I was at work and noticed one being abused very badly in the calibration dept. The QA guy uses it to clean up tooling gauges. I noticed it had never been properly taken care of as it had metal streak throughout. I asked him what he cleans them with and he tells me he just orders a new one when they get broken or stop honing well.

He has a broken one somewhere he said he would give me... The feel of it is unique almost like glass but with a touch of softness. Very beautiful stone...

The google research I did claims they are the finest natural stone in The world.. Any clue what grit it would be?

I think if you pulled particle size out of a translucent arkansas, you'd find it to be at least several microns. I have seen 4000 grit thrown around, but as soon as you start talking about grit numbers, the next question is "which schedule, CAMI, JIS, ...?"

The finest stones I've seen in terms of particle size for natural stones are the superfine japanese stones. I haven't tried a lot of european stuff.

I don't know why there are folks who call arkansas stones the finest stones in the world, unless by fine, they mean "nicest".

But I like them - especially on carbon steel, regardless of whether or not there are finer stones. They reward technique and experimentation with results and versatility, and they are "steel savers" once they've settled in, very conservative with metal removal.