Thread: Arkansas stones grit?

I use mine with tools for a week or two (without re-lapping) and they're usually broken in. Some of the really fine ones seemed really coarse at first, probably because of whatever was used to lap them leaving a rough surface on them.

If you have anything hardened steel and flat floating around, you can probably use that with light oil until the stone surface seems only slick and without bite.

I have taken two fine stones and rubbed them together (like we'd do with anything else) to get a head start if a fresh stone seems really aggressive, but they will both still be a little aggressive after that, I guess two stones rubbing together are stripping a little bit of abrasive from the surface of each. Still follow that up with tools every time until they feel like they've got no bite at all.

i have a very good routine for breaking in arks. i frist lap the ark with a dmt 220 then once flat i move on to a dmt 325 that is very worn to smooth out the stone. i use water in the frist two steps . after im done with the dmt 325 i let the stone dry and take a translucent ark that has already been made flat and i rub the two stones together until i get white quartz powder all over the stone.(rubbing them together dry) i repeat three times. on to the last step i put oil on the stone and use a piece of tool steel and i rub the stone down to finish the smooth out process i rub the stone until i can see some swarf on the stone repeat three times and your stone is broke in

Thanks for all the info guys.

I have a translucent Arkansas that I got from Dan's which I've been using with plane and chisel blades (and taking care to work the whole surface). Although I'm a long way off from needing/daring to hone a razor (my first one is on the way from The Classic Edge right now), I'd just need to add a hard arkansas to be able to use Dave W's honing method mentioned above.