Thread: Mechanical lapping

Dear all,

I have a stone workshop down the road from me and as I'm about to take delivery of a (hopefully) very hard Grecian hone / Idwall that will no doubt need a good lapping, I was wondering if anyone has experience of a stone worker using some mechanical polishing device on a hard whetstone. They are used to polishing marble worktops.

I do have a course diamond plate that I use for lapping other stones, dont fancy removing chips with it.

Thanks

Eddy

To consider have a "hone" lapped this way, that Grecian hone must really be in a natural or rough condition??
I've had slate cut that way, but it was almost as though it was just mined; then I had to "fine" lap it with a DMT.

Let the stone worker take a look at it. He will probably know what to do.

Sorry Hirlau to compare slate with LI tells me that you probably have no experience with LI.
As with using the workshop. There is slight difference between polishing worktop and relatively small hone. It is much harder to lap small object because it does not have enough weight to be stable for the polisher to work on.

Nothing to be sorry about, adrspach. You misunderstood my post or I was not clear.
I have no experience with either, really.
My post was not to tell him how to handle LI, either, just an option to a lapping method I have used.

As too the workshop, I walked in off the street with a piece of Welsch slate 11"x2 1/2 "x 1 1/2 ", as you can see , not very big. Probably was the smallest rock he (the owner), had handled in a while. He was facinated with this subject of hones. All the guys in the shop stopped & listened to me talk about hone, honing & razors, for about 2 minutes. He took the piece from me & walked to a large metal table that had saws sticking through it, with water flowing on the table. He used some type of hand tool to slide the slate past the blade , cutting it. I had him do this on all sides but the bottom, I wanted it to look natural. It took less than 5 minutes. He did not want to charge me, but I gave him a $20.00 anyway.

When I got home, I pencil grid the slate & it was flat (DMT 325) in about 25 minutes.

So, back to the OP, take it to the workshop, let the stoneman make the decision.

........... my workshop lapped hone.

That stone looks really interesting.

-james

I put her at about 6000, not a finisher with my skill level. As I get better with honing, I might be able to get more out of her.

As for the OP, post some pics, I've never seen a Grecian hone / Idwall hone, if I did ,I didn't know it.

I contacted a few stone workshop around here, not for lapping but for cutting, but when i told them the size of the stone they all wanted nothing to do with it because of its small size.

Originally Posted by Hirlau

I put her at about 6000, not a finisher with my skill level.

Thats a very interesting stone, it does resemble a Lynn Idwall with the white fractures on it are somewhat common on LI. Was it extremely hard to lap?

No, not really, I was surprised how flat that large table made the surface. 25 minutes tops, two grids drawn with pencil, DMT 325 under running water. It slurries easily.