Thread: Am I missing something !

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Snip.......
Adrsprach (Stefan, a respected member here with a great knowledge of natural hones from the British Isles)

Ah yes, he is a fountain of information on them british naturals.
It is way off topic, but I love telling the story of how I first met him

It was at a razor meet up at D R Harris in London a couple years back.
Suddenly a man walked thru the door all bent over from the weight of his rucksack.
It was Stefan, with a backpack filled to the brim with Charnley forests and other british naturals.
He needed a separate table just for his CF's
When travelling back home at night and upon bidding us farewll, he left us with about 120lbs of stones on his back heading for the train-station.
That is dedication!

The really impressive part about him though is the fact that he travels to all the abandoned quarries and looks for hones himself.
Trekking with his backpack, he collects stones all over.

Originally Posted by Neil Miller

Ahh - you didn't read the old posts about the LM and the DT then? Suffice it to say you are mistaken - the mines where these came from are well known as they were required to be registered. Briefly, what confuses people is that the names used for these hones became a blanket term, like Hoover: in common usage 'hoover' came to be used for all vacuum cleaners, even though there was/is only one make called Hoover.

The LM has at least 4 varieties. Adrsprach (Stefan, a respected member here with a great knowledge of natural hones from the British Isles) has talked to an old-timer at Inigo Jones quarry and he confirmed that they supplied hones to others and sometimes when they were at full capacity others helped them out with stones, hence the several types of stone, apparently (but not in actuality) from a single quarry and their differing characteristics. The truth is that supply and demand being what it is, slate from several neighbouring quarries came to be sold by one quarry owner under his own blanket-name, in the case of LMs this was 'Yellow Lake Oilstone'. This is why we have purple varieties and several shades of grey to grey/black.

Be that as it may, the quarries that supplied the original stones are well-known.

Regards,
Neil

I actually was unaware of that, thanks for the clarification, the only things is AJ claims he collected the stones himself from trip he took In wales, but he doesn't specify where exactly he got the stones from.

Originally Posted by RafalS

I actually was unaware of that, thanks for the clarification, the only things is AJ claims he collected the stones himself from trip he took In wales, but he doesn't specify where exactly he got the stones from.

I know that he used to go to tips and cut up any likely looking stone he found. Now he obviously sells Inigo Jones hones and I am sure he has a deal with the owner of another quarry. The so-called vintage thuringians originally came from a large purchase of hones from european authorities (like closed machine shops, labs, that sort of thing), lord knows where they come from now.

The purple, grey, dark grey and green slates are all available today, from a lot of welsh quarries (I live in Wales nr Snowdon national park for part of the year) so there is little danger of them running out. However, things are cyclical and I expect that supply will outstrip demand and the price will be lower and lower until it is no longer profitable.

What goes around comes around, they say.

Regards,
Neil

An interesting observation, one that I have wondered myself for some time.

First a lot is dependent on the shaver’s ability/experience to be able to feel the difference, which would be difficult to do.

Second as said, a lot depends on the preparation and the ability of the honer, much like a paint job. If the primer was not applied properly or sanded smooth the finish will never be as good as it could be.

So here’s my theory… The goal in honing a razor is first to make the bevels meet in a sharp, straight edge.

Then maintain the sharp edge and refine it by reducing the land height while maintaining the groove (the sharp part of the edge).

Unfortunately in moving up in progression we replace the land and groove with finer stria, finer lands and grooves.

Sub-micron pastes cut the land height and leave the groove made by the finish stone. The groove it the part that shaves, the land cuts skin. The closer the two are the more comfort. Of course YMMV because there are so many variables, paste quality, grit size, substrate, pressure and on and on.

So can you finish on a high grit finish stone and paste… and tell the difference?

Maybe, it is the groove you feel from the finish stone, so if you have not altered the groove with paste maybe you could tell. But most of us do too many laps on paste and alter or remove the original groove and then it does not matter because they no longer exist.

I have said this before, I doubt most could tell a particular finishing stone in a blind test, a pasted edge even more so.

So it depends on what your goal is. If you just want a good shave, a proper synthetic progression and a 12K super stone and paste will shave 95 percent of us just fine.

There are some great pastes available now, and used in combination with a 12K SS can give incredible shaves.

Don’t get me wrong I am still collecting stones, it’s a sickness.

I've just read this thread from start to finish and it now reads like an episode from Lord of the Rings! Full of characters and very old mines, even Stephan the Grey makes an appearance. Absolutely wonderful and very informative. I still don't know or understand how to get the best edge but I'm going to continue the journey in my own way and see where I end up. Thanks to all for making my night.

Interesting thread on naturals. I'm nearly all Japanese naturals and get extremely smooth edges without any pastes, and one of the best I have is a small stone that was much cheaper than the G20k.

But there are some necessary steps for smooth edges, most of which are posted above. First is a proper bevel set. If the two bevel planes don't make a perfect line, the edge will never shave well much less be smooth. Smooth edges IME are greatly helped if all the previous stones marks are erased along the entire bevel by the current one which is good development of the edge. This can take longer than you might think, and magnification can help confirm that it's time to move on to the next hone.

With Japanese hones, it's necessary to fully work the slurry down to near exhaustion with decreasing pressure for smooth edges, that can take from 30-60 or more strokes on a bench stone more on smaller stones where the edge doesn't get the "mileage" on the hone.

Finally, with JNats you can frequently adjust the crispness of the edge by finishing with diluted slurry or clear water. A clear water finish, if the stone will support it, with produce a crisper edge. The asagis are also noted to produce crisper edges than kiitas in general because they are generally harder and finer.

As has been said before, sharp is easy, smooth is hard.

Cheers, Steve