Thread: Lapping Progression-Am I Crazy?

I surface my hones on a per-stone basis. Some I like with a coarser finish and some with fine. For instance, I prefer a coarser finish on most fine hones as it helps them cut faster and gives pretty much the same finish, as well as helps get rid of the stiction and grabbiness. The exception to this is fine hones that are extremely slick. Those I might prefer to finish a bit finer to get a little better feel, depending on the surface area in contact with the stone (which depends on what I'm honing). Those stones I tend to finish both sides - one side coarse and one side fine. I recently tested all of my stones with both fine and coarse finishes while using a test workpiece to check the resultant difference in surface finish. The test piece was a sort of cone shaped piece of hardened steel with a 1/4" diameter flattened end. The coarser stones' resultant surface finishes are slightly affected by stone finish level but not a whole lot. Cutting speed is significantly affected with many stones. The finest stones seem to show no difference in resultant surface finishes but drastic difference in stiction depending on surface finish. (I.E. my Suehiro Gokumyo 20k gave a mirror finish to the test piece whether finished with a DMT XXC or lapped with a DMT C, then quickly dusted with a DMT XXF and even kissed with a Shapton 12k).

The stones I tested were Suehiro 1,500 and 20k, King 800, Shapton 2,000 8,000 and 12,000.