Thread: What stones?

Originally Posted by steve

Tony,

Thanks for the info. I did PM Howard to get a clarification. In no way do I doubt his statements or question his reliability. I hope I'm not coming across as doing so.

I in no way thought you were. I simply meant despite all our speculation he would have the most direct info and it's directly from those who quarry and know the stone.

Tony

I think there are some in the gallery or the library. But the only hard information that really matters for our purposes is how they shave, and the natural stones consistently produce edges that shave as well or better than the edges from higher-grit synthetics. OTOH the synthetics can go awfully high grit, and the pastes go even higher (0.1 micron diamond paste is not too expensive and is something like 150k-250k grit depending on your preferred grit rating system).

Originally Posted by Tony Miller

I in no way thought you were. I simply meant despite all our speculation he would have the most direct info and it's directly from those who quarry and know the stone.

Tony

I'm looking forward to his response but I've heard similar things to what everyone's saying. It basically seems to be the performance difference between man-made and natural stones.

By the way, did I read your post right? You mentioned Howard's website and the quarry's. Do you have a website for the quarry these come from?

Here is the link:

http://www.ardennes-coticule.com/engels.htm

They will refer you to Howard.

I'm with BigSpender on this one back at page 1. The 8k is plenty for 99% of us. The evidence provided that 8k is not enough (in this thread) is that the HHT has been passed.

For me, the HHT is the very lowest, lowest, lowest limit of shaving sharpness that I will bother testing a razor on my face with, not, the test of sharpness to go buy a new hone from.

Buy all the finishing stones you want, but lets readdress honing technique at some future point. You can PM me if you want and I'll give you all the trade secrets I know about honing on the 8k Norton.

Keep in mind that what you know about the Norton may not transfer over to a new set of hones either. You may find yourself in a whirlpool of frustration if you add to your honing arsenal.

Look at a DMT coarse continuous diamond stone for lapping any of those stones flat.