Thread: Ceramic stones for honing razors

I was talking about using the Spyderco on Razors.
I do use it on knives too. I run my carry knives on the ceramic a couple trips occasionally to keep em sharp. I'm decent at knife sharpening, but prefer to use the ceramics to keep em sharp instead. Once a knife is dull, I usually use a lansky kit to sharpen.

Originally Posted by shooter74743

The "surface finish" is why I have never messed with the Spyderco stones & have stuck with my shapton gs's & follow up with whatever finisher is tickling my fancy.

Jack0458: My "secret recipe" that has worked on every, I repeat every razor I have encountered, is Chosera 1K, Shapton GS 2,4,8,16K followed by most often a yellow-green Escher. I know it's going back a little in "grit", but there is something that a quality thuringian stone does to an edge that most other stones just can't copy.

When reading a post like yours I immediately want to check out the Escher stone or hone. I'm still up for trying new stones. But I think (actually I'm sure) I have the stones to get great results already. What I need more than a new stone is more experience. After a year of honing (sort of ) razors I'm just now starting to get results I'm proud of. I've been shaving with the razors I hone for the entire time and MAN, can I tell a difference in my shaves from a year ago. Anyway, I don't think I need another stone but I'm going to look into a yellow-green Escher. Is the yellow-green a grit reference? I may end up getting one just to try it. I need to wait at least a little while though. Right now I'm seeing how I feel about the Spyderco UF stone. Another one right now would only confuse me.

Jack

Sure, I have used my lapped Spyderco UF on razors. It works very well. It slightly improved on the factory grind as far as the finish imparted to razor, but not by much. I find the edge to be extremely keen and fairly smooth, but not quite as smooth as an Escher/Thuringian. (Yellow-Green is a color reference, BTW). I usually make about 50 laps with extremely light pressure for the finishing touch when using the UF. It requires quite a high level of refinement before using it if one wants optimal results. I usually go to at least the 8k Shapton Pro prior to using it.

My main concern and primary cause for lapping my UF stone was flatness - my stone had a slight twist in it which I wanted to correct. Not much, but as a machinist I am picky, lol. Again, the factory stones are surface ground with a diamond cup wheel. If you look closely you will see radial (circular) tool marks on the surface. This surfacing is the only difference between F and UF "grits" from Spyderco. The F stone is fired and left as is, the UF gets surface ground after firing.

You have an excellent set of stones. I started out with a hodge podge of stones, then a set of naniwa's, then the nortons...and then I graduated to the shapton gs's and have never looked back. Once I got the hang of them, i started messing around with finishers & just can't shake that tried and true combination. I still mess around with other natural finishers and even the G20, but if I have a troubled blade come my way i always revert to what works.

As far as the color references in the thuringians, i really don't think it's to do with grit. I've only had about a half dozen thuri's in my hands, but they all seem to be rather close in "grit". They all have personalities, some are softer than others, but Ihave never seen a bad one.

I do like your approach, you are learning one stone at a time for finishing. You are right, trying several finishers at one time without having a working knowledge of them will muddy the waters...ask me how I know.

Hello to All,

For razors, I use my Spyderco UF mostly as a substrate for 'slurry' experiments - for this it is superb.

My UF is not flat enough for my taste - you can see the swirls of swarf on the peaks of the stone when honing knives. My Fine is visibly bowed along the long axis- still works a treat though

Have fun

Best regards

Russ