Thread: Microscope and hones

Does anybody here have a decent scope that they have used to examine the grit from hones?
I tried putting a small spot of watery slurry on a slide from a few hones but to be honest I couldn't say they looked that different. Maybe I should have compared natural to man made.

Maybe I should just buy a nice polarising scope that is meant for this kind of thing (I was tempted by a lomo on ebay today which looked like it had a polarising stage)?

You would need some major magnification to be able to see the particales in the slurry. I think most of us either have the radio shack types which are useless for that or quality scopes with low magnification. I have a Nikon Stereo scope but it only goes up to about 86x. Its designed for mineralogic work but is great for razors. I don't think a polarization stage will do you any good. Thats designed for viewing thin sections in petrology studies.

I seem to recall I could make out most of the particles at something like 200x or 400x but they weren't too clear iirc as they were transparent and samples from each stone looked similar. This was on a fairly old binocular compound scope.

I do have a B&L stereozoom but it is much like your Nikon and even that sort of magnification requires me to use the 20x eyepieces which I don't usually bother with (I just stick to the 12.5x for examining blades, micromount minerals etc.)

Some of those thin mineral sections aren't totaly opaque and I would have thought a thin layer of slurry would be a rough approx. to one of these sections.

Not that I'd have a clue about the light interactions anyway but it would be interesting to see some pics of hone slurry or thin sections.

Most of the thin sections are opaque minerals but they are ground so thin they are more translucent so enough light penetrates when you rotate so the polarizing effect shows the xtls. I spent many an hour in my college days grinding thin sections in the geology lab before they bought a machine to do it.

I could measure the grit in work, if you want to send a sample.

I have a hunch even electron microscopy could'nt help us tyros. Methinks it's practice, practice, practice we need, probably after having watched in person someone expert at the process. Lynn's video helps, but knowing or feeling when to stop seems to be critical, as well as understanding how much pressure one may apply from razor to stone, is critical.

I'm having difficulty allowing myself to apply no pressure to the blade against the stone. My feeling is that without some pressure the blade will "float" upon the film of water on the stone. Float it don't, I suspect, but reading about and watching the process may have given me reasons but it certainly has not provided understanding.

I have always assumed that a bit more honing on finer stones will wear away the wire edge thrown by previous honing on a coarser stone. Perhaps I have not yet discovered the proper incantations or am not holding my tongue in the correct corner of my mouth. Of course, the holding of one's tongue does make incanting difficult.