Thread: Rubbing stones?

Long time reader and straight user. Love the site Lynn! This is truly the home for straights.
My question is about Nagura stones. I have several hones picked through E-bay and a local barber supply here in Phx, and would like to use a rubbing stone as described in several threads. Does anyone know where one can be purchased cheaply without purchasing a seperate waterstone? Also, on Japanese sword sites, there is descriptions of different grades. Can anyone explain which grade goes with which waterstone, and if the difference is major?

I have a Norton's 4k/8k, a lithide through Tilly, and a light grey 2"x4" barber's hone as my finest.
Thanks in advance

Are these natural waterstones you own? If not you could probably just buy a man made version for a fraction of a natural and it should be good enough.

There are quite a number of grades but I've only heard of a few like Betsujou which is fine and tokyu a level above this i think, orange grained ones are often tokyu. Koma for sword polishing but if your stones are very fine the naguras may be of a slightly rougher grit so wouldn't be ideal.
There are more, other colours like black as well iirc but it's really not my thing and it's late here so i won't try to recall any more at the moment. I'm always mixing the names up with Japanese.

I don't think people use rubbing stones on any of the hones you describe (Notron combo, lithide, barber hone)

I do use lather on the Norton sometimes but almost nobody else does. Bill Ellis uses "rotten stone" on it or something similar - maybe this is what you want?

I suggest using the lithide dry or with lather, and have no idea about the barber hone but they were generally used either dry or with lather.

If you want, I can send you a part of my broken lithide to make slurry on your lithide (PM me if interested)

Cheers
Ivo

The main point is that you want the rubbing stone to be equal to or softer than the hone. If it was harder you would wear down your hone with the rubbing stone. Most finer japanese Hones are quite soft, nothing like the coticule or ecsher stones. The Japanese stones are clay based. The Nogura stones are very soft basically like chalk, well harder than that but still very soft. I would think you would want to match your slurry to the fineness of the job, rough polishing, final polishing etc. If you look at those sword sites you see them going through all kinds of stages to get the sword like a mirror. Its something straight users would never use. The Japanese stone I have is a finishing stone and the rubbing stone that came with it is of similar material just poorer quality and a tad softer.

Another way to think about it is what do you want your slurry to consist of? If you want it to consist of the honing medium you can use anything harder than the hone, heck a piece of quartz might do the trick, but if you want it softer than you want the rubbing stone medium matched to the job.

Thanks everyone, I'll just stick to lather/water for my hones. My blades shave verry smoothly, and I should not change a thing, but you know how it is to wonder if they could be sharper.

Originally Posted by 4Shore

Thanks everyone, I'll just stick to lather/water for my hones. My blades shave verry smoothly, and I should not change a thing, but you know how it is to wonder if they could be sharper.

They could be, no question about it

Reading what you use - you can get them finer and sharper with say Shapton 15K ($99 or so) and 30K (~$280) hones.

Or try the cheaper approaches: Boron carbide, Chromium oxide, newspaper. Also diamond pastes...

Good luck
Ivo

I use diamond pastes (4.0, 1.0, .5 micron). They work very well indeed.
Thanks.