Thread: Cleaning up and honing a new antique store find: A.J. Jordan

Originally Posted by Utopian

You Norton 4k seemed to degrade the 1k edge and bevel. How old is your 4k? Have you used it very much since you got it? More importantly, have you lapped it very much?

I'm asking this because a lot of the 4k Nortons have an outer layer that has larger grit in it. For this reason, some people recommend lapping away the first 1/8 of an inch of the hone.

Yes - I saw that and was actually pretty surprised. The image is from different places along the blade - it's hard to get the same spot every time. That might account for the disparity. I did look at the length of the blade - that's why I went back to the 4K for three rounds. I did joint the edge at the 1K level to get rid of some chipping I noticed along some areas of the edge.





The 4K has been in use for a couple of years and I did end up lapping off a good 1/8 of an inch when I first got it. I lap it before every honing session. I find that that synthetics foul pretty quickly even without tape. Ive always noticed that the 4K feels gritty. I've commented here on that in the past. Maybe I should replace it - I've never been that happy with it. Love the 8K side of the Norton combo though.

I've been thinking about picking up a Naniwa 5K or a straight Norton 4K instead of the combo. Any advice on that?

Adam

I think maybe our combination hones are from the same bad run or something. I had a 4/8, and no matter what I did the 'back' end of my 4K just never felt as smooth as what I would dub the 'front' of my stone. I tried to lap layers away, I tried polishing it up to 2K with sandpaper, that side of my combination hone was a lost cause. It's currently relegated to knife honing duty for the remainder of it's life, and even with those I kind of try to avoid that bad spot.

My single grit 4K hone is much, much smoother. It has been kinder to me (knock on wood). So far there's been no buyer's remorse with my single grit Norton set 1k, 4k, or 8k.

My only reservation with a Naniwa 5 is that may be a bit large a jump from the 1K. I'm thinking maybe the 3K would be a better fit, since you can generally shift Naniwa stones up a tick in comparison to Nortons because the Japanese scale is a touch different from the US model.