Thread: Any general advice for using Arkansas stones?

I'm finally getting good edges off the 8K and I want to learn the arks I have.

I have a fine/hard and a black ark. Both have been flattened to 600 grit and one side of the black has been burnished. I'm only including the fine/hard as the one I have feels just a little smoother to the touch than my 8K and I'm wondering if it might be a reasonable intermediate before going to the black I also have Smith's honing oil, Smith's honing solution, and of course water. Is Smith's honing solution a good place to start?

I'm hoping some of you ark users have some general tips on using these stones. I know each stone is going to be different and I just need to figure mine out, but are there some basics to begin with? Start with light torque and stay with light torque/start heavy, work to light? Start with circles move to X strokes?

Any advice is appreciated.

Im not a big arkie user but id start with water. And always light strokes. If your edge is right at 8k then your just wanting to polish the edge finer. After 100 or so laps on water I go to a lube. This puts a little cushion on the stone so you touch is actualy lighter. Finishing with a heavier fluid. 300 to 400 laps is how i go. But get others opinions. Ive only found a few arkie edges i liked. Aaron is who id be asking as he has really been using arks a lot lately. Besides all the pros around here.

Like Gasman said, after 8k you're only polishing.

Using your soft or hard stone after 8K is likely degrading your edge, unless both are burnished. I view them as middle grit hones, the soft being used for things that I would use a 1 or 2K hones for in a synthetic setup, and the hard stone used for things I might do with a 4K. So you should be moving to your black hone.

Hands down the 'best' edges from an Arkansas stone are going to come from oil. And when I say best, I mean finest polish you're going to get from that stone. It also keeps the stone from loading up/wearing and slowing down if you've dressed one side for cutting faster. The caveat to this is it's harder to clean off if you plan to experiment with other honing solutions. I use about 50 to 100 laps on a natural when using oil as the final polish and call it good. I imagine Smith's solution can be treated much the same, but I've never used it personally just read some accounts of it's use here and there.

Using water...well it does work, but these aren't like most other stones that will tend to auto slurry or abrade to varying degrees. It's not particularly good at keeping the stone from loading up, but it does a decent job of speeding up the cutting process until the stone loads up. With this in mind I generally do about 50-100 laps on water, then I'll whip up a thin wet lather with shaving soap and lather up the honing surface and do another 50-100. The shave soap will slick it up and allow the stone to polish close to the same as oil, with the benefit of being easily cleaned up with a trip under running water.

Being that it's the finishing phase, you really shouldn't be using much more pressure/torque than you last used on the last phase on your 8K hone. Typically after the 4/5/6K phase I'm just letting the weight of the blade and mild torque do the work, there's no longer any start heavy/work to light or circular strokes. Just slightly modified X strokes and light pressure to finish things off. When I say modified, I basically mean the same as Gary Haywood uses on this coticule:



I find going back & forth for say a 25 count, then flipping the blade rather than flipping each pass gets you where you want to be far, far faster. Only my last 10 strokes follow the X stroke format. 50 to 100 strokes is a lot less daunting when it takes 2 minutes versus 20 plus.

And because I know you're wondering now that you've watched that video, yes - you can purchase a little coticule rubbing stone, make a slurry on your Black Arkansas stone, and do a 1 stone touch up exactly as they're doing in that video. It's fun to play with.

You may want to try using Smith's honing solution as an alternative to straight water or lather. It's water soluble so you can lighten it up after 50 or so strokes. As the other guys have mentioned, get used to doing a lot of laps; you're just polishing but at the end of the day (and it may literally be that) you'll have a superb edge - if all goes well.

I too agree with the Smith’s. I start with water and a couple of drops of smiths and only add smiths as more lube is needed. Another good lube to try is wd-40. The other problem with Arkansas stones is the burnishing. At the first stages of use the stone is rather “aggressive”, if your edge isn’t comfortable enough and you feel you’ve done a good job at honing try 10-15 minutes of burnishing with some hardened carbon steel. You are actually trying to knock the tops off the grit contained in the matrix of the stone. Then try finishing with the newly burnished face and see where that takes you edge wise. Another thing is forget what your edges look like coming off a synthetic as a natural hone and especially the Arkansas will leave a hazy finish. Just make sure the finish looks consistent.

Hopefully scouthikerdad chimes in, he has done some serious experimenting as of late with Arkansas’ and sounds like he has pretty well dialed in his technique.

Originally Posted by jfk742

I too agree with the Smith’s. I start with water and a couple of drops of smiths and only add smiths as more lube is needed. Another good lube to try is wd-40. The other problem with Arkansas stones is the burnishing. At the first stages of use the stone is rather “aggressive”, if your edge isn’t comfortable enough and you feel you’ve done a good job at honing try 10-15 minutes of burnishing with some hardened carbon steel. You are actually trying to knock the tops off the grit contained in the matrix of the stone. Then try finishing with the newly burnished face and see where that takes you edge wise. Another thing is forget what your edges look like coming off a synthetic as a natural hone and especially the Arkansas will leave a hazy finish. Just make sure the finish looks consistent.

Hopefully scouthikerdad chimes in, he has done some serious experimenting as of late with Arkansas’ and sounds like he has pretty well dialed in his technique.

Thanks, but I'm afraid you and Gasman Jerry might be overstating my expertise with Arkies a bit. I do, however, consider myself a devoted student of Arkies and other naturals, and am experimenting with some techniques that, in my hands on my stones at least, are giving me super-sharp and smooth edges. (Please excuse all the qualifiers-I am in the middle of teaching this year's crop of AP English Language students the value of qualifying their arguments and acknowledging complexity on their exam essays, so I'm kinda in that zone). (Yeah, I know, just shut up and talk about Arkie honing, SHD!!)

Anyhoo, my off and on CTS in my grading hand won't let me do the tedious hundreds of laps techniques that turn so many off of Arks in the first place, so myself and some others have been messing around with
torque on the edge and various progressions of lubes to finish (get your mind out of the gutter!). Assuming a keen edge off the 8 to 12k range, I've been playing around with what I call a "thin to thick" finishing progression on a true hard, surgical black or trans ark. As others have said, take your hardest, finest Ark and burnish the surface with some heavy chef's knives, a meat cleaver, or even a steel spatula. Then I do something like the following:

1. 50 or so Japanese-style half strokes with a fair amount of torque each side on plain water if you have a stiff-grind razor or chunky Sheffield. Obviously, a full-hollow or singing razor will not tolerate that torque without deflection. An already well-tuned edge will start sticking and almost digging in here. Careful, as you don't want to wreck an edge on these super-hard stones! (I haven't yet-knock on wood!).

2. Add a drop of dish soap and do the same regimen, gradually lightening the torque until, again, it starts sticking on both sides. As many of my razors are curvy Sheffields, I find myself doing sort of windshield wiper scything strokes to make sure I'm undercutting the water all along the edge.

3. Wash and dry hone and razor. Appy about a quarter's worth of WD-40 (or Smith's, Ballistol, glycerine-whatever oil you like for the "thick" finish). Do the same half-stroke regimen, again with some torque, lightening as you go, and finish with the usual lightening x-strokes.

4. Clean off the oil, strop the s**t out of it on your smoothest leather, and you should get a super-sharp, crisp and smooth shave.

Let us know how it goes. My next experiment may involve thuri slurry on an Ark; this has been a revelation on the Zulu Grey (maybe some day I can afford a big old thuri and use thuri slurry on an actual thuri lol!).

Now back out the shop to work on a Crown and Sword in English Walnut that I think is going to be a stunner-more later on that.

A lot depends on your stone and how it is finished. A lot also depends on your bevel and edge and how it is finished.

A burnished Ark will be a slow cutter, so if your edge is not finished to a near mirror with a very straight chip-free edge, you will be doing a lot of laps on a burnished ark. If your hard ark, Black Surgical or Translucent are not properly burnished, you will not get the full effect of an Ark edge.

Start with a pristine well shaving 8k edge, stropping on Chrome Oxide will help to eliminate the bevel and edge as a variable. Then experiment with a 600- grit side and a well burnished side, use your shaves as the arbitrator.

With Arks, you will start by using a bit more pressure, than finishing with a synthetic, lighten up on pressure as you finish. Smiths, Ballistol, soap all work as does oil. Once clean, Oil can easily be washed off with Dawn dish soap.

If you are not getting smooth shaving 8k edges, an Ark probably will not improve your edges, (It’s not the stones). Arks are not magic, but once dialed in, are smooth crisp shaving edges, unlike any synthetic or other natural stone.

Originally Posted by Euclid440

With Arks, you will start by using a bit more pressure, than finishing with a synthetic...

I'm not quite sure what you mean by synthetic: a synthetic stone, a synthetic
lubricant, or what am I missing?

Apart from that, I agree with you entirely.

Thanks.

Paul

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Lots of good tips.

Lots of laps don't bother me, I actually find it relaxing and sort of meditative.

Would my FBU shorty be a good candidate to try the pressure/torque technique, or would a wedge be better?

My hard ark is not burnished, my black is burnished on one side. Using the hard ark I put 350 or so laps with water using very light pressure. I was prepared to have the edge take a step back, but you don't know until you try. I stropped that edge with 50 on canvas and 250 on leather. To my delight the shave was improved from the 8K edge.

I took that edge to the black ark with 200 on the unburnished side and another 300 on the burnished side using Smith's. I'm used to oil, so the Smith's was a bit different. Adding water to the Smith's is a good idea, I'll be trying that in the future. 50/250 stropping and the shave was maybe a little better than the hard ark edge, not a huge improvement.

I added another 200 with oil on the burnished side of the black ark. I'll test shave tomorrow and let you know the outcome. I'm pretty happy with the current results, but chasing the 1% is kinda fun. might be time to try a different strop...

I'm pretty happy with the current results, but chasing the 1% is kinda fun. might be time to try a different strop...
I think you just nailed about 90% of what we talk about on the honing forum here, JJ! Assuming you're cool with the hundreds of laps, you may not want to torque the edge too much; some serious honers don't advocate that so much, though Arks are their own entity in the world of naturals. Just looking at your progression, I would consider dropping that 200 on the un-burnished side in the middle, as it may take you backwards a bit? You never know til you try.

And you can probably put a bit of torque on that WB FBU shorty assuming it's not a re-grind to hollow. Again, the advantage to me is fewer laps, but as you seem to enjoy that, just keep experimenting. As you know, that's where the fun is! And either way, it should improve and smooth out a bit after a shave or two assuming good stropping technique, which you must have or your shaves wouldn't be improving.

Please keep reporting back and adding to the knowledge base. When I first started messing with Arkies, I read every relevant Arkie thread on here and other forums as I started adapting my own techniques (which I adapted from the techniques of others TBH-nothing new under the sun).