Any general advice for using Arkansas stones?

[JellyJar]

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.

[Gasman]

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.

[Marshal]

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.

[Maladroit]

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.

[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.

[ScoutHikerDad]

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.

[biglou13]

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.

Get a handful of razors and practice......take notes.

Everyone’s lap pattern is unique, and no fixed pattern is perfect. On each stone/progression I start with a few warm up, full regular laps, then circles, then back and forth laps, followed by pyramid of edge leading 1/2 laps

My lap count is no where near what some of you are doing but still getting good results.... I’ll have to try some higher lap counts.

[JellyJar]

I took my second blade back to the hard ark and then went straight to the burnished black. Got a shave in and it was kinda meh. Not horrible, but not where I want the edge to be. Right now I think using the un-burnished side between the hard and burnished black is helpful. Practice, practice, practice...

[JellyJar]

Went back to the un-burnished side of the black ark with the second blade, and then did a bunch of laps on the burnished side followed by a whole lot of stropping. I did a single test pass this morning and was very pleased. I'll to a whole shave this weekend, just to be sure.

I'm pretty happy I've got a progression giving me edges I enjoy.

Thanks for all of your tips, they have been very helpful.

[outback]

JJ, have u tried finishing with soap n water, on the black.?!
( dish soap, liquid hand soap )

I've been finishing out a few on my black, coming off a Coti, to the black w/ soap n water, has been producing some incredible, results.