Thread: Arkansas

I have a Pike Norton Washita, a hard Ark and a Trans.

I use them all as double sided so I get 6 stones for the price of 3 and i start the washita at 220 for the first side.

Anyone have any suggestions what I should do on the finer side of the Washita so I can get an edge quite a long way with it.

I would also appreciate some advice on what I should do for the two sides of both the hard and trans.

I don't burnish any of them.

I have one final question, when I use my Arks the polish is removed from my blades and they go darker and dull. I can polish them back up with chrome polish and a lot of work, but I don't like to, especially on a newly honed Trans edge. Does anyone else experience this and how can I avoid it.

I have used Glycerin, Dish soap and water, smiths, and mineral oil to the same effect. Maybe it's because I spend such a long time honing with the Arks?

I guess I’m not following, the stones make your blade dull? The edge and spine is the only part that touches the stone, tape on the spine and if your finisher is not polishing, then maybe you do need to burnish, it’s either that or use the strop. But it don’t matter just put the stone down and shave

You can't, or rather it is not practical to slurry an ark since novoculite will ruin a diamond plate but what you can do is use foreign slurry such as coticule slurry. I have never really done so but you could probably use Thuringian slurry also. What I might try if I were you is the slurry stone that came with that coti You got recently. Maybe give that a whirl and see how that works. You could use other slurry stones as well but that's maybe a place to start.

As far as the darkening I'm assuming you mean the blade face not the bevel. I have never seen that although maybe I'm just thick or something. I only use water on mine and occasionally a drop of liquid hand soap at finish.

Originally Posted by tcrideshd

I guess I’m not following, the stones make your blade dull? The edge and spine is the only part that touches the stone, tape on the spine and if your finisher is not polishing, then maybe you do need to burnish, it’s either that or use the strop. But it don’t matter just put the stone down and shave

I agree, the spine is taped and the bevel is bright but the rest of the blade that doesn't touch the stone (full hollow) goes dull so I am assuming that whatever i use to hone gets up on the hollow and takes the shine off.

I don't think for a second it's my stones making my blade dull, must be what I'm honing with I guess.

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

You can't, or rather it is not practical to slurry an ark since novoculite will ruin a diamond plate but what you can do is use foreign slurry such as coticule slurry. I have never really done so but you could probably use Thuringian slurry also. What I might try if I were you is the slurry stone that came with that coti You got recently. Maybe give that a whirl and see how that works. You could use other slurry stones as well but that's maybe a place to start.

As far as the darkening I'm assuming you mean the blade face not the bevel. I have never seen that although maybe I'm just thick or something. I only use water on mine and occasionally a drop of liquid hand soap at finish.

I don't slurry an Ark and yes, the face of the blade goes dull not the bevel,

If I get a chance today, I'll post a few pics.

I might try just water, I kinda thought I had to use some thing slippery like oil.

I have shaved off my black ark with water, oil and WD40. My satisfaction with the shave is OK with water but gets better with the oil and best with WD40.
My softer Arks, Washita, soft and Hard don't seem to work well as double sided. I think the act of honing on them burnishes the stone thus making them less aggressive. This is probably happening on the harder stones but to a lessor degree. YMMV

Originally Posted by boz

I have shaved off my black ark with water, oil and WD40. My satisfaction with the shave is OK with water but gets better with the oil and best with WD40.
My softer Arks, Washita, soft and Hard don't seem to work well as double sided. I think the act of honing on them burnishes the stone thus making them less aggressive. This is probably happening on the harder stones but to a lessor degree. YMMV

Thanks for that, I have heard that WD40 is useful, do you use any Arks double sided. Even just a trans?

Originally Posted by PaulFLUS

You can't, or rather it is not practical to slurry an ark since novoculite will ruin a diamond plate but what you can do is use foreign slurry such as coticule slurry. I have never really done so but you could probably use Thuringian slurry also. What I might try if I were you is the slurry stone that came with that coti You got recently. Maybe give that a whirl and see how that works. You could use other slurry stones as well but that's maybe a place to start.

As far as the darkening I'm assuming you mean the blade face not the bevel. I have never seen that although maybe I'm just thick or something. I only use water on mine and occasionally a drop of liquid hand soap at finish.

I have an F A Koch & Co, Faultless No 20 that had started to pull a bit and had been put aside for some love.

I got it out this morning and taped the spine with kapton, I then added a layer of electrical tape so I would have a micro bevel. I like micro bevels when I experiment because it's easiy to change to something else later.

I did 20, 10, 5, 3 circles on either side using the courser side of my Trans then 50 X strokes.

I turned it to the finer side and did exactly the same.

I then did 60 on cotton and 100 on Buffalo leather.

The blade hasn't discoloured and it is very Ark sharp.

I used Smiths and I'm starting to wonder now if maybe the discolouration could have been from honing on my Arks from Washita all the way up to Trans over a period of maybe 4 hours solid.

Finishing an Ark two sided works for a while but if you are going coarser than the natural texture of the stone the surface will always tend to wear in over time so if you want to keep that aggression you need to refresh the surface once in a while. I used to do the two sided lapping thing but don't bother anymore, the stone just wants to be what it wants to be and I lap to that.

For a Washita I go to about 150/180 grit, same with a soft, 220 for a hard, up to 400 for trans/black/true hard. Use a bunch of oil and just knock down the high points for 10 or 15 seconds.

From what I have heard Dan's lap all their stones with continually refreshed and recycled 90 grit SiC. I emailed them not too long back about recommended surface refreshing and I was advised to use 220 grit wet/dry or loose abrasive (for all stones) reasonably coarser than the 600 grit many go to for a trans/black/true hard.

I know people get away with all sorts of honing fluids on Arks but for me they really are oilstones in the truest sense. Lubricant on a stone isn't only to wash away swarf but also prevents excessive wear of the abrasive, not a problem with a friable stone like the relatively soft Japanese waterstones but on a non friable stone you want a lubricant that absolutely minimizes the wear on the abrasives and oil is better than that at water. Then again if you've ever worked in grinding industrially, resin bonded soft abrasives similar to those used in waterstones are used with oil almost exclusively because even they perform better than with water, but no one is going to have a circulating oil coolant system hovering over the honing bench.

If you use an Ark with water, it cuts well initially but I find the stone slows down rapidly and the surface starts to burnish, water is also very poor at suspending the swarf above the stone. Maybe not too much of a problem on the very fine Arks but on say Hard down to Washita I would recommend strongly against water.

Something like WD40/Microil is almost ideal viscosity wise, although personally I use neatsfoot oil which is a natural oil rendered from the shin bones of ruminant animals, sometimes cut with a little turps in the winter months to thin it out. A close second for me was a mix of Ballistol and Water at about 1 part Ballistol to 5 parts water which you can adjust on the fly by spraying extra water on the stone to thin or extra Ballistol to thicken. The white emulsion it creates is also a great visual indicator for undercut and swarf accumulation.

One thing I have noticed with Arks is that because they are quite slow and work better with some pressure, if you have a razor with a lot of bevel reveal like an old wedge they come to an absolute crawl and you could spend days honing. I have a small old wedge, 15.5 mm wide and the spine wear and bevel width totals 6.5mm of that 15.5 and an Ark just will not really cut it effectively because the pressure needed is so high for that kind of surface area. I'm going to be regrinding that razor soon.

I meant to mention earlier, which someone did in the interim, that if you want to keep them as two sided stones that instead of burnishing the smooth side to maintain that you will need to lap the other since they will tend to burnish not vice versa.

Also as a correction, I only use just water with the trans and black. With a washita and soft I use Smith's and thin in progression with WD-40 or 3 in 1 thinned with mineral spirits. I find that WD-40 by itself does not work as well as mixed with honing oil especially on a washita.

Thp001 mentioned the crawl that can happen with some razors. For finishing I have always viewed that as a good thing. The gradual nature of the fine Arks makes me slow down and I think my edges benefit from that. Plus honing is one of those zen, cathartic, mindful or whatever you want to call it activities. I spend my whole day in intent concentration and to do a busy but mindless activity is rather refreshing.