Thread: Norton 4000/8000 prep

Originally Posted by geoffreyt

I just posted this in the Flattening with sandpaper thread. I found this thread so helpful and on my topic I thought Id post here too as you are all on the trail I traverse.

This is a helpful post. Thank you. I'm using a glass bed and 1000 grit paper. I see the 8000 side makes a nice yellow slurry. I'm not sure what I'm doing and I was washing the slurry off the stone and the paper and re-honing. Maybe I should use the slurry. Any way, I have done the 4K and the 8K using one piece of paper. Moving my stone back and forth with no down ward pressure. I applied a little pencil to the 4K side to watch it remove. It never did come out completely and I had thought I applied it lightly. I was wondering. How much lapping of stone should I do?How can I reference or determine a flat enough surface to simply sharpen my razors? I don't need to get too carried away just yet. I simply want a good surface to start my learning and sharpening process.

The pencil marks do not go any deeper than the surface, you'll have to lap the stone until they are all gone.

1000 grit paper may be too high for this. I don't personally use paper so I may be wrong, but I do know that it'd take me a while to properly lap a stone with my DMT 1200, and I suppose sandpaper should be even slower.

This ought to be a part of the learning experience; don't short change any step in the honing process, you'll just end up doing it like you should have the first time, later.

This actually opens the door for me to pass on my favorite piece of advice from my father. "If you're gonna f@&%in' do something, do it right". (I intend no angry tone with this quote, that's just the way he used say it when we worked together in his machine shop around tools that will maim or kill you if you don't use them correctly).

That said, most stone are "flat enough" . But for learning, you want to decrease the variables that could cause problems. So, I say keep lapping.