In a hurry? Spyder-slurry!

I got bored yesterday, so I tried honing with a little slurry on my spyderco UF;

I created it with a little DMT-like diamond pocket hone (about1"x3"), just like you would with a regular slurry stone.

WOW! Other than a brand new DMT, or sandpaper, I have never seen anything cut so fast. When I get off work today, I will have to post some pics of all the steel that got blasted off that razor. In 10-15 passes it knocked off ALL the marks from the DMT 8K, unreal... Darn near a mirror polish.

After about 10 passes on a light slurry, I made about 20-30 passes water-only to try and clean up the edge afterwards. I haven't test shaved yet, or experimented with it on more than 2 razors yet, but it does open up another use for the UF. And it had much better feedback too, almost like my coticule really!:eek:

I have a few razors that refuse to play nice with me, so I may test them on the Fine or Medium with slurry just to see what happens.

Wow never thought of doing that with my spydes may as well give it a try thanks

yep, just never would have thought of using a slurry on the UF, maybe I'll give it a go the next time I've got some honing to do.

Thanks for the report, looking forward to reading about the shave results.

I don't use my UF very often. I wonder if I would use it more if I could find a local stonecutter to cut an inch off the end to use as a rubbing stone?

Also, I've never used my wet, so I'll have to try that too!

Thanks for the ideas.

Here are the step by step pics of honing up a Clauss "New Departure Razor" I got from ebay a few days ago. I used the ol' black magic marker routine to set the bevel on the DMT 1200.
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Here's the little diamond pocket hone aka. slurry stone
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Just rub that guy around like a regular slurry stone, no big deal...
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These pics are to show the consistency of the slurry, it's pretty light, but it's more than enough as you will see.
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This swarf and slurry you see on here is after 5 passes!
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As you can see, it really blasts the steel off. Like I said above, I still do some passes with water only to refine the edge a bit more afterwards.

I test shaved with 2 other razors (a Torrey and a Wilbert) that have gone through this process, and I am happy with the results. Very nice, very sharp and smooth.

I have a Shumate, the Clauss shown above, and a Robeson I honed up like this as well. I am patiently waiting till I grow more facial hair to continue testing.

Great photos and very informative. Thanks!

I tried this on my small spyderco medium hone. It definately does improve the feedback from the hone. Still can't quite get it to work for me though, but that's just inexperience I think.
Thanks for the tip.

Connor

im going to try it tonight and report back as well i think ill like it

Quick update: on some of my razors, I need to make upwards of 20-50 passes on the UF (after cleaning thoroughly) with no slurry to get the best edge.

So far, it seems to be very similar to the "coticule with slurry and then coticule with water only" progression, except faster and finer.

I will keep with the updates as I find things of relevance.

:OTAlso...check out my little get together I am hosting! It's in the General forums... shoot me a PM if you are coming out. I don't have a big house, but all are welcome.

worked for me i took an english wedge i had a hard time getting shaving sharp and using this method it is scary sharp now thanks for the tip

Well, it took me a while but I finally acted on Joke's Spyder-Slurry suggestion of making a slurry with a DMT plate, but I wanted to do it with a slurry stone. Since my father in-law has a tile cutting saw, I got him to cut a slurry stone off of the end of my Spyderco UF when we visited for Thanksgiving. I'm thankful to report that it works just as Joke described!!!

After making a slurry with the rubbing stone, it only took 10 light passes to show lots of steel residue on the hone. This is definitely going to be something that I will be playing with more!

A tile cutting saw worked? Awesome! I have GOT to get ahold of one, so I can take my full set and make slurry stones.

Thanks a lot for this idea. Given the rate of steel removal, I wouldn't be surprised if I could set a bevel with this "ultra fine" hone!

what is the equivalent grit of the UF on a shapton

According to Spyderco, the UF is only a 2K grit hone. I don't understand that because it performs more like a 10K hone. I have never used a Shapton so I'm not one to compare them but there was a recent comparison between UF and the Shapton 16K.

The objections to the UF were primarily low feedback and slow cutting. I suspect the use of slurry as a step prior to final polish will eliminate some of those objections.

This is a timely thread for me because I just bought the medium, fine and ultra fine lightly used. It seems that there is no agreement on the grit rating of the Spyderco hones. Here is a thread I dug up earlier today doing a search for anything relating to the topic. The second page of the thread has more on the Spyderco then the first. I haven't used mine enough to have a conclusion as to whether they will work for me but I am really glad that joke1176 and Utopian tried the slurry and posted about it:tu.

OK, I have to admit that I got a little bit too excited about the slurry when I speculated that it might be able to be used to set bevels. It won't do that. I have played with it a little more and I have found that the slurry does cause rapid steel removal but the stone loads up pretty quickly. However, I do believe the slurry will allow for faster polishing.

I promise I will play with it more and try to jump to conclusions less!

I thought the same thing, at first. The loading issue is the only reason I don't like these stones as much as naturals really.

That's one reason why I would like to cut the end off for a slurry stone: it would make cleaning a lot faster and easier... I hope.


If I ever figure out how to do it correctly, I am turning this into a wiki article. :gaah:

Might be a good idea to buy a UF and cut it up for slurry stones. Keep one and put the rest on the classifieds. Chris L did that with the Chinese 12K and it worked out well for him and all who bought one. Me included. :)

Me included as well, and that works great!!! It's such a shock to get so much feedback from the 12K with slurry.

Last night I was experimenting with 4 hones so I did not devote a great deal of time with the Spyder-slurry, but I need to pull back on my enthusiasm even further. I was sort of shocked to find that, though the slurry stone did temporarily improve cutting action, it did not serve to clear the stone once it loaded. I had to clear the hone with the recommended scouring pad and abrasive cleaner. Also, the steel cutting worked great on a couple of razors, which lead me to my preliminary conclusions, but then I tried to show it off to my wife whose father cut the stone for me. I was touching up a Wade and Butcher Special so I wanted to show her how fast metal appeared on the stone. I did 10 strokes and nothing. I did 10 more strokes and nothing. She was not terribly impressed. Neither was I. Apparently this is another case of some hones liking some razors, and vice versa, more than others.

I'm beginning to suspect that the Spyderco will not become the poor man's Shapton.

My wife doesn't share my enthusiasm for obtaining great edges either...