Thread: Carborundums

I bought a carborundum 124 Hone (NOS) marked "FINE" to be my bevel setter. The first razor to touch it is a Torrey restoration project that i got a little careless with the dremel and ended up sanding someofthe edge off (.5mm max). I bread knifed it flat on the hone and then began to set the bevel. I know i've got a lot of metal to get through but it's taking longer thani think it should. I used the same technique to get a bad chip out of my wapi and the beveling went quick with some 2k wet/dry sandpaper... anyway to the question

Are carborundums slow cutters or are Torrey's just hard steel? thank you!

Both actually. The 2-3 Torrey's I have/had were all pretty hard steel (nun2sharp has one that wouldn't play nice with me).

Wet/dry paper cuts FAST. I think it cuts faster than DMT's, and while carborundum hones aren't the slowest, they can't match that rate of metal removal.

Carborundum made a variety of barber hones. Some were extremely fine, most seem to be medium, and I've only found one that was coarse. Unfortunately, I have never been able to find a table of Carborundum numbers.
I agree with Joke1176, most are fairly slow. I don't think many Carborundums are adequate as a bevel setter, certainly not one labeled as "fine." Is this your only hone? If you bread knifed the blade, you can expect many hundreds of strokes on an average bevel setting hone. Of course, this will vary greatly depending on your pressure.