Wow. I just bought a bar of this stuff at Woodcraft, and when I realized I didn't quite know how to apply it to a balsa strop, I set it aside.

YOU SIR, (yes, i'm sort of shouting) HAVE DONE US A VERY FINE SERVICE AND DESERVE OUR THANKS!


Quote Originally Posted by Ben325e View Post
Hey guys, I've had a recent experience that everyone here needs to know about. A few months ago, I was in the market for some chromium oxide, and I couldn't find anywhere that had the Hand American products in stock, so I researched on most of the major woodworking retailers online, and found that many of them sell bars of honing compound.

These bars are green and waxy looking, usually about five inches in length or so. Most of them look pretty much just like this:


They are typically advertised as being "Chromium Oxide" honing compound. I didn't like the fact that most of the places didn't give a particle size in microns, so I shopped around. I ended up with the "Veritas" honing compound sold by Lee Valley Tools, because of this sentence in the description on their website:

"It is primarily chromium oxide admixed with other fine abrasives (0.5 micron particle size) to give the best combination of cutting speed and fine finish."

0.5 micron is what I was shooting for, so I bought it and it was great for my kitchen knives (I got into straights from sharp kitchen knives... just a natural progression, I guess!).

When I started using it for straights, I got good shaves off of it, or so I thought. I would follow my Chinese 12k with the polishing compound on a paddle strop of my own making, and things were ok. After a while, I found myself enjoying my shaves right off of the 12k better than with the compound, and under the microscope, my bevels didn't look as smooth as what I found on the Tim Zowada pictures.

I emailed Lee Valley's customer service department, and asked for the Materials Safety Data Sheet on the compound, and they sent it to me, and it was VERY reavealing. The Veritas compound, which they advertise as "primarily chromium oxide" actually has the following composition as seen in the Green/Red box in the pic below.






The veritas bar is between 50 and 60 percent Aluminum Oxide!!! So, the next question that came to mind was "Is the particle size held to .5 micron?" To find this out, I decided to contact Formax Manufacturing, the company that makes the honing compound (They also make the "Microfine" honing compound like you find at woodcraft.com). I emailed the customer service, and who replied but Andrew Johnston, whose name is on the MSDS sheet. I figured he would be the right guy to ask about the particle size of the abrasive.

Here is our email conversation:
If you have bought the Veritas Honing compound and would like to return it for a full refund including being refunded for your original shipping charge as well as not paying postage to ship it back, click here: Lee Valley Tools

A gentleman at Lee Valley has told me he would have the item description looked into and edited for the future.

I assume that most other places that sell "Chromium oxide" bars also have mostly aluminum oxide in them. When I performed a MSDS search on such bars, I found many that contained only 5 to 10 percent chromium oxide.

For example, McMaster-Carr sells a chromium oxide bar that has an average particle size of TWO microns! (Seraphim, did you *ahem* recommend *ahem ahem* this bar to someone on badger and blade? )

Bigbadwulf - I believe you bought the Veritas honing compound on my recommendation a few weeks ago - I'm buying the Hand American chromium oxide, and will gladly send you a good bit for free, as well as a paddle strop made with Hand American leather as an apology! PM me your address, and I'll send it out when my order comes in.

The moral of the Story? Buy the Hand American Chromium oxide. Japaneseknifesharpening.com stocks it. I'm sure Dave Martell will be happy to read my post!!

Cheers,