Thread: Reason behind pyramid honing and other musings

Yes, I know the clunk the door makes. I also know that for the last 8 years I've been trying to convince my wife that she does not need to slam the door on my Honda Prelude, which was engineered to produce a perfectly fine resonant satisfying clunk with minimal exertion of force. I cringe every time she slams that door.

On the other hand, this is one of the few complaints I have about her so I keep my mouth shut (almost) every time that door crashes shut.

LOL. I can certainly say the same of my girlfriend. Not the car door thing. The keeping my mouth shut because the good far outweighs the bad.

Shapton glass for American market were engineered for A2, so there is work being done in that regard. I hear they are doing more. Norton consistency? who'd a thunk it.

I too like thinking about sharpening on the microcrystalline submicron scale; but it never seems to help me hone better. It's just an interesting distraction when you're crazy about stone and steel.

I have never tried pyramid honing and likely never will. I don't understand its purpose. An edge that has been re-finished several times(more than just touching up) feels to me sharper and sharper. removing more and more residual coarse scratches makes the edge increasingly more continious.

"teeth", coarse scratches and such to my mind are micro stress risers that can only lead to larger chips.

I can dig the resonance idea with the pyramids. I'll go you one further: what grit sizes correspond to what musical notes? For example (i'm making up number because I don't know) a 4k grit has particles that are 10 micron across, which is the width of a sound wave vibrating at 440 cycles per second, or A in the staff. Now if you were to hone with a series of Tambura players droning on A around you, would the sound frequencies interfere with or cooperate with your 4k hone? The possibilities are endless!

I'm pretty certain, in theory, you could shave with a harmonic generated off a tuning fork and skip the stone/razor combo all together.

The emphasis on "in theory" is probably very important here . . .

While I sense a certain sense of sarcasm, if you were to try and hone a razor with it's response frequency it would shatter.... this is why singers break glasses with their voices....

Originally Posted by AFDavis11

I'm pretty certain, in theory, you could shave with a harmonic generated off a tuning fork and skip the stone/razor combo all together.

The emphasis on "in theory" is probably very important here . . .

I'm no history buff, but I believe this is one contributing factor to the Axis forces losing WWII. They got caught up on the concept of a death ray using radio and sound waves. Was just too impractical, or, not as effective as, well, you know.

if you were to try and hone a razor with it's response frequency it would shatter.... this is why singers break glasses with their voices....

Maybe, but the decibels required would strain even the most powerful amplification system. Not to mention the stiffness of the steel and/or hone would lend to a very high resonance frequency. I wasn't suggesting using the response (resonance?) frequencies, but matching the distance between particles on the hone with the peaks and troughs of sound waves to get a coupling effect. That, and I was being geeky/sarcastic.

Of course it would take far too many decibels. But if you had enough to sharpen steel (alter its properties) you would have enough to cause resonance (alter its properties). And I know what you mean. The issue is not the frequency of cutting pieces, but the frequency of its cutting pattern, which will almost certainly not correspond to a natural wave.