Cerium Oxide is also used in lapidary work where it is considered a high end polisher for that final polish. I used to use it by the pound in my college days in the Geology Lab.
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Cerium Oxide is also used in lapidary work where it is considered a high end polisher for that final polish. I used to use it by the pound in my college days in the Geology Lab.
I use Cerium Oxide on denim wrapped tightly around a 1/2" piece of balsawood. It does a nice job but don't breathe it.
Its a matter of the particle size of the stuff and the relative hardness of the polishing medium compared to the stuff you are trying to polish. That's why many lapidary polishes are mixtures of different materials in an attempt to give the best of many worlds. You can use (for example) Chrome Ox to polish material like Quartz and things of that approximate hardness but as you start dealing with harder material it doesn't work so good.
Are you thinking that this will improve the slurry?
It almost makes sense to have a baby jar with a wet H2O paste
of CeOx or even CrOx. A touch of the finger would pick up
some and you might have an instant but very fine slurry.
By adding a drop of surfactant to the paste it might also
help clean the hone.
And CeOx is clean (unlike CrOx...) I guess if I had some handy I would try it.
Wait, I might... that very fine white polishing compound for ceramic cook
tops....has something white in it that polishes glass.
Very Intereresting - the "Su'? Why wouldnt that work with other fine hones that rely on a slurry - coticules, barber hones, synthetic waterstones, etc? Or, even if you couldnt get the exact same effect, what would be the effect of doing so with other hones like that?
The su are kind of cool because the particles stay in them until floated out by water (if I understand correctly). So, with the suita the effect might be prolonged.
As for Japanese naturals from the Kyoto region in general, part of their fineness relies on the natural abrasive particles being ground down in the honing process (these are called chert and, I believe, come from the remains of radiolaria). I would think using the cerium oxide would hasten the breakdown into finer particles. Making them become finer and faster than normal.
One could use the cerium oxide with any hone and I think Sham has a video where he uses Chro-ox that way. I just think that, because of the way the natural Japanese hones work, it might be particularly interesting with them.
People use Carborundum too, but CeO should be finer and might work better.
YouTube - knife sharpening using Maruka finishing stone with SiC slurry ( #30,000 green carborumdum)
Any type of contamination on Jnats is pretty much degrading the quality of the hone. There is a good reason why Jnats don't have a grit rating system and that is because the don't cut in the same fashion as other hones.
If you were to take a piece of butter and run a fork through it, that would pretty much be the same scratch pattern as any of the synthetics and most any other hone that isn't a Jnat finisher. If you ran a micro plane over the same butter at some point you would have something that looks flat, that is the Jnat effect so pretty much anything else after the Jnat is probably making your edge less sharp and any contamination would have a negative impact on the edge. So keep Jnats clean.