Thread: Why is this lapping taking sooo long???

keep your pressure light and in the center of the stone let the sandpaper do the work too much pressure will only clog the paper. tape that sand paper down flat, if the rounded off corners are not too large your razor wont touch them anyway.

if i were you i wouldn't worry about it. it is small stone you most likely end up using x strokes and you will never touch corners.
your stone shouldn't be perfect flat anyway.
hope this helps.

What is the substrate the paper is on?

Where did you learn to make circular motions. Sometimes circles are ok but imho most prone to inaccuracy.

I would agree that the corners are not all that important.

The closer you get to lapping the stone flat the longer it takes to lap the higher areas down. This is because you have a flat area that gets larger as you remove material. It can take forever to reduce the whole surface enough to eliminate a rounded corner (as you know). I wouldn't worry about the corners. After you radius the long edges of the stone you will have a honing surface that is very slightly curved inward at the ends where you don't use it anyway.

On natural stones I'm alot mor forgiving on full area flatness. As jimmy pointed ou about checking the honing path to see if the area in question is a problem. Naturals are a limited item and once used up cannot be replaced, so I take a minimal amount of material off and learn to use what I can on that one stone. Synthetics I have no problem grinding away as someone will just make more...

Originally Posted by kevint

What is the substrate the paper is on?

Where did you learn to make circular motions. Sometimes circles are ok but imho most prone to inaccuracy.

I would agree that the corners are not all that important.

I put the paper on a piece of finished marble slab (about 10" X 5") and I learned to use circular motions from SRP wiki "lapping 101". It said you could use circles or figure 8's according to your preference.

I really appreciate everybody's input, especially the very relieving advice/confirmation that the corners could be left alone for now.

And BTW stimpy, thanks for putting the idea in my head that my stone may be possessed as I go into my first attempt at honing!

the best motion is front and back alternating left and right to form a sorta X; turning the stone end to end (often)to keep pressure application issues equalized helps as well.

Forget about the corners, they are of no importance when honing.

I agree with that Randy. But I question why, because typical use results in high corners and ends -dished in the middle.

3 hours on a coticule should do it I'd think.

Which is the reason for my pointing out making circles is not the best approach and just perhaps the cause of low corners which in the extremes of accuracy would require some deft hand work to have equalized pressure as you come round and round

Whatta ya think?