Has anyone had any experience with Ice Bear water stones? Any info is appreciated.
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Has anyone had any experience with Ice Bear water stones? Any info is appreciated.
Ice Bear are made by King, AFAIK. I use one for bevel setting. It's quite soft, but does a great job. I do have finer grades, but use them solely for my kitchen knives. This is purely as I have Shaptons & naturals for the razors, & I've just not needed to find out how they perform.
I have the King 800, 1200 and 6000 stones. They work well, but dish out pretty easily. I just reflatten them for 15 seconds on 220 wet-dry sandpaper every 15 minutes.
ps: The shave off the 6K is very scratchy. Even finishing using water only and "1/2 the weight of the blade". 50-75 roundtrips on a pasted paddle strop (.6u Flexcut Gold) smooths it out. A 10-12K stone would be a LOT easier.
do you already have this stones wich ones?
or considering to buy?
If its the last one what is the price gain compared to the stones that has lots of followers here?
I hone pretty much every day on Ice Bear stones -- 1k,4k, sometimes 6k, plus I use the Woodcraft "Chinese 12k" for finishing. My personal feeling is that all of them are relatively slow cutters -- not necessarily a bad thing for relatively inexperienced honers. I don't think they "dish" all that easily, I flatten every few sessions on 220 wet/dry sandpaper.
I've tried other members' stones, and if I had the money to spend, I'd probably go for a set of Nortons, 1k,4k,8k. The fact is, though, that you can get excellent results off Ice Bear stones for almost half the price.
Finally -- it's not the just the stones -- it's the hands. Great stones don't make great edges -- practice, patience, and -hopefully- some friendly coaching like I've gotten from Holli4, JoeD, and Carrie make for great edges.
Yup, King owner here. From 300 - 8k. The only stone I hate is the 300. The DMTC is more gentle on razors :p The others are great. A fairly soft stone & yeah they do need attention regularly with lapping. Other than that a beautiful finish on the 8k & I still pull out the 4k now & then on problem razors where the softness can be an advantage.
I prefer Shapton GS for the volume I hone ~ less lapping
Ice Bear make a 10 k I believe but never tried it.
Thank you all for the info was thinking of buying them but saw in classifieds hidden holli4 had a set and got them instead.:P