Thread: What is the best honing stone available?

In all honesty, I'm against unnecessary waste (one of the reasons for focusing on restoring antiques). I bought the soap to see what it was like to use one. Now I just want to run out of it and I'm against actually throwing it out, so I found it a purpose lol.

Originally Posted by randydance062449

I have been away for a week and wanted to post this to you before.

I was reading a collection of woodworking articles on maintaining woodworking tools. One of the articles dealt with sharpening on Arkansas stones. The gentleman used kerosene as a lubricant as it is a very fine oil. To keep his stones in shape he would roughen them up once in while. It seems that the arkansas abrasive pasticles can become rounded and thus fail to remove metal as fast as they once would. The solution is to lap them on either a coarser stone or sandpaper. This
restores the stones cutting ability.


Food for thought,

Thanks Randy, great advice! I did as recommended and got a sharp edge as never before in very short time!

Another thing: have you ever heard of Thuringian waterstones? According to the German forum Nassrasur.com they are great stones for honing razors, as good as coticules. Apparently they started to re-extract from the quarry after 50 years of neglect. Similar to the coticule they are recommended to be rubbed before use to loosen a small amount of honing particles. Brand new stones are about half as expensive as coticules.

Where can you buy those? Actually don't tell me, I'm a hone-junky

They are aavailable. One of our members is looking into the price of them. They come in different grits. When I find out the cost I will order some and try them out. Then I will let you guys know what I think of them.

Dear Ilija and Randy,

Here's the link of the German company selling the Thuringian stones: http://www.mst-mueller.de/index2.html. On the left upper corner of the web page you click "neue Produkte" to see the stones and some sample sizes and prices.
I understand from the forum dicussion of NassRasur.com there are more (larger) sizes available.
I am actually considering ordering one.

Randy, can you get me in touch with the member who is looking into these stones? I'll send this Herr Mueller an e-mail asking him to give me more details of the stones and let you know when I know more.

Living within the EU it is easy for me to order them without having to pay additional taxes and excises.

Kees,

I've been away on vacation a while and couldn't reply when you first posted.
I am both interested and encouraged by your posts. I've slaved away over my Arkansas surgical black for over 20 years using oil and getting an edge that was just adequate enough to shave. I only relatively recently found this site and have learned a great deal. I'm currently wearing my arms out lapping my surgical black, but I intend to try your method alternating with the arkansas medium and surgical black with water (my wife couldn't take the smell of Kerosene in the house). I do, however, intend to purchase a Norton 4k/8k tonight from the local woodworking store since I'm tired of spending so much time honing. But I'm very intrigued to find out that there may have been an acceptable honing technique right under my nose all those years. If only I had known....

This is the page that Aschaab and I were looking at
http://www.mst-mueller.de/index2.html

Fein Abziehsteine selection from the main page

Originally Posted by Kees

Dear Ilija and Randy,

Here's the link of the German company selling the Thuringian stones: http://www.mst-mueller.de/index2.html. On the left upper corner of the web page you click "neue Produkte" to see the stones and some sample sizes and prices.
I understand from the forum dicussion of NassRasur.com there are more (larger) sizes available.
I am actually considering ordering one.

Randy, can you get me in touch with the member who is looking into these stones? I'll send this Herr Mueller an e-mail asking him to give me more details of the stones and let you know when I know more.

Living within the EU it is easy for me to order them without having to pay additional taxes and excises.

The grits are kind of confusing. It appears that the ANSI grits are finer than Japanese grits when you compare the figures. They also don't offer the figures for their finest stones. Can anyone rate these in plain English and get some pricing/shipping info?

The finest stones are rated in microns and I am waiting for info on pricing.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

The grits are kind of confusing. It appears that the ANSI grits are finer than Japanese grits when you compare the figures. They also don't offer the figures for their finest stones. Can anyone rate these in plain English and get some pricing/shipping info?

Originally Posted by randydance062449

This is the page that Aschaab and I were looking at
http://www.mst-mueller.de/index2.html

Fein Abziehsteine selection from the main page

Randy,

I think the page you are referring to is about synthetic stones. Under "neue Produkte" you find some info on natural stones.