Thread: Jnat Finishing Routines--what are yours?

Have heard talk of late of actually Honing on slurry till it drys out and continued honing on basically powdered Slurry,what up with that?

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Have heard talk of late of actually Honing on slurry till it drys out and continued honing on basically powdered Slurry,what up with that?

That method works well on some stones (typically slower ones) & not too well on many others. A lot of stones will either slurry-dull or swiss cheese the edge if you use that much slurry for too long. I tried it on my Oozuku once--the edge was dull & a bit harsh.

Many stones work best on light slurry (you can dilute to water or not--it depends on a lot of factors) or even plain water.

Best thing to do is ask the seller what works best on it--they're all different.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

Have heard talk of late of actually Honing on slurry till it drys out and continued honing on basically powdered Slurry,what up with that?

Originally Posted by PA23-250

That method works well on some stones (typically slower ones) & not too well on many others. A lot of stones will either slurry-dull or swiss cheese the edge if you use that much slurry for too long. I tried it on my Oozuku once--the edge was dull & a bit harsh.

Many stones work best on light slurry (you can dilute to water or not--it depends on a lot of factors) or even plain water.

Best thing to do is ask the seller what works best on it--they're all different.

Hence the problem with Natural stones hehehe or the Romance of a natural stone depends on how you look at it...

The first thing you have to do is figure out if the slurry coming off of your stone is Friable (breaks down) if it doesn't. then you need to go to water, if it does then you need to see whether it works better diluting to water, or going to dry

My Nakyama is a very hard stone, yet the slurry breaks down, and as it goes too dry it feels as though you are honing on fine talc, the problem is that at the presssures we use on western razors it takes eons to break down the slurry... You are better off leaving the old slurry on the stone, When honing Kamisori this is not a problem as the pressure and how you work the razor aids in the slurry breaking down...

Ain't honing at this level fun ???

That it is!

AFAIK all Kyoto (finishing) hones have friable grit particles that break down in thickness rather than size (Max, Alx & So say they do & I believe them), but the question I think is how much & how quickly it breaks down.

Let's say you have a hone that takes longer to do this & you make a lot of slurry. You could dull or eat the edge before it has a chance to do its thing. Then, the cutting power could be slowed to the point where you can't recapture the sharpness you lost early on & you could think your stone is no good when it's fine & you just made too much slurry. Especially w/ what Glen said about the pressure & sharpening area of western razors.