Hi Zeke,

I'm one of the few guys around here that uses arkansas stones extensively. I've used both the hard and translucent arkansas, but never the soft. However, if the soft arkansas is all you've got, then it can probably be made to work, but it won't work as well as the higher grades of stone. You'll have to keep a very light touch, and you might want to invest in a tube of boron carbide from handamerican.com, and a piece of thin cardboard from your local grocery store or hobby store or arts supply store for putting the finishing touch on the edge.

As for using the arkansas stone, you'll need to make sure the stone is lapped very flat. Unlike with the waterstones, there's no slurry to help buffer the edge as it scrapes along the hone, so every little imperfection in the stone's surface tends to negatively affect the edge. On the plus side, you can clearly feel the edge develop on the stone.

To lap the stone, get a sheet of 600 grit wet/dry sandpaper, get it wet and place the paper side down on your countertop. Then rub the arkansas stone back and forth in an X motion until it's flat. This can take awhile, arkansas stones are surprisingly tough.

I tried using oil on the arkansas stones, but got consistently poor results with it. The purpose of the oil is to keep the blade lubricated and prevent the swarf from clogging up the pores in the stone. There's some controversy among the knife and chisel communities as to whether water or oil works better at this. For razors, water seems to work much better than oil, and lather seems to work better yet, providing excellent lubrication and keeping the stone very clean. Unlike with the waterstones, the arkansas stone isn't soaked at all, just spritz on some water, smear on a dab of lather, and go to work.

You can use a little bit of pressure, but the arkansas stone isn't a very fast cutter. However, you can swipe the blade pretty fast, much faster than you can with a waterstone, so the laps go pretty fast.

I don't think a soft arkansas will get the blade sharp enough for a comfortable shave, so you'll want to pick up a tube of boron carbide from handamerican.com, and smear a dab of this on some thin cardboard (posterboard) which you can probably get from the grocery store, or just take the backboard from a notepad. Strop the blade on this for 10-15 laps after you've gotten the blade as sharp as you can get it on the soft arkansas, and that should do the trick.