Thread: paste hone equvilent

I've noticed this on pasted clean strops and on repastes. Similarly fresh-pasted wood and repasted wood behaves the same. It's possible that there are flavors of leather (HA red latigo is a possibility) that would hold less paste and behave similarly to the bare wood, but then you may as well have gone with the bare wood and saved yourself the cost of the leather.

what micron of the CRo do you use

I'm using the handamerican stuff. They claim it's 60k grit, but accepted wisdom around here is that it's 0.5 micron. This may be due to the different grit standards.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I'm using the handamerican stuff. They claim it's 60k grit, but accepted wisdom around here is that it's 0.5 micron. This may be due to the different grit standards.

The grit and micron designations are equivalents.

Originally Posted by Joe Lerch

The grit and micron designations are equivalents.

I always thought .5 micron was 30k grit (JIS)? Or is that only true for diamond abrasive?

Originally Posted by mparker762

I always thought .5 micron was 30k grit (JIS)? Or is that only true for diamond abrasive?

We have Norton's equivalents posted, where it's 50K. 6oK is close enough.

Where did the 30K come from?

Originally Posted by Joe Lerch

Where did the 30K come from?

Shapton site. According to them, 15k is at just under a micron and 30k is 0.49 micron.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

Shapton site. According to them, 15k is at just under a micron and 30k is 0.49 micron.

Yup. There seems to be a big difference between shapton and norton's grit sizes. The shapton 8k feels noticeably finer than the norton 8k, for example, but the norton 8k is about 3 micron while the shapton 8k is only 1.8 micron.

Originally Posted by FiReSTaRT

Shapton site. According to them, 15k is at just under a micron and 30k is 0.49 micron.

There's a lot of inconsistency here because there are two different ways to specify grit. azjoe posted a document about this.

In any case, we have Norton's table and we have one on the diamond pastes, and at least those two agree, placing .5 micron at 50K and .25 at 100K.

Originally Posted by mparker762

Yup. There seems to be a big difference between shapton and norton's grit sizes. The shapton 8k feels noticeably finer than the norton 8k, for example, but the norton 8k is about 3 micron while the shapton 8k is only 1.8 micron.

If you look at the Norton table you can see that their water stones tend to be equivalent to sandpaper with half the grit size. For example, a 4K is equivalent to 2K sandpaper. Maybe Shapton changed that to make their grit the same as sandpaper.

I believe sandpaper is done with a screen, so 2K sandpaper has no particle larger than 2K. Norton uses an average, so the particles in a 4K stone may be as large as 2K particles, as long as the averagew is 4K.