Thread: difference between hard and soft stones

Today I ordered my first stone. I have purchased a shapton glass stone 16000 grit, holder, and dglp from srd. I am very excited to learn how to touch up my dovo. the other grits will soon be mine also!

That's a good stone.

You can certainly finish a razor on a hard black or translucent Arkansas, and that's about as hard as it gets. They're slow but many folks love an Ark edge. Thuringians are also fairly hard.

In the Japanese natural world, hardness generally goes with fineness, so you want a pretty hard stone. Almost none of the finishers are soft enough to self-slurry with razor pressure.

However, a small portion especially some vintage stones defy the hard/fine general relationship and are relatively soft and very fine. This is about 2% of them according to Takeshi-San at AFrames Tokyo. They are the ones I look for, but unfortunately they bring a high price if the seller understands what they have.

Cheers, Steve

Originally Posted by mainaman

It is the opposite, for knives you want softer stones for razor harder stones. Harder meaning not easy to release slurry on their own while honing on the stone.

Ditto. A harder stone has a much wider working range, and will allow you to improve results as skill improves. Very soft stones are somewhat one dimensional and do not allow a great final finish. there is a balance of stones that are hard but not glass hard that are nice to use if they can still be used without releasing grit, and some super hard stones that don't release grit at all that newbies will find difficult to crack (but even those make nice base stones for nagura work).

I can't think of any natural stone that releases grit under light pressure of a razor that really does a good job finishing.

Razors cut growth, firearms end it.