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Making a hone

Good grief... :blink:

Oh don't be a poopy pants. He may find "The One Stone".

You know.

One stone to rule them all.
One stone to find them.
One stone to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

Oh... wait.... that's The Lord of the Rings.

So sorry. :001_tt2:

Really tho, the slate from India may not work too well. They may have other stuffs tho.
 
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i am watching "the return of the king" right now with my son while my wife cooks...

i lol'd really hard at that....
 
Wyatt actually had some decent luck with his slate tile he bought, said it was about between 4-8k. Looking for any stone is a good idea, even if it is just some tile. This is a group learning experience by the way. :)

Love the Lord of the Rings reference Jeff. That's the spirit I like for holidays. lol
 
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Wyatt actually had some decent luck with his slate tile he bought, said it was about between 4-8k. Looking for any stone is a good idea, even if it is just some tile. This is a group learning experience by the way. :)

Love the Lord of the Rings reference Jeff. That's the spirit I like for holidays. lol

That's a range of stone I could use too! I have a friend with every tool known to man....I'll see if i can find one and have him slice and dice it for me....AND lap it if I can sweet talk him!

I'm out in West Texas, so I don't know if there's any natural rock around here that would work well. If any of you know...clue me in.
 
I have a lump of petrified wood. Apprx 8 inch x 8 inch tapering from about 1 1/2 inch to almost 4 inch. Generally red in color, with streaks of black.

I will ask my neighbor about his tile saw when I get back home, but I don't have a means of effectively lapping this material.

The quarry is the Mill Stream Run Reservation in the Cleveland Metroparks. You can look at the hiking maps online.
http://www.clemetparks.com/recreation/hiking/index.asp

Phil
 
I have a lump of petrified wood. Apprx 8 inch x 8 inch tapering from about 1 1/2 inch to almost 4 inch. Generally red in color, with streaks of black.

I will ask my neighbor about his tile saw when I get back home, but I don't have a means of effectively lapping this material.

The quarry is the Mill Stream Run Reservation in the Cleveland Metroparks. You can look at the hiking maps online.
http://www.clemetparks.com/recreation/hiking/index.asp

Phil

Now that sounds really interesting! You may need a diamond plate to make much progress. Harbor Freight sells one cheap. Not high quality, but it works. I can hardly wait to see how it works out.

@Paco: Since Wid didn't show for the game, go back and pick a stone if you like. I've probably gone about this in a slipshod way not gathering together full sequences of grit levels and sending out complete packages, but that would take a lot longer.
 
I have a piece of petrified wood somewhere, I'm a pack rat so it might take me a while to find it. I actually found it as a door stop in an old trailer home we had gotten from someone.
 
First the good news.

Armed with the knowledge that the Finns have been using a type of phyllite for centuries for sharpening tasks, I took a little hike yesterday to see what I could scare up in an area with documented deposits. The results are unimpressive to look at:

$001.jpg$006.jpg

The stones are just metamorphosed layered rock of differeing origin, some sedimentary, some volcanic, and the like. I've lapped one (2nd pic) and it seems to be a mid range thing, but a fair lead in to the jaspers or so it seems on the face of it. Given a little time I'll have samples of it for you guys to evaluate. Seems like it would do great for finishing a knife. Decent cutting action.

The bad news.

We are gathered here to pay our respects to "Skippy" the wonder hone. Skippy had the pedigree to be one of the finest finishing hones ever made, polyurethane matrix with a precision high quality abrasive material. Alas, Skippy succumbed to the terrible disease of EPA regulations regarding V(olatile) O(rganic) C(ompounds). The modern "new and environmentally safer, water based" polyurethane of Skippys body has shrunken and deformed so badly that we dare not display it for fear of making small children cry and brave hearted men shrink away in horror. (Ok, so someone tossed it in the garbage.)

Long story short, in days past polyurethane could be poured in a mold and expected to hold that shape. That idea don't work too good now. The result was laughable.
 
hmm... have you tried that yet on a razor??

Yes, on 2 in fact. I judge it to be midrangeish. Doubt you could shave off it, but it cuts ok and seems to prep for later stages in a reasonable way. Someone else will need to judge grit level. I don't have much to compare it to. I don't expect that anyone would remotely consider it a finishing stone of any kind, just a step in a progression. Thing is, the different stones are of differing composition. I can't think of any simple way to judge them without just trying them. They do seem to be pretty homogeneous and consistent in crystal size.
 
If you guys are looking to make artificial whetstones, it might be advantageous to read up on what the Japanese do. There are still families that make waterstones by hand, some of them doing this after a long family history of making pottery.

In regards to a question earlier about "coarser" or "finer" coticules, of the stones quarried in the Ardennes, I have used coticules cut from about a dozen different layers, and none have seemed coarser or finer than any other. On the other hand, some have been more difficult than others to get a very good finish from, but they all got there. The only exceptions I know of are ones with harmful inclusions, such as a large 10" long one that I have that has coarse crystalline inclusions--too coarse for actual use. That last stone would have been exchanged by Ardennes-Coticule if they had mined it.

I know that Japanese finishing stones were highly guarded by Japanese royalty for centuries, but coticules, Arkansas stones and a few others were commercially available in many parts of the world thanks to companies like the predecessors of Norton-Pike. In fact, I have a coticule that is in a Pike box, and Pike had operations in Belgium, the US and other countries. The company S.R. Droescher, which was based out of New York, was an importer. The familiar Wade & Butcher was a joint US-English company, which explains why so many of those razors are found in this country. Razors were not manufactured in very many places in the US until late in the 19th century. While whetstones were quarried throughout the US, it's not surprising that many were imported and distributed throughout the country as well.
 
Well, if we are talking about porcelain suspending a material that does not play in vitrification, I use an IR reflector in my gas forge that I whip up, it is 70% Zircopax, 30% kaolin. It seems durable, defiantly increases forge temperatures, and with that high zircon load is "grogged" and tends to not shrink crack (but does crack when I accidentally poke it with a piece of iron.)

Never thought of trying it as a hone, but I don't have a kiln...

Phil
 
I have found that the best artificial ceramic whetstones are where the abrasive and adhesive are sintered just below there melting point fusing them together but not affecting the structure of the abrasive. (usually aluminum oxide) Which I think means you would have to use an adhesive that has a close melting point to the aluminum oxide. Some even say that they only use aluminum oxide and sinter it at high temperatures with a large amount of pressure (tons). From what i have gathered from others who have had success, you don't necessarily need the pressure if you have the right temperature and adhesive to abrasive ratio.
 
Hmmm... preliminary tests are promising.

It looks like a highly metamorphosed slate or siltstone, can make slurry, has crystals on the microscopic level. Naturally, I went back to learn more. It's from a narrow strata between coarser seams.

$001.jpg$004.jpg

A second larger piece is in the works. Much softer than silica. I went to youtube and watched some vids, played "monkey see monkey do" and had some encouraging results. Stones that use slurry are beyond my experience tho. Someone else will have to do the definitive testing.

On the artificial stone prospects: How about terracotta as a carrier?
 
Those look very promising Jeff, First one looks like a good bevel setter. The second two look really nice, those look just like some Arkansas stones I've seen. You're doing a great job Jeff. In the future I'm betting you will be one fine Whet Smith. :)
 
Those look very promising Jeff, First one looks like a good bevel setter. The second two look really nice, those look just like some Arkansas stones I've seen. You're doing a great job Jeff. In the future I'm betting you will be one fine Whet Smith. :)

Uhhhh..... I'm not so sure about that. The slurry off that stone just ate 2 diamond plates before I knew what was happening! I was lapping along & no slurry was coming up, so I checked with my fingers: "Oh, too smooth, must be the 600, need lower grit!". Grabbed another and went to it. Hey, not much slurry! Checked the grit and it is a 300, but smooth as a babys butt.... same with the 200. DOH! That didn't happen with the silica!

Oh... and they are all from the same strata. I agree that it should be a good bevel setter.... but it seems to do just a little more. The larger materials in the rock seem to be quite soft, the crystalline materials apparently not so much.

Now.... I just wonder what will work best for lapping it?
 
its hard enough to eat diamonds...... this sounds interesting.... did you try the old fashioned wet/dry sandpaper yet?? that that is cool as hell BTW......
 
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