The lapping is the hard part, lol! I learned that very quickly with the Gila, as well as the quartzite. Loose abrasives make a huge difference, but even on glass they don't leave things perfectly flat. Takes a lot of effort to get real square surfaces on very hard rocks.
Making a hone
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The lapping is the hard part, lol! I learned that very quickly with the Gila, as well as the quartzite. Loose abrasives make a huge difference, but even on glass they don't leave things perfectly flat. Takes a lot of effort to get real square surfaces on very hard rocks.
I attacked my Gila for another 35 min last night. I almost have all of the potential edge killers deleted. I should have ordered sic coarser than 220 because it just beats the grits to a pulp.
I have grits from 500 through 80, and I wish I had some 60. I don't have any good ways to saw stones so I often start with pretty bad surfaces.
I don't think you'd see much difference between 60x and 80x SIC.
For me - the 80x doesn't cut so well on glassier stone, usually - the 120-ish stuff has better bite.
For me - the 80x doesn't cut so well on glassier stone, usually - the 120-ish stuff has better bite.
That's interesting. I don't think I would have ever thought to try that. I'll probably wait until I run out of one of the grits I have before ordering any 60 anyway. It's cheap enough to be worth adding to an order just to see if you are correct about it not being any faster than the 80. Thanks for that post.
It's funny stuff - I find the same to be true for w/d; on certain stones, lower grits aren't as effective as one would think.
I have a theory - that the particles in the coarser grits are so large that the stone only rides on the points/peaks of each particle and it's not 'digging in' as much as a finer grit can - because there are more peaks.... smaller particles, denser abrasive count, etc.
I have a theory - that the particles in the coarser grits are so large that the stone only rides on the points/peaks of each particle and it's not 'digging in' as much as a finer grit can - because there are more peaks.... smaller particles, denser abrasive count, etc.
I've noticed the same. A trans ark seems to just roll around on top of low grit W/D. I've never really thought about it but what Keith says above makes sense.
This is accurate. On hardened steel (I mostly work with AISI W2 tool steel at around 65HRC), a 36 grit Norton Blaze belt will barely touch it after just a few moments, but an 80-120 grit will cut, and continue to cut until the actual belt dulls. On unhardened steel however, the 36 grit Blaze is far, far more efficient. Obviously the returns diminish the higher you go in grit. With belts and hardened steel the enemy becomes heat...but with stones and loose abrasives, there is no real down side.
On the Apache Gila however, and other hard quartz laden stones, I almost wonder if starting at semi low grits would make it more efficient overall due to the relatively quick breakdown of the abrasive into smaller particles. you'd have some heavy scratches from the low grit, and then a progressively finer and finer abrasive until the cutting action stopped completely. This might take a fair amount of pressure though. I've never tried it, so this is just a complete guess...but it's something I thought I'd share/ask about to see if any of you guys had tried it.
By the way, if you watched my video of working with the Gila on the belt grinder, you can see the same results as with the hardened steel. I should have tried a higher grit belt...but didn't think of it. Those belts were still sharp even after minutes of running uselessly against the Gila.
^
Do you make swords?
I have no love for the 80x SIC with the very hard stones I've tried it on. Pressure didn't help enough to matter for me, but I didn't really lean on it all that much - I'm doing it in a sink I'd like to have around for a while. Easier for me to just use the finer stuff.
Do you make swords?
I have no love for the 80x SIC with the very hard stones I've tried it on. Pressure didn't help enough to matter for me, but I didn't really lean on it all that much - I'm doing it in a sink I'd like to have around for a while. Easier for me to just use the finer stuff.
Experimenting yesterday, I found that the 120 grit did indeed cut faster than the 80 grit on the schist that I'm now lapping. Thank's
I tried using some very coarse AlO paper on my large Black Trans. Ark. early on. I want to say it was like 40 grit or something ridiculous. I figured it would cut like a mad mother. It did! For about the first 10 seconds... Then it started to visibly smooth the peaks of the AlO, and fill in the valleys with debris. I couldn't use water on it, or it just ruined the paper, and no matter what I tried, it would just deaden the peaks almost immediately. The result was interesting, because the smoothed peaks would actually start to polish the stone to a high shine, but it would take forever to work through the remaining scratches (kind of like the stone and the grit were polishing each other). I would have tried to use a bunch of the AlO paper to do all the work (it was dirt cheap at Harbor Freight), but every so often that high shine would get a deep scratch in it due to another peak breaking off/lose grit/something like that.
Cool, yw.
Here is a new stone that I'm very excited about. The small test piece in the fore ground is from the same deposit. Though the deposit is 700' thick and was layed down over a period of about 10 million years. It would be reasonable to expect some differences in the two samples.
I like the looks of the striped one. I just ordered a largeish piece oh Owyhee Jasper to play with. My fortification agate is really cool...but its too small and too full 9f inclusions to be a valid hone.
"Ordered"??? No Fair. j/k
Fun stuff!
I purchased a rather large slab of Picture Agate, but have yet to get it lapped. I have had good results with other agates, so I felt justified in getting a pretty piece, since I could look for a lifetime and not find one that compares. Plus, it could very reasonably be displayed in the bathroom. Truly picture quality.
That striped one could be cut into some cool combo hones
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