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- #21
BTW, I was surprised how quickly the 5 mic film smoothed that stone out. After rubbing together for about 10 seconds the film was covered with milky slurry.
Finally bought an Ark
- Thread starter David
- Start date
Never used films. I'm speaking from my experience off w/d sandpaper, where the surface seemed especially slick and molten off 2000x. When I stopped earlier, the surface seemed harder, more angular, and ultimately, I prefer this. In any case, the stone is subsequently being smoothed by the blades afterwards all the same. Yours is probably fine as it is, and you won't know what you want until you use it. Nice thing about a whole stone like that is that you can sand the backside differently, if you want to experiment with one side being smoother than the other. Some people rub their Arkansas stones together to get the surface they want.
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YOU MEAN I HAFTA GET TWO????
I was having a hard enuff time justifyin' one.....
can I just rub a les lat and an arkie together?????
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I have a small pocket Arkansas I use for the purpose. Ark rubs the lat in this case. I've also used it on a strop. Nice little stone.
to burnish the strop?
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- #26
Alum, what's the difference in a translucent and a hard ark? This one is labeled hard arkansas stone. Did they label stones as translucent back in the day?
Depends how far back you go. Stones were picked for translucence in the 19th century. Was used to guarantee hardness and lack of defects (cause you could see into the stone). I don't think I've seen a label declaring translucence before at least the 70's. "Hard" arkansas that weren't translucent are VERY rare before the mid 20th century. Then Someone, I think it was Norton, started marketing Hard Black arks, and based on the stones I've seen, around that time, some other mines started selling opaque stones as hards.
Hard Arkansas, as marketed today, is closer to a soft Arkansas. The hard you have is following the older nomenclature, as Ian mentions, or what we would now call translucent in this case. I think the grading change may have been done by the Arkansas state geological authorities at some point during the last 20-40 years, but maybe it was Norton and the others followed suit. In the old days, a soft could have been a Washita, and a hard would have been, well, a hard translucent. A hard black is typically harder than a translucent though, although to confuse things, there are softer blacks as well. For example, Hall's currently sells three black stones: the softest, a Dunsten black, is softer than a translucent; the other two, a translucent black and one that is similar to the black hard Dan's sells (I forget the specific name it goes by) are harder. Yet all three have been called "surgical black" by Hall's, which goes to show that such a term is an arbitrary marketing one, since the Dunsten black is not as hard or fine as the other two.
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Just been looking at this chart at Dan's...
http://www.danswhetstone.com/stone_grades_101.htm
It looks like US govt classifications have changed, so that what is now called Hard used to be called Soft, and an old one designated Hard would be True Hard, Translucent or Black Hard by Dan's current gradings.
(The one I have is a Dan's Black Hard - and it really is hard)
http://www.danswhetstone.com/stone_grades_101.htm
It looks like US govt classifications have changed, so that what is now called Hard used to be called Soft, and an old one designated Hard would be True Hard, Translucent or Black Hard by Dan's current gradings.
(The one I have is a Dan's Black Hard - and it really is hard)
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- #30
Thanks for the info. I don't have another ark to compare it to, but it's definitely hard. The back side had those glue marks/fissures and some splits. My origional plan was to lap it smooth but the coarse SIC powder on my shapton steel plate did nothing to it. Probably wouldn't have worked anyway as the fissures run up about 1/4 inch from the bottom.
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- #31
Alright. I'm officially sold on these Arkansas stones. I took a known edge that I've shaved with maybe 8 times. Did HHT before I started and it was a weak 1-violin. Oiled the trans up and stayed on it for about 5 minutes (no clue how many laps didnt count) doing only nice consistent x-strokes with as little pressure as possible. Wiped down the blade, louped the edge, nothing special there. Got a mean HHT 3-4 right off the stone. It wasn't a silent HHT, but as soon as the hair touched the blade it just popped in half. I like this stone. The norton honing oil felt a little thick on it..like it was pushing back at me. Maybe that's a good thing but I'd prefer it to be a little thinner.
If it's actually oil (not some weird synthetic recipe), you can thin it by adding kerosene. This will make it smell like Kerosene, though.
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- #33
It's highly refined mineral oil
Yep, if you wanna thin it and don't mind the smell, add some kerosene.
Anyone using just water on their Arks instead of oil?
Several people here have mentioned that they do so. I tried it myself. The results were very, very, very, very poor. It may work well if you wash obsessively. It did not for me.
I've been using soapy water with my Hard Black Ark, and I'm getting very pleasing results.
Interesting, all the different results, water vs soapy water vs oil. I have a black translucent I am still working with steel. My intention was to use it as a finishing hone. I was thinking of trying to use water because once oil is used it is harder to come back to water. What to do? I guess I could try water >soapy water>oil (last resort).
I once knew someone that washed obsessively - they had terrible eczema on their hands.
But what would you need to wash obsessively? The stone? If it had never been used with oil would that still be necessary?
Yes. Because of how Novaculite cuts it's generally considered pretty ineffective used with water unless you compulsively wash the swarf out of it, including scrubbing it between uses because water isn't viscous enough to keep swarf out of the stones pores.
