That is very true. Small deviations in flatness won't hurt anything as long as they are consistent stone to stone through your progression.
Nothing comes easy with arks.
- Thread starter kcb5150
- Start date
My thoughts too
For me - it depends on the frequency of the deviation - a swooping deviation from edge to edge seems to have little effect. I've never used a gauge to measure this, I judge by the amount of light under the straightedge that I can see. But - a rolling surface with several peaks/valley on a hard stone does seem to affect performance in a negative way. That's for me, not sure about it affecting anyone else or anyone else noticing the same. All I know for sure is that I shoot for dead flat and I have a bit of 'tolerance' that diminishes with stone hardness.
Yep, I find the same. A smooth curve is fine but undulations or twists are no good. I like as flat as I can get also - often this is less than .001" - no light visible between two lapped stones face to face.
- Thread starter
- #105
Finally finished a blade on this. Brought a small English cutlery co hand forged wedge to b/g thuri level and then I did 225laps on this, took a break and then did 225 more. Stropped on an 827. The HHT is actually scary... Scary good but also legit scary. Bevel is gleaming.
- Thread starter
- #106
Had a test shave. It's insane how keen that little blade is. It's almost too much, it completely overcame the blade's utter lack of mass with keenness and that is scary when tiny blades that lack mass are harder to control imo. Hht is still nuts after stropping post shave. Wild thing is, the surface is maybe only 80% as far as conditioning goes.
That's a sweet stone!
- Thread starter
- #109
That looks NOS almost
It takes a lot to make a hard arkansas not look NOS, to be fair... unless you're using it for awls/hooks/etc, the way that 4x1" I bought was.
And thanks.
And thanks.
I was looking at the prices on the vintage trans and black arks tonight. Can't believe what they're selling for these days.
They've been steadily climbing the past year or two. Once razor guys started trying them out, really. I was really surprised I won this one. Threw a value bid at it in the last five minutes, and got it for just under my max.
- Thread starter
- #113
I mean more the box and label look really good
- Thread starter
- #114
The yellow ones and surgical black seem to get the most aggressive bids with white trans following up. An 8" pale yellow one got really good cash awhile back. As long as you don't go crazy, arks are pretty fluid as far as getting your money back if you need to because you have a very broad spectrum of ppl who would want/need one.
- Thread starter
- #115
The war eagle ones always look quite nice when they pop up and don't seem to go for what a pike or norton will. IDK why that is.
I noticed that too, my guess is era? Pike/Nortons can be 100ish years old... not sure when War Eagles date to, but they look 50's-60's to me.
- Thread starter
- #117
I just narrowly lost a war eagle surgical black a couple of months ago. It looked like a really excellent piece. More of a smoky black vs jet black. I put what I thought was a mild bid for a large piece of SB and came in second by not much. Surprised me. Watch the subsequent ones and more of the same. IDK. I am not curious enough to force the issue and see if it is justified.
- Thread starter
- #118
I saw your auction, you got a really good price on that black. The premium you pay for arks is you know what you are getting for the most part. Charnley forests are a slot machine, and Turkish oilstone while being quite nice, is fragile and a mixed bag.
- Thread starter
- #119
Probably a lot of the appeal with thuris as well besides raw performance, is you get the performance across the board.
- Thread starter
- #120
I've been using this more and more lately. It seems to be able to delete the scratch pattern from anything that came before it. Edges are still getting more refined as the surface breaks in. Edges shave effortlessly even atg... Very very forgiving edges as well... If it didn't take hundreds of laps I'd be tempted to use it most of the time.... It's painfully slow...
