David Weaver
..this whole recent rash of unicorn and stones and whatever will blow over and I'll go back to wondering why I have all of this stuff.

but in the meantime, it makes me a little more and more aggravated that some of the gurus go out and tell beginners or knife people that they should spend $600-$800 or so on a set of stones and diamond this or that and whatever else in order to get a certain finish. For example, a shapton 30k is $360 for 5mm of abrasive. Why? It's some kind of white alundum in a binder.

Linde A is finer than the abrasive in the shapton 30k, and there's probably enough in a pound of it ($60 at retail, and far less in quantity) to make several stones of that type, maybe even 5.

What I'm going to fiddle with is I have most of a pound of linde A. I also know from french polishing that shellac works really well (slick) with mineral oil on the surface, the shellac remains relatively unaffected and sticks to itself.

I'm going to make a small tray and dry shellac into a cake with linde A in it and make a super fine oilstone and see what it feels like. I've got some amber shellac that isn't going to last before I use all of it and this is an ideal way to use it.

I'm going to take a guess here that it will make an edge that looks like a white sheet under the microscope and work well with oil (no rusty tools) and be reasonably tough.