lily white washita stones

Re: lily white washita stones *LINK*

David Miller from Iowa

>I remeber the thread, but am too lazy to look for it. Here's what I bookmarked from that conversation.


Arkansas stones

Re: lily white washita stones *LINK*

Jonathan Peck - N.Y.

>I must have missed the thread, but some folks might be interested in this link


The Joys of Arkansas Stones

Hall's Pro Edge *LINK*

Bob Smalser, Seabeck, WA

>I've used nothing but novaculite stones for 40 years, my father and uncles used them and India oil stones for 40 years before me, and I use them almost every day.

Go to Hall's Pro Edge to buy your stones, and you won't be perpetuating myths about only the antique Nortons and Pikes being any good. I've one hand-me-down Norton from the old yard and 5 random (not as good as Hall's) novaculite stones/slips and every single one of them works just dandy....including the two slips I bought on Ebay last month.

One feature that is confusing, and helps these myths is the fact that there is no way to tell the grit of the stone by the color....I've dark stones that are much harder and finer than my white stone.

If I merely assumed those dark stones were soft or coarse stones and used them to begin with on really dull edges, then I'd be frustrated too.

There is no such thing as a magic pill. It ain't what you sharpen with, but how you sharpen....but if you want to go the traditional route using novaculite stones, I can get you started.


No myths here.

Re: Hall's Pro Edge

Don Clark

>Bob,

Do you find that the Novaculite stones work OK on relatively hard and tough steel, such as the A2 blades being put out by Lie-Neilson and Ron Hock or high speed steel blades, or knife blades made from D-2 or the new ultra-tough stainless steels?

I ask because I have always heard that the Novaculite stones are not hard enough to efficiently cut many of the hard and tough steels.

If it weren't for those reservations, I would probably be using them.

Don Clark

Re: Hall's Pro Edge

Joe Rogers, Northern Virginia

>I don't believe hadness per se is the issue. Novaculite is very hard. It is the matrix that exposes the abrasive edges on the crystals that makes the stones cut slower by shrouding the working edges. My set of Arkansas stones is almost complete. I will add a Washita to start the process off and the incremental stones will speed up the process. I had too big a gap between the shaping grit and the finishing grits. Thanks again Joel for the Norton translucent hard Arkansas.JR

Re: Hall's Pro Edge

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>My old translucent hard Arkansas did a fine job of completing the flattening and polishing of the back (I started with a coarse DMT) and putting a very useful edge on my new A2 LV bullnose shoulder plane blade. Everyone in the shop has been using the plane (the stone is "hands off"), and they all love it as much as I do.

Re: Hall's Pro Edge

joel

>I routinely sharpen A@ on arkansas stones. I almost always hollow grind to save time but it's not critical.

New Norton stones

joel

>Bob,

As a large seller of NEW Norton-Pike stones I'd be the last person to tell you that only antique stones are any good. There are several makers of stones out there now and Norton is still one of if not the best.

As for my original post I am still trying to find someone who uses lilywhites (not arkansas stones)

Honing High Alloy Blades

Steve Elliott

>I can't shed any light on whether novaculite stones will effectively cut high alloy steels, but I discovered this week that waterstones won't.

I've been testing plane blades made from carbon steel, A2, and highly carbided alloys (CPM 3V and Holtey's S53) using a Norton 8000x waterstone for final honing. The carbon steel and A2 took very sharp edges but the 3V and S53 didn't. The S53 in particular performed much worse than when it had been honed using 1 micron diamond paste.

Here's a microscope picture of the S53 edge produced by the Norton stone:

The light-colored, speckled surface is a microbevel produced by the Norton stone. From its appearance under the microscope, this edge seems to be very sharp. In other tests of sharpness (shaving hair, etc.) it didn't do very well.

When the edge was rehoned using 1 micron diamond paste, it looked like this:

There are a few scratches visible on the bevel and a few white spots on the edge that may be remnants of a wire edge, but this edge tested significantly sharper than the one from the Norton stone. It also showed much better edge retention.

When I honed this blade on the Norton stone, it barely cut at all for a while. Then as a slurry developed, it began to cut better. Pretty soon it was cutting surprisingly fast. I now believe what happened was that as the stone began to remove metal, the carbide particles released from the steel matrix mixed into the slurry and became its primary cutting agent. Because these carbide particles are much larger than the grit in the Norton stone, and harder as well, the surface produced on the blade was less refined than the surface usually produced by the Norton on other steels. The carbide particles are about 3 microns in diameter, and are held like cobblestones in the steel matrix. If the waterstone was too soft to cut the carbides effectively, they may have given the cutting edge a bumpy, rounded surface. Diamond is hard enough to actually abrade the carbide particles, producing a sharper edge.

For both speed and quality of edge produced, diamond is better that a waterstone on heavily carbided high alloy steels. The waterstone did work well on the A2, which doesn't contain many carbides.