New supply of Norton Washita stones available *LINK*

Re: New supply of Norton Washita stones available

Chuck Bjorgen

Merry Christmas to me.

Re: New supply of Norton Washita stones available

David Bassett

"... mined...."

More likely they uncovered some NOS somewhere. (Either a back shelf in some Norton warehouse or from a retailer gone bust.)

I'm hoping David Weaver takes a look and offers an opinion. Several comments about how these don't look like Washitas from the past.

looks...that was my thought..

David Weaver

but I've had soft arkansas/washita looking stones that felt like washitas and had some lines in them.

I am going to sound super stingy here, but I don't want to pay $30+shipping + tax just to check one of these out and declare whether or not it's pike mine washita stuff (dan calls it perryn rock or perrin or something like that) or if it's coarser softs just graded by weight.

I have noticed over the last ten years that I could buy a labeled no 1 washita 10 years ago for about $45 shipped on ebay. Nothing like that now (but I go for visual aspects of stones and not labels). Good clean full sized full thickness stones in England in a nice box are about $60 equivalent, but the shipping to here is prohibitive.

If there was a single stone that I would say anyone can learn to freehand on, it's the washita (in combination with a grinder). One angle slightly steeper than the grinder, tease the wire edge off after creating a secondary bevel and strop. In skilled hands, especially in combination with a buffer used on the bevel side, it's as fine as anything anyone would need. Dreamy to use compared to any synthetic that I've ever tried (the only really dreamy synthetic that I ever tried was a frictionite 825 - not endorsing going to find one, they're not that great for their price - they just have a really satisfying feel).

At any rate, I've ordered a gaggle of steel, a forge, a belt sander and a heavy wheel grinder and several hundred dollars of used files in the last couple of weeks, so I'm cooling it on the curiosity purchases. I haven't seen coloration like that on true washita, but I have seen faint brown lines - it could be that pike never needed to allow any such thing in no 1 and other labeled stones, and that the limited run is from the cuttings/scraps remaining in new hampshire.

Re: looks...that was my thought..

Jack Dover

I'm on a verge of clicking "checkout", however I don't have anything to compare to. I do own some soft Arkansas, but next coarse stone in my collection is Norton coarse crystolon and an extra coarse DMT plate. Soft Arkansas works perfectly for the Unicorn method, that's all what I care about at this point. I wonder whether I'm about to waste some money by assuming that maybe having a Washita would let me avoid buying waterstones for Japanese tools I own. God it's hard once started, but... must... resist...

Re: looks...that was my thought..

David Weaver

fine india and washita or soft arkansas is excellent for japanese tools. If they're full spec hardness, the soft ark will barely cut them and should leave a good surface - especially on the back side (flat surface spread out over the soft ark and super hard steel = almost no groove depth).

what wiley calls "tangent buffing" on the bevel side keeps the angle from getting chased too steep.

I don't use much for japanese tools other than chisels because the giant bevel on the planes makes them a pain in the ane to deal with quickly, but if I used them a lot, I'd either hollow grind the bevel or grind on crystolon, and then follow with fine india and soft ark. It's faster than a japanese or synthetic waterstone rotation (especially if you run into something that does minor damage to an edge), and the edge is just as good.

That was my quesion actually...

Jack Dover

... just couldn't put it together, I guess.

I don't think I own any Japanese blade that's harder than a regular well tempered Wesern blade. Most of my Harlequin set is was sharpened on diamond stones before I got some oil stones. But I had a steal on one of the auctions recently, two planes and one of them is an absolute beast. I can't get it sharp for the life of me. My Arkansas stones don't really cut that steel, rather burnish it, the blade gets chipped on diamond plates. Had some limited success with an India stone refreshing a surface often. There could be a few other tools like this in my resore list.

I have purchased a coarse Crystolon recently, pretty sure it will cut that steel, since it's the same abrasive that's used in coarse Japanese stones, right? But I was thinking I don't have anything in between my coarsest and my finest stones (that can cut this steel that is), there weren't any reasonable Washita offerings for quite a bit and this 40+$ stone seems like a good deal, or at least better than I'll have on ebay these days. Haven't bought it yet because of doubts it's a real Washita and that even a real Washita might not be what I really need.

I guess what I'm looking for is the Unicorn for Japanese tools.

Re: That was my quesion actually...

Wiley Horne

Hi Jack,

For something in-between, Shapton 1000 is really aggressive. Good stone to have on hand if you don’t already.

Wiley

Re: That was my quesion actually...

David Weaver

here's my thought on your hard plane iron -I've gotten tool lots from japan (which could be all kinds of crapola, including a gaggle of plane irons).

I will with regularity get blades (old, but well made) that are hardly used and are hard like your plane iron. Almost nothing will touch them other than silicon carbide (diamonds will, too), which seems OK ("well, it's really hard, but I"ll get it close with the silicon carbide and then just finish the last little bit with finer stones"), but what happens is that the blade either crumbles in middle and finish honing or in use.

It's just overhard, and there's no way around it. There is a chance that in the most ideal of woods, these overhard blades may have been OK, but if they see anything else, they're not up to it. The fact that the edge crumbles (it looks good to the eye, but my microscope would tell its secrets really quickly) makes it a conundrum because the only thing that cuts it also makes it fail. What are you to do with it, hone it on a natural stone for 50 minutes? No. I get lots of chisels, too, and what I do with all of these now is temper them at 325F, or slightly above. This is the lower range of hitachi's tempering temperatures and crosses to 65/66 hardness.

My advice if the blade will not get sharp is if you have a way to accurately temper it at 325F, do so. It will be nearly as hard, but that's right around the magic point where the steel gets just a little bit of toughness.

For plane irons, in reality, there's no virtue to a 66 hardness blade - they cannot resist small chipping at the outset and they won't outlast a blade that's slightly softer, and the fact that they take damage that blade a click softer won't negates all of the rest.

It has been my experience, too, that some of the most highly regarded makers are hard like this. I think it's on purpose, and I think it always was, but based on very well prepared irons that were set aside overhard, I think not everyone was confident enough to temper the irons back. You should not ever have an issue with running into any japanese tool that won't be very hard still after 325F - if such a thing occurs, then an error in hardening was made in the first place (too little heat or too slow of a quench).

It's common in chisels where it's faster and easier for me to test that a fat unicorn bevel still results in this kind of chipping - it's not virtuous no matter what anyone says. I wouldn't personally go beyond about 350 or 360 degrees, but that's your discretion).

I have three kiyotada chisels - one is a touch soft, the other is in the middle and the third is glass hard and glass fragile like this. I don't have the heart to temper it because I don't want to ever have to say it was tempered if I pass it along to someone else later in life. But it also stings my cheeks that I can't use it like it is - it only grinds on silicon carbide, and then the edge falls apart when finish honing. My favorite of these chisels, of course, is the one in the middle (it's hard, but if it wasn't marked kiyotada, I don't think I'd be able to differentiate its performance from any other vintage chisel that's professionally made and properly hardened).

Once you temper a tool like that back, though, and it's still hard, the tool will be tougher than the connection between the tang and handle. If that's not an endorsement for a performance ceiling, I don't know what is. When I was buying new more expensive chisels and plane irons, I didn't have the stones to play with tempering, but after buying gobs of used chisels from japan for $10-$15 each, I'm convinced that the difference between a $200 super high end chisel (that's properly tempered) and a $15 professionally made older chisel (that would have been more expensive when made) is zero in performance, and 100% in appearance .

Crystolon

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

The composition is silicon carbide. It will abrade even tungsten carbide. There is no steel it will not abrade, even high vanadium steels. However, it is not recommended for high hardness steel because it is not sufficiently tough when abrading steel of high hardness. It will fracture and act like a finer abrasive than advertised. Aluminum oxide is recommended for this application

Theory vs. Practice

David Weaver

The india stones have a harder binder and they are graded quickly by really hard tools. The fresh crystolon stones in an oil bath don't.

In practice, they just work better for grinding whereas the aluminum oxide stones settle in pretty quickly and are better at following them. The loose grit if SC goes all over the place (in an oil bath mostly in the oil) - I think that's why there's a huge surplus of barely used medium and fine older carborundum corp. SC stones.

If a crystolon stone is older and the binder is hard and doesn't release particles, then it's no good for this.

The other thing that SC does well vs. al-ox is if you have a high carbide steel (SGPS is an example that I learned in practice - it's grabby on an india stone - silicon carbide doesn't do that and just wastes it away like crazy. SGPS literally likes nothing other than silicon carbide and then loose abrasive on a soft backer All other abrasives (even diamond on cast) grip the carbides or something and what you're left with is a steel with little pocks taken out of it.

For sandpaper and lapping, what you say is true - neither paper is really great for hand lapping (the green and purples and blues make even less economic sense), but the cheapest red and white alumina do fairly well (and they're cheap, so you don't have to fret throwing them out and getting more fresh paper). Silicon carbide paper is graded almost instantly and it may be "sharp particles" left behind, but they're too small to be worthwhile.

The other variable here is wrought iron, mild steel or pure iron backing - the silicon carbide deals with it well. It's kind of rubbery on alumina - I think it likes a tumbling abrasive better for fast cutting so that it doesn't just get grooved.

Re: That was my quesion actually...

Jack Dover

Yeah, thanks for the suggestion, that's my plan B actually, it's just I know I won't stop and will most probably buy the whole set by the end of the year. Maybe I'll do it anyway later, still haven't decided on what brand of water stones to go with.

Thanks!

Jack Dover

Surprisingly this didn't occur to me, even though there were tempering issues with my other Japanese tools.

I thought that maybe this blade has to be broken in, since it wasn't used. There were other tools having a crumbly edge from hardening\tempering, but doing ok after some metal was ground off exposing a properly tempered part. I'm going to give it another attempt while correcting some issues and if it doesn't work - I'll try tempering. There's nothing to lose at this point, the blade is not operational anyway and it wasn't expensive at all. I have a small toaster oven graduated to 450F, shouldn't have problems producing 325-350F.

Re: Thanks!

David Weaver

It's possible that it's just the tip of an iron or brand new chisel, but most japanese tools have probably been heated in a more even heat and don't have the tip burning that quickly made induction hardened tools can have.

My tempering success rate so far is 100% (as in, in any tool that is well finished enough that it was intended for professionals, there's never been a failure due to the chipping just being due to the tool being junk). It's a shame that otherwise really superb tools were cast aside when all they needed was a tad more tempering.