Marble Tile For Touchups?

[lightfoot]

So I found a whole box of 3 x 6” marble tiles at the home improvement store for around four dollars. I knocked off the glossy finish with a series of wet dry paper and took it up to 400 grit. I also chamfered the edges and it actually looks plausible for minor touchups. Has anyone ever tried such a ridiculous thing? Thanks

 

[Slash McCoy]

Might work with soap or oil. Maybe with a 2k sandpaper finish? Possibly it is not hard enough but give it a try. What do you got to lose? WAY more ridiculous things have been used, with varying degrees of success, for honing razors. The bottom of a coffee mug. A brick. Fieldstone. Why not marble tile?

 

[lightfoot]

Yes it has to be taken up to a much higher W/D grit for sure.

 

[LJS]

Marble is a pretty soft and inconsistent stone. Hopefully yours won’t be too gritty or release too much. Marble is easy to carve.

 

[lightfoot]

Marble is a pretty soft and inconsistent stone. Hopefully yours won’t be too gritty or release too much. Marble is easy to carve.

I definitely don’t have high hopes but at 63 cents per stone I couldn’t resist.

 

[McBlade]

I'd finish it with a sheet of lapping film

But it's good to experiment. You always learn something.

 

[Slash McCoy]

If you could find some pink granite, that might work. It should work in similar fashion to the hardest arkies.

 

[lightfoot]

So I finally got brave enough to shave off this piece of marble. I found my missing stash of 1000# W/D and worked up the surface beyond what I’d accomplished before.
I used a generous amount of oil and did roughly 100 strokes on it. The feedback was hard to describe but it was a bit ark-like at times. I did the lightest strokes I could throughout.
I was surprised at how smooth the shave was. Smooth as pretty much any of my other finishing stones but this is an account of ONLY ONE SHAVE. I’m not suggesting that the following attempts will be as good. Could have been dumb luck or any number of other factors. I’m still glad a took a chance on it though.
I’ll report back if I get any delayed irritation in the morning.

 

[trentr]

Well dang, now I gotta make a tile finisher LOL. Pretty cool.

 

[lightfoot]

Ok so 3rd shave on 5-day growth. Results were good to go for sure. Only work I did prior to this evening was 20 or so strokes on the tile with a bit of lather the other day.
Definitely a bump in keenness over the last shave.
Soap was curtesy of N=GM2. Just a good tallow shave soap.

 

[kohalajohn]

What a wonderful experiment.

 

[lightfoot]

What a wonderful experiment.

Thanks. I also want to get a piece of that pink granite that Slash mentioned to try out.

 

[Slash McCoy]

You might also try lapping the tile with lapping film. Of course, that would beg the question of why you don't just mount the film ON the tile and hone on film. But one must play sometimes.

 

[bluesman 7]

I find many natural stones that are plenty fine enough, but don't contain enough silica to be worth actually using. These would act slower than the slowest Arkansas stones. I would expect marble to be in this category.

 

[lightfoot]

I don’t really know what to say other than the fact that I shaved with it again yesterday morning and it’s still trucking along.
My progression was:
Shapton - 1.5K
Naniwa - 3K
Shapton - 5K
Naniwa - 8k
Marble tile - Unknown K

 

[stone and strop]

I find many natural stones that are plenty fine enough, but don't contain enough silica to be worth actually using. These would act slower than the slowest Arkansas stones. I would expect marble to be in this category.

I would have thought the same thing.
I don't think marble contains much if any silica or quartzite. Its mostly calcite.
It might be burnishing it some, like stropping.

 

[lightfoot]

Yeah because the blade was shaving well at 8k. I just wanted to see if the marble would get the edge a little further along.

 

[H Brad Boonshaft]

Yea, back in the day I tried all that stuff, marble, frosted glass, bricks, found rock any kind of random fine abrasives as paste.



What I found is, it is better to use a known grit and abrasive. The end result for me is Film, Arks and Jnats are hard to beat , Diamonds, CBN and Chrome Oxide for paste.



As said, better to stick some film on the marble and hone on that, and your results will be repeatable. Sanding marble or glass flat with 220 will make it stick better with plain water.

 

[Gamma]

Marble and Granite have proven, to me anyway, to be useless as any type of hone I want to use on my gear. Norton had a granite barber hone back in the 50s, totally pointless invention IMO. With those rocks, I see burnishing only, which can be done on leather, and zero 'sharpening' in the conventional sense. Yard slates do better IMO. Well, sometimes they do - some slates just wreck edges.

 

[lightfoot]

As I continue doing touchups on this thing I’ll report any instance that either:
A - It won’t keep the edge going or...
B - It crashes the edge