It's actually kind of funny how so called experts did not know or did not care to find out the truth! Glad the truth is out and you have one more way to a great edge.
Honing slates.
- Thread starter SliceOfLife
- Start date
So if i understand correctly the green and redish brown slate is more of a middle tier comparable to 4k to 6k and the Welsh Dragon tongue purple and yellow lake are more inline with a finisher somewhere around 8k to 12k?
Does anyone have any experience with the Miniog slate stone? They're claiming in the UK that it's just a one hone stone after bevel set.
Interesting topic. I think the big question when it comes to slates (like most stones) is the test. I believe that there are Brazilian slates with capacities as good as those of thurigian (I have even seen ancient literature mentioning the sale of Brazilian slate as a hone). The big question is that the market for razor stones is very small, lack of knowledge and interest to test. The slate industry prefers to sell tons of paving much more than testing a lot of layers to sell a tiny amount to a select market that will not pay a decent price for the effort.
timwcic
"Look what I found"
Don’t give up on a green slate. I have had several green slates over the years. While some were mid grit hones, several are top finishers, giving me excellent results. Like with any hone, finding the right combination. And the biggest unicorn of all, the Cutlers Green
timwcic
"Look what I found"
@CCR Don’t give up on a green slate. This I rescued last week. It was a funk covered mess. Gave it a good cleaning and lap, ended up with, what I think, is a green Vermont slate. Molted, swirled surface with deep green orbs scattered about. It feels to be in the 8-10K range. Have not broke in or used much, just a beater SR it get a feel. I think it has more potential, just have to see what I can squeeze it out of the stone
In my other post in this thread I show a photo of a slate patio stone that I now know to be Vermont slate. Since then I have found two Vermont slate roof tiles, one green and one purple, and have used them as hones. They both work very well but the purple "feels" like a finer grit.
I have also been to some home improvement and flooring stores and bought some floor and wall tiles. One tile I got at Menards was 3"x6" and was black and silver in color. It only cost $0.50 per tile so I got 4, lapped all of them flat and found them to be rather soft so they make lots of slurry and do a pretty good job as a finisher.
If you would like play around with slate stones as hones go to home improvement and flooring stores. Slate tiles are less than $5.00 each and some come in sizes that you don't have to cut down.
Old Vermont roof tiles may be found at large antique malls or recycled building suppliers.
You may spend more money on wet/dry sand paper than on the slate and more time cutting them to size than lapping them flat but when you hone a razor on them you feel like it was worth it even if it isn't "The Greatest Finishing Hone In The World"
Here is a link to the slate tile (or one like it) I bought at Menards. I think they sell single tiles online.
I have also been to some home improvement and flooring stores and bought some floor and wall tiles. One tile I got at Menards was 3"x6" and was black and silver in color. It only cost $0.50 per tile so I got 4, lapped all of them flat and found them to be rather soft so they make lots of slurry and do a pretty good job as a finisher.
If you would like play around with slate stones as hones go to home improvement and flooring stores. Slate tiles are less than $5.00 each and some come in sizes that you don't have to cut down.
Old Vermont roof tiles may be found at large antique malls or recycled building suppliers.
You may spend more money on wet/dry sand paper than on the slate and more time cutting them to size than lapping them flat but when you hone a razor on them you feel like it was worth it even if it isn't "The Greatest Finishing Hone In The World"
Here is a link to the slate tile (or one like it) I bought at Menards. I think they sell single tiles online.
This might have had some potential but will probably have a hard time holding a slurry or water, size is perfect tho
Vermont slate
If the bottom side is good a guy can hone all day and play a lil cribbage after he is done,never leave his seat. Ha!
Think i will throw a little money at it.
Last edited:
I bought a piece of Vermont unfading green slate. After lapping it on multiple grades of sandpaper (first photo), I used it with water and glycerin to finish a razor. I won't use the razor until tomorrow.
Being a newcomer, it never occurred to me to ask for an additional small piece to use as a slurry stone. And now, after seeing all that nice green muck, I would like to try honing a razor with a little slurry. I have read a bunch about the pros and cons of using Atoma and DMT diamond plates to make slurry, and I am hesitant to buy more stuff just to make a little slurry.
What are the risks of me using a small piece of burned/worn out P600 or P1200 silicon carbide sandpaper wrapped around a small block to whip up some slurry?
BTW, the stone is 8" x 3" x 0.75" and I bought it from a quarry in Vermont very close to where my family has vacationed for decades by just sending them an email. The stone looks really nice and it would way cool if it turned out to be a good hone.
Being a newcomer, it never occurred to me to ask for an additional small piece to use as a slurry stone. And now, after seeing all that nice green muck, I would like to try honing a razor with a little slurry. I have read a bunch about the pros and cons of using Atoma and DMT diamond plates to make slurry, and I am hesitant to buy more stuff just to make a little slurry.
What are the risks of me using a small piece of burned/worn out P600 or P1200 silicon carbide sandpaper wrapped around a small block to whip up some slurry?
BTW, the stone is 8" x 3" x 0.75" and I bought it from a quarry in Vermont very close to where my family has vacationed for decades by just sending them an email. The stone looks really nice and it would way cool if it turned out to be a good hone.
I tried using fine grit wet/dry sandpaper to slurry a slate stone and got some grit from the sandpaper in the slurry. It put a very small scar on the stone and scared the crap out of me. Now I use a small diamond grit pocket knife hone I got at a hardware store for around $5.00. They don't lose any grit.
If you got the green slate just by asking see if you can also get some purple slate. As I posted before I have green and purple roof tiles I made into hones and I feel the purple may be finer than the green. And check out some local home improvement and flooring stores for slate tiles, you may find some 3" x 6" or 3" x 8" for just a buck or two that you can also have fun with.
Last edited:
Nice looking piece!
I would not use paper - even well used for slurry. As a matter of fact I would not use slurry at all.
Dress it to 1k and just use with water from an 8k starting point to see if it improves an 8k edge and by how much or if it degrades it.
Slurry on slates may degrade the edge far enough back that it will not recover in any meaningful way just going to water.
Starting at a good 8k is the beginning of finishing. If it can produce a keen comfortable edge from there with water alone then it will be a fine hone. You can then experiment further to get more out of it.
It sounds like using slurry on the Vermont slate may not be the way to go, but I have to ask:
1. When I search for pocket diamond sharpeners, the DMT Mini Diamond Stone keeps popping up (see below). Are these less likely to lose grit than the 3" cards?
2. Just curious, do most people raise slurry on an Escher like in this video and does this mean that an Escher/Thuringian is just a different beast than a Vermont slate?
A stone like that you probably want to plan on testing more than using at first. Use a well sharp edge and preferably polished bevel and start with finishing strokes. Inspect, shave, compare. Obvious bad signs would be big scratches in the bevel or tearing up the edge which are what you need to look for. If there are no issues and it turns out to be a decent razor stone then you can play with slurries etc and see what you can do with it. Honestly I would recommend you just forego all the slurry stuff and use the stone, but that is opinion.
- Thread starter
- #35
Easiest way to test random slates in my experience is similar to what LJS suggests and is one of the few places I find HHT useful.
Take a finished razor that silent falls (root held) after stropping. Do 30+ clean water passes on the stone I'm testing and strop then HHT. If it doesn't silent fall and instead aggressively cuts, pops, or clings to the hair... this generally indicates a somewhat toothy edge and a step down from a great finisher. Can still be an OK finisher, but not a great one.
Then I go 8k (DMT/Norton/Mesh) to it and do anywhere from 30-150 passes to see if it has sufficient efficacy/speed to be a decent hone. Test the same way. If it passed the first test but not this one... it's barely cutting... again not a great finisher. Maybe try slurry at that point, but I rarely bother with slurry. If a stones surface isn't a great hone then liquifying that surface and letting is roll around on and around my edge isn't something that often proves beneficial.
My belief is that in most cases slurry on bad hones masks their badness for people without shaving experience by dulling the edge so that the harshness is less evident.
Take a finished razor that silent falls (root held) after stropping. Do 30+ clean water passes on the stone I'm testing and strop then HHT. If it doesn't silent fall and instead aggressively cuts, pops, or clings to the hair... this generally indicates a somewhat toothy edge and a step down from a great finisher. Can still be an OK finisher, but not a great one.
Then I go 8k (DMT/Norton/Mesh) to it and do anywhere from 30-150 passes to see if it has sufficient efficacy/speed to be a decent hone. Test the same way. If it passed the first test but not this one... it's barely cutting... again not a great finisher. Maybe try slurry at that point, but I rarely bother with slurry. If a stones surface isn't a great hone then liquifying that surface and letting is roll around on and around my edge isn't something that often proves beneficial.
My belief is that in most cases slurry on bad hones masks their badness for people without shaving experience by dulling the edge so that the harshness is less evident.
The pocket stone I bought is an "Accusharp" and I really know nothing about it other than I saw it in a hardware store for less than $10.00 and thought it would be a good slurry stone.
As far as using a slurry on an Escher/Thuringian, those stones are far softer than Vermont and many other types of slate and also came with a slurry stone which got lost over time. Many people don't slurry Escher/Thuringian and still get a great edge so I think it's more a matter of choice.
As far as the Vermont hones I have I've tried them with slurry and without and don't see much difference. It's fun to play around through but don't use your best razor to find out what works. I was using a $5.00 flea market razor when the sandpaper slurry scared the crap out of me.
Last edited:
Messages received. Thanks for the excellent advice!
This is what I do, as stated above, but I start at 8k because if it can't improve that then it saves a step and there is no need to move on.
If you start at a superfine refined edge you have no idea where the stone lies - just that it is not as fine as your finest finishers.
If it improved an 8k edge significantly then you can try as you stated with something that is in the 12k range or considered a decent finisher incrementally testing to your finest hone.
This saves time and is accurate.
I've made quite a lot of slate whetstones, and am trying out another today (some progress shots below). Quite a lot of what I'm about to say was summed up very accurately in early posts in this thread by @SliceOfLife and @Gamma , but just to re-iterate...
Almost any bit of quarried slate you get your hands on will work reasonably well as a hone. It has an even, homogenous grit and a bind that allows slurrying without being too soft. Softness is actually the problem you come up against most when trying to make your own hones. Almost any rock you pick up anywhere will work to some extent or another as a whetstone because SiO2 / Quartz is basically everywhere, but if your rock is soft, it also needs to be fine. And if it's fine it's unlikely to have a particularly high quartz content, so will cut very slowly. Very fine, reasonably soft stones, with a high silica content are rare.
And it's quartz content (and shape), rather than hardness or bind, that is the main problem you come up against with slates - they're usually quite slow. Here's a picture of my favourite slate I've found:
This stone is flat, but you'll notice the wavy lines on the surface, these are the bedding planes of the original mud-like deposit. I've flattened this stone parallel to the layers of the slate, and yet the process of lithification and metamorphic change mean that the initial bedding planes change across a single layer of the stone. I've found stones where this is very marked to be faster in use.
That stone above is relatively soft; it's from a quite an early stage in the metamorphic change from shale, the layers on the sides are still very visible, and it's flaky when you break it up. This is the kind of slate that is used for roof tiling.
Today though I'm trying a different kind, which is from the same area, possibly even the same quarry, but is much more compact and less noticeably layered. This I guess is more the kind of thing that would be used for paving.
I broke that bit in two, here's a picture of it with a piece of the first (layered, flaky) kind on top:
From there I flatten it on a belt sander. As you can see it's not completely flat yet, but most of it is enough for me to try out. If I like it - I'll flatten completely, if I don't - I've saved myself a sanding belt:
First though I atoma it, the stone is harder than the first type, but still slurries nicely. Here's what it looks like wet, with some pretty funky saw marks on the side! (I found this in a field - the green is grass stains).
I have high hopes for this stone at this point; it feels nice, and relatively fine, with a reasonably high quartz and mica content. This is a bit difficult to take a picture of but here's trying:
Now I'm guessing most of that twinkly is mica, the stone doesn't feel coarse enough to have such a large amount of visible quartz. But hopefully there's some in there, and this will cut quite nicely, it has the potential to be quite a good stone I think.
Update to follow later once I've tried it...
Almost any bit of quarried slate you get your hands on will work reasonably well as a hone. It has an even, homogenous grit and a bind that allows slurrying without being too soft. Softness is actually the problem you come up against most when trying to make your own hones. Almost any rock you pick up anywhere will work to some extent or another as a whetstone because SiO2 / Quartz is basically everywhere, but if your rock is soft, it also needs to be fine. And if it's fine it's unlikely to have a particularly high quartz content, so will cut very slowly. Very fine, reasonably soft stones, with a high silica content are rare.
And it's quartz content (and shape), rather than hardness or bind, that is the main problem you come up against with slates - they're usually quite slow. Here's a picture of my favourite slate I've found:
This stone is flat, but you'll notice the wavy lines on the surface, these are the bedding planes of the original mud-like deposit. I've flattened this stone parallel to the layers of the slate, and yet the process of lithification and metamorphic change mean that the initial bedding planes change across a single layer of the stone. I've found stones where this is very marked to be faster in use.
That stone above is relatively soft; it's from a quite an early stage in the metamorphic change from shale, the layers on the sides are still very visible, and it's flaky when you break it up. This is the kind of slate that is used for roof tiling.
Today though I'm trying a different kind, which is from the same area, possibly even the same quarry, but is much more compact and less noticeably layered. This I guess is more the kind of thing that would be used for paving.
I broke that bit in two, here's a picture of it with a piece of the first (layered, flaky) kind on top:
From there I flatten it on a belt sander. As you can see it's not completely flat yet, but most of it is enough for me to try out. If I like it - I'll flatten completely, if I don't - I've saved myself a sanding belt:
First though I atoma it, the stone is harder than the first type, but still slurries nicely. Here's what it looks like wet, with some pretty funky saw marks on the side! (I found this in a field - the green is grass stains).
I have high hopes for this stone at this point; it feels nice, and relatively fine, with a reasonably high quartz and mica content. This is a bit difficult to take a picture of but here's trying:
Now I'm guessing most of that twinkly is mica, the stone doesn't feel coarse enough to have such a large amount of visible quartz. But hopefully there's some in there, and this will cut quite nicely, it has the potential to be quite a good stone I think.
Update to follow later once I've tried it...
Well even though I said I had high hopes for this, I was slightly surprised by just how good this stone is. It's not just 'good-for-something-you-found-in-a-field' good... it's properly good.
The stone is harder and darker than the first type, it requires a bit more effort to raise slurry, the slurry is also a darker grey:
It's also notably faster, and marginally coarser, but incredibly uniform. The grit rating of slates is a little difficult to put a number on because of how they cut. They tend to work considerably coarser with pressure and when slurried than just with water, because the particles of quartz in slates are not very sharp - they kinda get rounded and compressed in the metamorphic process.
With mud and pressure I'm probably working this stone in the region of around 4k, with final finishing strokes being higher. If I can do this on a kitchen knife for instance, you can probably use it on a razor:
But perhaps the thing that impressed me most about it was how it polished both cladding and core. Non Japanese stones don't tend to be very good at this, and I've not had much luck with any kind of slate before. They're either too hard and will burnish the jigane, or too soft and you get random scratches. This stone appears to be in the Goldilocks Zone, and has has very uniform grit to complement. Here's the bevel of that knife before I started:
Here it is (other side) after a couple of mins on the stone:
The scratch pattern on the jigane is beautifully hazy and even, and the hagane is going toward mirror:
I'm very pleased about this. TBH, even though this stone is relatively quick, there are still a ton of things that will do normal knife sharpening better than slates, but they are very few that will also polish like this. It will be an excellent yanagiba stone.
The stone is harder and darker than the first type, it requires a bit more effort to raise slurry, the slurry is also a darker grey:
It's also notably faster, and marginally coarser, but incredibly uniform. The grit rating of slates is a little difficult to put a number on because of how they cut. They tend to work considerably coarser with pressure and when slurried than just with water, because the particles of quartz in slates are not very sharp - they kinda get rounded and compressed in the metamorphic process.
With mud and pressure I'm probably working this stone in the region of around 4k, with final finishing strokes being higher. If I can do this on a kitchen knife for instance, you can probably use it on a razor:
But perhaps the thing that impressed me most about it was how it polished both cladding and core. Non Japanese stones don't tend to be very good at this, and I've not had much luck with any kind of slate before. They're either too hard and will burnish the jigane, or too soft and you get random scratches. This stone appears to be in the Goldilocks Zone, and has has very uniform grit to complement. Here's the bevel of that knife before I started:
Here it is (other side) after a couple of mins on the stone:
The scratch pattern on the jigane is beautifully hazy and even, and the hagane is going toward mirror:
I'm very pleased about this. TBH, even though this stone is relatively quick, there are still a ton of things that will do normal knife sharpening better than slates, but they are very few that will also polish like this. It will be an excellent yanagiba stone.
