Black Arkansas "primitive" Happy B-day to me!!!

[C FrankC]

About a year ago I too purchased a black primitive from Dan's, very good people to work with!
It's about the same size as yours and came to me far from flat. At the time I didn't have a lapping plate or SIC powder and so I just used a flat tile and W/D sandpaper to lap it flat.
That process took a LONG time, finished on 2K grit Norton paper. Finally after hours of hard work it was flat and smooth.
I decided to use a 1" X .5" X 8" piece of high speed tool steel to do my burnishing with so that I could use some pressure on the stone, I used Mineral oil for lubricant.
To get this big chunk of Black goodness to a polish took another seemingly endless amount of time.
The final steps for me was to take this stone to my grinder and do a little smoothing of the edges so that I could chamfer them with a diamond plate and then take the hardest Tomo I own and using .5 micron diamond spray lap the stone.
Took the tool steel bar and re-burnished the surface under running water, now it looks like Eric's and it polishes wonderfully, after about 300 strokes.
I like Smiths or Norton for honing lubricant.
These stones are a real labor of love and can take quite a lot of time & effort to get them where you may want them but once there they are very good finishers.
I prefer a nearly finished edge like a mid range J-nat or even a finished Coticule edge before going to this stone to get the absolute best results. Don't give up, sounds like you are getting closer - took me about two weeks worth of spare time to get mine where I want it and I just shaved off an edge from it---never disappoints!

 

[Dilbone]

Sounds like you're pretty close now. It will only get better.

I hope so, it seemed like I'd never get there but even if it doesn't get better than it is now I think I'd still be happy with the edge I'm getting.

About a year ago I too purchased a black primitive from Dan's, very good people to work with!
It's about the same size as yours and came to me far from flat. At the time I didn't have a lapping plate or SIC powder and so I just used a flat tile and W/D sandpaper to lap it flat.
That process took a LONG time, finished on 2K grit Norton paper. Finally after hours of hard work it was flat and smooth.
I decided to use a 1" X .5" X 8" piece of high speed tool steel to do my burnishing with so that I could use some pressure on the stone, I used Mineral oil for lubricant.
To get this big chunk of Black goodness to a polish took another seemingly endless amount of time.
The final steps for me was to take this stone to my grinder and do a little smoothing of the edges so that I could chamfer them with a diamond plate and then take the hardest Tomo I own and using .5 micron diamond spray lap the stone.
Took the tool steel bar and re-burnished the surface under running water, now it looks like Eric's and it polishes wonderfully, after about 300 strokes.
I like Smiths or Norton for honing lubricant.
These stones are a real labor of love and can take quite a lot of time & effort to get them where you may want them but once there they are very good finishers.
I prefer a nearly finished edge like a mid range J-nat or even a finished Coticule edge before going to this stone to get the absolute best results. Don't give up, sounds like you are getting closer - took me about two weeks worth of spare time to get mine where I want it and I just shaved off an edge from it---never disappoints!

I'm still thinking about hitting it with some 2000grit, but I may just use it for a while and see if it just improves with use. I think mine was pretty flat out of the box, but the surface was pretty rough. The 1500 grit really smoothed it out a lot.
I'm still thinking about cutting this down the middle so I can have a narrower hone...these warped blades are a real pain to hone on a 4" wide stone

 

[C FrankC]

You may want to hold off on the cutting, as you get more and more adept at honing gymnastics you may find that with proper stroke dynamics the width of the honing surface becomes less of a factor, Of coarse YMMV.
If you are at 1500 grit and your hone is flat I advise to keep running steel on it.
If it's not dead nuts flat now is the time to go back and fix it, the polishing of the surface starts over when you take the W/D to it. If you decide to cut it's possible that the cut edges will be slightly chipped, this may take extra work also.
Remember once you get this stone conditioned where you want it, if it's not as flat as you would like the conditioning starts all over after re-flattening the surface so make certain that it's as flat as you need it early in the process.

 

[Dilbone]

I ended up deciding not to hit it with 2000grit and just keep honing on it.

I did another 300 laps on that gold dollar I've been trying to get right and the edge just wasn't getting any better. That blade is so hard to hone I just can't get it to touch the hone all the way along the edge. I decided to go with some circles for several minutes then finish that off with some 30ish x strokes. I checked the edge and felt like I was getting some improvement so I went back to the circles for a while and finished off with x strokes again. The edge seemed to be the best this one had gotten off of this stone. It looks like maybe I'll have to use circles with the couple of warped blades I have.

Then I got out a little 4/8 Larkin I have and hit it with 200 full laps. It seemed like a sharper edge than the GD. The next morning I shaved with both. Half the face with each blade. They both felt pretty good so I'm happy with that.

The Larkin was the first nice and straight blade I'd tried on this stone and it seemed to respond well to it. I can't wait to hit some of my other razors with this arkie now and see if I can't get it even smoother. Good times

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[Dilbone]

Well, I've been frustrated at best with the performance of my black arkie. I decided that it has to be a lapping issue because I just can't get edges off the coti to improve off the ark, in fact they end up a step down once I do a couple hundred laps. After checking with the edge of my DMT it was obvious that this rock wasn't flat so for the better part of 2 days I tried to beat this thing into submission.

Some seriously sore hands, forearms, triceps, and lats later I gave up after seeing what seemed like diminishing returns but a definite improvement over what it was.

I know some are going to cringe at this next couple of images but the 4" width of this stone has been problematic for me with most of my blades being less than straight and all my other hones being 2" width. I decided it was time to rip this one down the middle.
I broke out the old tile wet saw and hoped it would actually be able to cut through this monster.

It struggled a bit through the thickest part that is over an inch thick but it finally made it. The "keeper" piece is just over 2" width. The other is a bit over 1.75"

Once ripping it I went back to the marble lapping plate and spent some more time on it. The flattening progress seemed to go a bit faster with less face to deal with and the larger of the 2 pieces was the flattest portion of the stone already so it seemed there was a light at the end of the tunnel.

I finally finished up with a sheet of 2000grit and used the slurry for quite some time to get a pretty nice polish going on it. By far the most uniform and consistent the surface has ever looked.

Here it is after a couple of rounds with an old razor and one short session with a chisel.
I've determined that for burnishing I prefer mineral oil over Smith's honing solution. Smith's dries out way too fast and when I'm sitting here for 10-15minutes at a time rubbing steel on this the last thing I want to worry about is replenishing solution and having it run off everywhere. The mineral oil takes very little and stays put. It looks better already.

Hopefully I'll get this burnished well enough to use it within the week and finally experience a nice arkie edge!!!

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[Haggises]

the horror!

that big piece of Arkansas real estate, subdivided into lots!

Hope it works out for you

 

[Dilbone]

the horror!

that big piece of Arkansas real estate, subdivided into lots!

Hope it works out for you

**hangs head in shame**

This just shows the height of the level of frustration I was having...I may not have even been in my right mind...[emoji12]

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[Haggises]

**hangs head in shame**

This just shows the height of the level of frustration I was having...I may not have even been in my right mind...[emoji12]

Well now you can be in two minds. One of em should be right

 

[eKretz]

Oh dear. I totally would have lapped that for you! Should have posted before cutting. Oh well, it's done now, good luck with the second try!

 

[David]

Nice cut, Chris. Now you have a slurry stone. lol.

 

[C FrankC]

Tears

 

[Andy77]

The whole photobucket TOS change is killing me! I need to see what we're all talking about!!

 

[Dilbone]

The whole photobucket TOS change is killing me! I need to see what we're all talking about!!

I think this is the beginning of the end for PB, I can't even tell you how pissed I was when I found out what they pulled. 7 years worth of forum posts down the tubes.

There are a couple pics of the carnage I just posted[emoji15]

It was about 4"x7" and I'm glad I ripped it down. I just did a couple hundred laps on my GD competition razor and it was very comfortable to hone with.

Here are the original pics when I first got this primitive black from Dan's

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[Andy77]

I think this is the beginning of the end for PB, I can't even tell you how pissed I was when I found out what they pulled. 7 years worth of forum posts down the tubes.

Amen. What hosting site are you using now?

There are a couple pics of the carnage I just posted[emoji15]

It was about 4"x7" and I'm glad I ripped it down. I just did a couple hundred laps on my GD competition razor and it was very comfortable to hone with.

Here are the original pics when I first got this primitive black from Dan's

Beautiful stone!!

 

[Dilbone]

Amen. What hosting site are you using now?



Beautiful stone!!

I'm not using one now. Just direct upload to the forums that have the capability. Most seem to have gone to direct hosting themselves.

Yeah, I called Dan's upon David's suggestion and asked about a "primitive" black and Mary in the office sent me pics so I jumped on it. It's taken me way too long to get it going though. I hope this renewed interest in it will eventually yield a nice bump off of my coti.

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[Dilbone]

After 400ish laps on the rock the bevel got noticeably hazy and the floating over the arm and leg hair tests had worsened compared to the edge off the coticle. I took a few swipes on my last shave with it and it was def not as sharp as off the coti....not enough polish yet to the hone.

I got back to work and have been burnishing away on this thing. It's gotta be getting closer...

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[PaulMallorca]

Had some trouble to polish my butterscotch. Tried a lot of things, even paste on a felt wheel (worked, but grit remains in the pores), and what worked the best are those two steps:

- When finishing on 1500 W&D, when the grit is all gone and I can see mostly the paper, I keep rubbing with out adding water. As it dries, the paper with the remaining grit starts to polish pretty good.

- Then I work the surface with a smaller Turkish oil stone. Is made of a softer novaculite, so I guess another arkansas would work too.

It went like glass with out much fuss!

On water, the "off the stone" feeling is not super sharp, but once stropped it goes incredible. On oil, the off the stone arm hair test is amazing, but improves less with stropping than a water edge... I get awesome shaves with both!

Under magnification both edges are very different, bevel and apex, both show differences I'm still trying to understand and improve...

 

[Dilbone]

So last night I decided I was going to go back to burnishing with water but instead of just water I added a big blob of dish liquid to the stone and worked it with a bit of water using a fresh out of the box gold dollar.

I would add a smidge of water when it got too dry and then add more soap when it seemed the suds were dying back. I kept at this for a couple different 5-10 minute sessions and I couldn't believe the difference in the surface of the stone. It was MUCH more reflective. The surface still looks a bit grainy when looking straight into it but even at slight angles it is a much clearer mirror like reflection. I think I am finally getting somewhere. I did another 5ish minutes this morning and feel like it's getting there. A bit more work and I'll see if I can finally get a positive bump on a razor's edge

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[Dilbone]

I did 200 laps with gold dollar I did the 400ish laps before. This was after going some time on the coti to bring the edge back after killing it on this arkie before it was ready. After those 200 laps today the edge doesnt appear to be worse so that's better than it has been.

Since then I've done another 20-30minutes with dish soap and water burnishing. I'm gonna do another 100 or so laps and check with a shave test to see if I'm finally at least getting a little bit of a bump from this arkie.

As of now the reflection is getting clearer...and enough to see myself in it straight on.

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[eKretz]

Now you're getting there. Burnishing goes faster with water for certain. Another thing you might need to watch for is whether that coticule is convexing your edge a tiny bit and the Ark isn't able to cut enough to get back to the apex. That can happen with some coticules, especially if using slurry. Arks don't have a whole lot of steel removal ability once they're polished up for most comfortable edges.