Burnishing a Translucent Arkansas

[BBS Kirk]

I was interested in burnishing my Trans. Could I just use a spoon under running water? Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[duke762]

If the stone is brand new it will most likely need lapped with loose SiC and then dressed to final flatness on W/D sand paper. They final dressing on W/D is where you can play around with higher or lower grits. Are you new to the weirding ways of the Ark or are you having some kind of trouble?

Before you do anything. please read the the following quote from Gamma and maybe my "burnishing" rant.

Depends. Good washita are extremely friable and I don't spend time trying to maintain a certain RA past making sure it cuts evenly. In other words, when it clogs in spots, I clear.

After flattening with SIC, I usually lap Washita with a 140 Atoma regularly to keep the top clear and free of sludge/swarf. I 'might' consider using the 400x plate on a harder/finer example, but rarely.

Soft Arks are all over the place - many new soft Arks are so inconsistent across the stone that I don't bother worrying about the surface; lapping one end to 400x will be totally different at the other end. Very HQ soft Arks, like Nortons pure-white 8x2s usually get lapped to 200x on SIC. During use I"ll use the 140x Atome to clear and rejuvenate. If the cutting is irregular then I'll try the 400x. If I need a finer cut I'll use a harder Ark or move to synthetics.

A lot depends on what I'm sharpening and the stone in question.
Softer coarser Washita are way different than the harder finer types and using them for knives/tools or razors sorta dictates which stone, and how the surface would be in an ideal world.

I don't get too fussy with cutlery at the early stages. Razors are another story and I usually only use one particular Washita for straights, and then I skip soft Arks entirely and bounce right to a hard Ark. That's if I am committed to an Ark progression - and that's usually not the case. Right at this moment I don't even have a soft Ark in the 'kit' because it's non-essential at the moment.

For cutlery that is totally toast and in need of a complete edge reprofile, I start off with a 120 synth, then a Washita. I usually don't care too much about which Washita I use at this point; basically, I am only taking off the massive burr I made on the 120x and then polishing a little bit. If I decide to go further with the edge, I might go to a soft Ark, but I'll probably go to a synth 500x. I might choose a hard Ark if I want more polish, or I might go a different route .

Basically, in a nutshell, after much testing and comparing, I've found that a consistently surfaced stone is more important than what grit it was lapped to. Pressure/force rules the cutting action for me. My hardest stones never get lapped past 600x and the softer stones never see finer than 400x, and usually it's more like 140-200x. I did recently take a Transluent a bit higher than 600x, and while it looks nice, objectiverly, the scope shows that it didn't improve anything.

Last paragraph says it all. Then again my rant.......

I have shelf queens that have one side "burnished", just for looks. Actually they are not "burnished", just lapped to a really high grit. When I started looking at razor forums, I was drawn to the pretty Arks some folks were carefully "burnishing". Lord I hate that word! It has no place in conversations on abrasive hones.

But I proceeded to "burnish" my Arks. I have quite a few, spent a lot of time "burnishing".

Let's talk terminology for a second.

Lapping- A necessary thing to do to Arks and other hones to flatten them. Loose grit, flat as possible.

Dressing- A necessary thing to do to Ark's and other hone to get a supreme, final flatness and to dress the surface of the hone to the desired surface condition for optimal honing. Fixed grit is required at this level. Usually W/D sand paper.


Burnishing- Working the surface of the hone fairly aggressively with a piece of steel, knife, meat cleaver, paint scraper,
etc. to condition the surface of the stone to be finer or "burnish" the edge of the blade. I read one post
where the poster claimed that loading the stone with steel was desirable and then he could "burnish" his
edge.

There are no stones at all, natural or synthetic that benefit from "burnishing". Stones are designed to cut, remove steel. there is no "burnishing" going on. All fixed abrasive media works this way. How the "burnishing" thing got started, I don't know. Some have the ability to cut finer than others but none benefit from "burnishing". I fell victim to the pretty hone thing and "burnished" all my Ark's. Go for it if you want to. I did, I know you want to. Easy change.

But I ended up at 600 grit W/D and things changed for the better and they get redressed, the minute they start to "burnish" , glaze, or start to get shiny. Lap to a high grit, dress to a high grit but I will never accept "burnishing" as a feasible method for prepping the surface of any hone. My 2 cents.

Try it and see if you like it or if you are polishing one side for show ( as I have done ), it's easy to undo. My show pieces are finished to .5 micron diamond compound.....on the side I don't have any intention of using.

Oh, and I wanted to add....a spoon wood be a terrible idea. Lap to the higher grits if wanted. Do not get there by "burnishing". That is actually what your razor does, takes the top off of freshly revealed points left by lapping and dressing that are actually doing all the work. And doing it's job is why we all get Arks to begin with. Because if you treat it just right, it will deliver the goods. If you knock off all those fresh points the stone slows to the point of being ineffective. I redress often and my edges suffer if I don't.

Does anyone "burnish" any other type of hone?

 

[BBS Kirk]

If the stone is brand new it will most likely need lapped with loose SiC and then dressed to final flatness on W/D sand paper. They final dressing on W/D is where you can play around with higher or lower grits. Are you new to the weirding ways of the Ark or are you having some kind of trouble?

Before you do anything. please read the the following quote from Gamma and maybe my "burnishing" rant.



Last paragraph says it all. Then again my rant.......



Try it and see if you like it or if you are polishing one side for show ( as I have done ), it's easy to undo. My show pieces are finished to .5 micron diamond compound.....on the side I don't have any intention of using.

Oh, and I wanted to add....a spoon wood be a terrible idea. Lap to the higher grits if wanted. Do not get there by "burnishing". That is actually what your razor does, takes the top off of freshly revealed points left by lapping and dressing that are actually doing all the work. And doing it's job is why we all get Arks to begin with. Because if you treat it just right, it will deliver the goods. If you knock off all those fresh points the stone slows to the point of being ineffective. I redress often and my edges suffer if I don't.

Does anyone "burnish" any other type of hone?

Thanks a lot for your detailed post. I will lap her to 600 grit today. I will give it a shot. I’m not getting great Ark edges. The edge is not up to par with my best Jnat edges. Maybe I need to lap her and go from there.

 

[Alum of Potash]

If the stone is brand new it will most likely need lapped with loose SiC and then dressed to final flatness on W/D sand paper. They final dressing on W/D is where you can play around with higher or lower grits. Are you new to the weirding ways of the Ark or are you having some kind of trouble?

Before you do anything. please read the the following quote from Gamma and maybe my "burnishing" rant.



Last paragraph says it all. Then again my rant.......



Try it and see if you like it or if you are polishing one side for show ( as I have done ), it's easy to undo. My show pieces are finished to .5 micron diamond compound.....on the side I don't have any intention of using.

Oh, and I wanted to add....a spoon wood be a terrible idea. Lap to the higher grits if wanted. Do not get there by "burnishing". That is actually what your razor does, takes the top off of freshly revealed points left by lapping and dressing that are actually doing all the work. And doing it's job is why we all get Arks to begin with. Because if you treat it just right, it will deliver the goods. If you knock off all those fresh points the stone slows to the point of being ineffective. I redress often and my edges suffer if I don't.

Does anyone "burnish" any other type of hone?

I can appreciate your rant about burnishing. I have always disliked the term as applied to Arkansas stones as burnishing implies a metal surface to my mind, rather than stone. Polishing seems a better term for stones. I've not had a problem with translucent and black hard stones glazing over when "polished" to, say, 2000x, and I've used table knives to smooth a translucent surface out of the box by way of comparison. The translucent has more of a molten, sticky feel after being lapped really high, but still releases slurry with pressure. Black hard seems brittle as always. Lapping to 600x as sometimes recommended seems like a good compromise. I have had glazing problems with soft Arkansas stones, but these I would never lap very high.

 

[SliceOfLife]

Burnish means to me rounding off a jagged or rough surface in a way similar to how metal undergoes work hardening on the exterior during machining. Essentially you're working the stone surface to act like a "harder" and closer-grained stone.

This is not something I'd do deliberately by grinding some soft garbage steel into the hone. That's a waste of time and just asking to clog up your stone. Got a nice big cleaver that you'd like to see with a mirror polish, though? That's fair game.

That said, yes, polishing it higher on wet/dry up to 1-3k will polish up your stone faster, but it doesn't "Break in" a Novaculite quite the same way that use does. You've still got jagged edges... just much smaller jagged edges. If you don't use the stone for anything but razors, though, yeah polishing it a bit higher will let you actually wear in the stone in weeks instead of decades. If you're using it for heavier tools, I like to get it flat and sand out any obvious tooth/grain pattern from the lapping (400-800ish)... then start using it. Lapping past that is a waste of time when I could be polishing up knives and killing two birds with one stone.

Like I said in another post, I really only high grit lap anything for a glamour shot. A 3k polished ark can shine like a 3k polished piece of copper or aluminum and people will ooh and ahh over it if you photo it with the light on it just right... has nothing to do with function, though.