I find that oil always lets the novaculite stones cut more than water and keeps them cutting longer. Others will beg to differ but that's my experience through a LOT of testing.
Canadian Novaculite
- Thread starter Rugger007
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- #42
Today I honed my kami and finished on the Canadian Hone. My progression was a Shapton glass 4k followed by my Frankonian with light slurry to clear water. The edge was beautiful but I decided to follow that with 20 laps on a Shapton glass 16k so I had a solid benchmark to see what the Canadian stone could do. I did 50 laps with water only and didn’t really see any improvement, so I put a bit of lather in the stone and did another 50 laps. That did the trick and I did see improvement over the 16k. Another 50 laps for good measure and it looks fantastic. Now I need to shave with it to see how it feels. Next time I will eliminate the shapton 16k and see how that goes. All in all I’m pretty happy with this stone, it’s angreat addition to my collection.
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- #43
Pretty rock. How did the edge feal in the face?
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- #45
It’s wonderful! Keen and smooth, can’t ask for better.
Ergo, water use might be perceived as finer due to metal particles clogging the stone?
Did you use the stone as received or lap it flatten it and then smooth it? Water and slurry use or oil?
On coarser stones or more coarsely surfaced ones perhaps. As near as I can tell, there are NO metal particles being removed at all on finer (burnished/polished) Arks when using water. Oil is a different story, but still there's not a large amount of steel being removed then either.
So what are you suggesting, that water leads to a finer finish with polished finishing Arks than with oil? Lack of swarf would either seem to indicate this or that the stone is not acting on it at all.
On a tangential note, I've noted that different vegetable oils used on Arkansas stones will also yield varying degrees of swarf production.
I believe that on the finely burnished/polished Arks that the action is mostly or all burnishing when water is used. When oil is used it's a combination of both, with only a very little amount of cutting going on.
I mainly only use oil myself for shaving razor honing use (on Arks) and have always gotten outstanding edges. I have also shaved with edges honed on Arks with water in the past and find them to be good as well. So I guess either way works, but generally I feel that the Ark with oil will allow a little more work to be done rather than just putting on a final polish. However as I'm sure we're all aware, there are a lot of variables in the process that make it difficult to generalize.
I mainly only use oil myself for shaving razor honing use (on Arks) and have always gotten outstanding edges. I have also shaved with edges honed on Arks with water in the past and find them to be good as well. So I guess either way works, but generally I feel that the Ark with oil will allow a little more work to be done rather than just putting on a final polish. However as I'm sure we're all aware, there are a lot of variables in the process that make it difficult to generalize.
Very interesting. I've only used water with an Ark on rare occasions (a smoothed translucent), preferring oil in general, with no real cutting action in water solution from what I could tell. With oil, swarf, albeit light, is generated. However, I am curious; as with grapeseed and apricot kernel oils, I've found little to no swarf as well, consequently considering them to be "slower" than the petroleum-based oils. Cold-pressed virgin olive oil, on the other hand, works quite well as to swarf generation. Think I may play around with moving from olive oil to grapeseed to see if this helps refine things. Moving from olive oil to water is also possible, but then one has to wash off the stone first. All of this would seem to run counter to the sometimes suggested advice to move from water to oil at the end with coticules and slates for a finer finish.
Again, there are many variables - one being the thickness of the oil. There's also the surface prep of the stone in question and the amount of pressure used, and the surface area of the steel in contact with the hone, and...etc.
Ordered one of the Superior grade ones today. Look forward to giving it a try. Nice to support a local guy starting a new source of hones.
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- #54
I think you are going to love it. She’s a beast to lap, but once there you will be very happy. Keep up posted on it.
Yeah I ordered some 200, 600, 1000 silicone carbide to try lapping. My poor old dmt ain't up for the task I'm sure.
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- #56
I had to go down to 90x sic to get it flat. It was suggested to me to only dress the stone to 400x. I did mine to 600x and then rubbed it with the dressing stone and it’s mirror polished. I’m going to put mine to a 400 atoma and see if I can get it working a bit faster.
Thanks for the tip. I'll order some coarser sic as well. I've never laped with the powder before so I guessed on the grades.
Really nice stone looks like it is lapped pretty flat. Gonna give it a quick pass tomorrow to see if it's flat. Then I'll give it a go.
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- #59
Looks very nice! Looking forward to your impressions.
I ran it over my dmt. Came pretty flat. Bit dished but took 5min and she was good.
Polished one of my razors that was fresh off of my ss 12k. I find the naniwa gives me consistently very sharp edges but a bit harsh.
@50 strokes on water. Shave was very nice. Still sharp but very smooth. I think this stone has some good potential.
Polished one of my razors that was fresh off of my ss 12k. I find the naniwa gives me consistently very sharp edges but a bit harsh.
@50 strokes on water. Shave was very nice. Still sharp but very smooth. I think this stone has some good potential.
