I know jewelry/watch repair guys that use the ruby matchsticks to do things. Eeeeh,
even if they were cost effective and readily available, don't the gems feel really dead under the razor as you go?
Imperia la Roccia
- Thread starter totorlekiller
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I know jewelry/watch repair guys that use the ruby matchsticks to do things. Eeeeh,
even if they were cost effective and readily available, don't the gems feel really dead under the razor as you go?
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- #22
My grit estimate is based on the scratch pattern comparison with well calibrated synthetic stone (king, Naniwa, Norton, Shapton).
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- #23
I have a ruby that is 1" by 3". Using it requires doing small rotative motions. It works so well at erasing Scratches marks ranging from King 1K to Norton 8K that I have been tempted to get the full size one and see how it would work as a proper hone.
Back to the small gems stones, I have many razors that were honed solely on those little things after bevel was set.
Progression is King 1K for bevel on full size stone. Then ruby, Jade, orange Agate. I used to do the Finishing on a brown Agate. I am now experimenting with a Pink one that seems similar in grit to the Brown and a purple one that seems a tad thinner.
I was hoping that a 15K natural stone would give me a smoother edge than the Agates, but that did not happen. Not even close.
What's the feedback like on those gem stones? Is it completely glassy or does it have some draw? Does it vary between the different stones?
Thanks. Didn't know, and often helps to qualify things. Are you using pics from a microscope? Can you determine depth as well as width? Just curious as I have found that the sharpest edge is not necessarily the most comfortable.
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My 'beryl' had a red side, they called it ruby. It's just sintered corundum. I think the beryls, jades, agates and so on are all sintered something or another.. The red one I had was about 3k or so, cut like a demon on oil, like carp on water.
The alleged beryl was fine - a decent stone. Nothing to write home about. Probably tops out between 8-10k JIS.
The auction site sellers keep everyone entertained with their ridiculous stories of natural this and high grit that, it's kinda funny actually. They're commercial polishing stones for mold makers, engravers, etc.
But - you can make them work if you want to. They just don't go the distance that the sellers claim. Not for our purposes anyway.
They're not gems, and not natural - just commercial synthetic stone. The red one is dead as a doornail. The beryl had some life. Haven't tried the fake agate yet. There's a few cool looking ones out there, but you can't pick the stone you want so it's up to the seller and who knows what'll show up. Saw an interesting blue/white one with a wave pattern and a black/white mottled one too.
Has anyone used real "agate"?
Sure - Jasper too - some can work, others can mess up the edge. Trial/error time there.
Interesting. I've got a couple big slabs of chalcedony that might work.
If you have a way to trim the edges up nice, you may wind up with something nice to work with.
I already had the chunk cut into roughly 3" x 5" slabs. I need to lap them. I never could find anyone who had used it to hone with, so I shelved the project.
Look in this sub forum for the 'making a hone' thread - in there you'll find many posts about Jasper slabs being used.
How thick are the slabs?
How thick are the slabs?
1/2"
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- #34
There is a little feedback.
When you start on the jade, you feel a little scratch that goes away after a while. I then move to an agate and get a little scratch again until it goes away.
Not as much feedback as a Shapton glass stone though.
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- #35
I've had edge mess up problems on stone I am trying out, which is why I have a few that works that I am sticking too and a few I have not even tried.
Since this is the last step of the honing, one bad stone, and you are back to resetting the bevel.
A lot of the issues I've had with the agates are the surrounding raw stuff.
The ones that are cut into little rectangles don't have those issues.
I've also tried picking up random stones in the wild and lapping them and this has proven less successful. At least the agate have a pretty clean surface once lapped.
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- #36
So here are the agates I used ordered by grit (top one is finest)
The bottom 2 I bought on eBay from one of those sellers. Some how I do not think they are synthetic (agate is neither rare nor expensive after all), but I have no way to prove it.
The bottom grey one is about 10K, same as a Jade, so I typically do not use is as the jade works fine. The agate cuts faster, so on some swedish steel for which the jade does not do much, I use it a bit to get things started and then polish on the Jade.
The orange one is good. It gives me something thinner than my Shapton 16K (rated at 0.9 microns). I like it as it does not have any border and give me a reliable polish.
The next one up is the pink one and that one is definitely natural. I think I have lapped it properly, but still I'd feel better if the raw border was gone. It is a bit thinner than the orange one but does not cut as fast.
The one above I call the brown one, but it has an composite structure. It was my finishing stone until a few weeks ago when I tested the purple one and found it to be even thinner.
The bottom two are the types I'm referring to that see being sold out of Asia. Fleapay, yes - but other places also. Sometimes they're sold as 'Pulpstone'. They 'could' be agate out of the ground, but it would be highly unusual to cut Agate like that and see it as we do. I'm leaning toward sintered something or another. I've had direct dealings with one of the wholesalers, translation was difficult at times but I did get the feeling that all of what he was selling, which was stones like those bottom 2, is man-made.
The other thing is that I also see stones sold as 'agate' that is obviously not Agate; crazy colors, patterns, etc. The 'ruby' stones are obvisouly sintered, same for the blue ones. There were black ones also.
But - sure, they could be natural. No way to know for sure.
Now that - is sweet. Nice work. I kept looking for slabs of something that thick, and rectangular, but nothing turned up. Very cool. Pix needed!
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When I get home I'll snap a few pics.
Here we go. The jeweler who cut this for me measured the hardness at 7.3, so it's a tad harder than the other chalcedony blends(agate, jasper, chert, flint, etc.). The lack of color lead him to believe it was a very pure silicon. I was hiking the Absaroka range in Montana, just north of Yellowstone National Park, when I busted my toe on it 
I'm guessing it was thrown from the park during the last eruption. The coloring in chalcedonies comes from minerals/impurities in the groundwater that fill voids in limestone or basalt flows. A lot of the minerals that makeup the different colors are nonexistent in the Park. This thing is almost pure Silicon Dioxide.
I'm guessing it was thrown from the park during the last eruption. The coloring in chalcedonies comes from minerals/impurities in the groundwater that fill voids in limestone or basalt flows. A lot of the minerals that makeup the different colors are nonexistent in the Park. This thing is almost pure Silicon Dioxide.
