One doesn't read much here about the arkies and my earliest impressions were that they were "ok" for knives, but not up to handling the demands of putting a fine edge on straights. These were my first impressions. Over the last six months, however, someone here and someone there would make a strongly favorable comment about the edges they were getting off their arkansas stone. Even using it as a finisher after a jnat which simply astonished me.
What I didn't understand was, if they were such fine finishers, why weren't more people using them? Where were the threads discussing the best places to buy them? More interestingly, how come they almost never show up on the BST? It was a puzzle, but I decided that if I found one cheap enough to take a risk on, then I'd do it. It was nearly 2 months before the opportunity presented itself, but a vintage one came up on another forum for 45 bucks shipped which is at the upper level of my "gamble on it limit". It was part of a lot the seller had purchased elsewhere and he said it improved the edges on his razors and didn't need lapping and so I bought it.
The arkie arrived and on first look it was promising. The box was in good shape and it appeared flat with a small bit chipped out of one corner. I'd read an earlier thread here on how monstrously difficult they could be to flatten and discussed with life2short1971 the possibility of sending it out to a lapidary to be flattened. In the end, it appeared close enough to flat for me to try and so I went at it. Fellas, this was one hard stone.
Here is the final finished product. Took at least an hour and a half to lap. Interestingly, I started really removing stone when I got up to 1500 grit. It ate the sandpaper like a labrador eats biscuits, but it was much faster than the lower grits.
View attachment 346598
And here's how it progressed in the lapping on 400 grit at 10/20/40 minutes. Note that the middle rather than the edges were the high spot. Pretty pleased about that.
View attachment 346599View attachment 346600View attachment 346601View attachment 346602
So now I had a flat translucent gem from Arkansas. Wasn't really sure what to do at this point, but again from the reading I understood them to be slow finishers and to use oil. Grabbed about a half dozen of my shave ready razors, mineral oil and the arkie.
I had no real idea what I was doing here. After the first half dozen, the results were so stunning, I grabbed another 6. Ended up doing a combination of circles and x strokes on a thin oil film. Sometimes the oil was very thick and so I honed longer letting the oil slowly accumulate on the blade and then wiped it off and honed it again. Generally it was about 2-3 minutes of honing.
Before and after honing each razor, I did an HHT. In every case, it improved the edge and this was before stropping. Much of this is subjective, heck, nearly all of it is, but I did this multiple times with at least a dozen razors and to my eye the difference was unmistakeable. FWIW, my daughter gave me a cutting from her long locks for Father's Day so the hair was from a single clump from one person. They're not uniform, but I've gotten good enough that I can choose strands pretty close in thickness just from their feel and color. This contributes somewhat to the uniformity of the experiment though tester bias is unavoidable.
It was such an astonishing and easy improvement on already sharp edges, that even now I can't help but wonder what I'm missing. Where's the downside? I shaved with one of the razors, the Bartmann, this afternoon and it was an excellent shave. Nothing magical, no unicorn poop in my lather or pixie dust in my whiskers, but a smooth, irritation free shave from the second straight I've ever owned that was in some need of keening. The next step, suggested by Gamma, is to use it on my sharpest jnat edges and see what that does. Allegedly, this is where the arkie really earns its keep.
I'm getting ready to leave for a week on the road with my son and so there'll be no more honing for a while, but I'll be thinking about why such an excellent stone gets so little love here and/or what I may be missing in this equation. This may be early stage enthusiasm and so I'd be interested in the experience of others.
What I didn't understand was, if they were such fine finishers, why weren't more people using them? Where were the threads discussing the best places to buy them? More interestingly, how come they almost never show up on the BST? It was a puzzle, but I decided that if I found one cheap enough to take a risk on, then I'd do it. It was nearly 2 months before the opportunity presented itself, but a vintage one came up on another forum for 45 bucks shipped which is at the upper level of my "gamble on it limit". It was part of a lot the seller had purchased elsewhere and he said it improved the edges on his razors and didn't need lapping and so I bought it.
The arkie arrived and on first look it was promising. The box was in good shape and it appeared flat with a small bit chipped out of one corner. I'd read an earlier thread here on how monstrously difficult they could be to flatten and discussed with life2short1971 the possibility of sending it out to a lapidary to be flattened. In the end, it appeared close enough to flat for me to try and so I went at it. Fellas, this was one hard stone.
Here is the final finished product. Took at least an hour and a half to lap. Interestingly, I started really removing stone when I got up to 1500 grit. It ate the sandpaper like a labrador eats biscuits, but it was much faster than the lower grits.
View attachment 346598
And here's how it progressed in the lapping on 400 grit at 10/20/40 minutes. Note that the middle rather than the edges were the high spot. Pretty pleased about that.
View attachment 346599View attachment 346600View attachment 346601View attachment 346602
So now I had a flat translucent gem from Arkansas. Wasn't really sure what to do at this point, but again from the reading I understood them to be slow finishers and to use oil. Grabbed about a half dozen of my shave ready razors, mineral oil and the arkie.
I had no real idea what I was doing here. After the first half dozen, the results were so stunning, I grabbed another 6. Ended up doing a combination of circles and x strokes on a thin oil film. Sometimes the oil was very thick and so I honed longer letting the oil slowly accumulate on the blade and then wiped it off and honed it again. Generally it was about 2-3 minutes of honing.
Before and after honing each razor, I did an HHT. In every case, it improved the edge and this was before stropping. Much of this is subjective, heck, nearly all of it is, but I did this multiple times with at least a dozen razors and to my eye the difference was unmistakeable. FWIW, my daughter gave me a cutting from her long locks for Father's Day so the hair was from a single clump from one person. They're not uniform, but I've gotten good enough that I can choose strands pretty close in thickness just from their feel and color. This contributes somewhat to the uniformity of the experiment though tester bias is unavoidable.
It was such an astonishing and easy improvement on already sharp edges, that even now I can't help but wonder what I'm missing. Where's the downside? I shaved with one of the razors, the Bartmann, this afternoon and it was an excellent shave. Nothing magical, no unicorn poop in my lather or pixie dust in my whiskers, but a smooth, irritation free shave from the second straight I've ever owned that was in some need of keening. The next step, suggested by Gamma, is to use it on my sharpest jnat edges and see what that does. Allegedly, this is where the arkie really earns its keep.
I'm getting ready to leave for a week on the road with my son and so there'll be no more honing for a while, but I'll be thinking about why such an excellent stone gets so little love here and/or what I may be missing in this equation. This may be early stage enthusiasm and so I'd be interested in the experience of others.
