Just curious has anyone tried using grey soapstone for honing or setting a bevel. I am referring to the soft stone that artists use for their carvings. Since it can be easily gouged I would imagine it's too soft to use as a polisher but perhaps it can set a bevel and it's cheap to buy. Just curious to know if it's been done before.
Using soap stone for honing?
- Thread starter rambus007
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It's mostly talc. Very low hardness. I don't know - I would guess that it would be better as a polisher and not very good for removing metal as a bevel setter, but who knows....
Clocking in at 2.2 Mohs really doesn't make soapstone a good candidate for scratching hardened steel...
You can scratch soapstone with your fingernail but you can't scratch your razor with your nail, so it's a no go
You can scratch soapstone with your fingernail but you can't scratch your razor with your nail, so it's a no go
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- #5
Tangentially, apparently coticules were sometimes referred to as soapstones. Does that count?
Yes I read about it in one of Bart's messages today and it got me thinking if our 'western' soapstone would work too.
Clocking in at 2.2 Mohs really doesn't make soapstone a good candidate for scratching hardened steel...
You can scratch soapstone with your fingernail but you can't scratch your razor with your nail, so it's a no go
Wow you guys amaze me with how much knowledge you have. Thanks for sharing that with us. Your point makes absolute sense. I wonder if the soapstone can be used to remove grime or rust at least since it won't 'harm' the finish on the metal as it isn't hard enough to scratch it?
I draw on steel with soapstone...does that count?
Phil
Phil
If you want to try to polish with stone, try rotten stone or maybe pumice.
A good use for the soapstone would be to carve a nice straight razor stand out of it
Well, ya know, there's really only one thing to do.... try it.
I would. If I had a soap-stone.... (hhhmmmm..... wonder who I know might have one ....?...)
Got nothin' to lose, except maybe you've got to re-hone the razor.
Just because something has a lower rating on the Moh's scale doesn't mean it doesn't have some kind of an abrasive effect, it's all a matter of degree, right?. Whether or not one could tell the difference i couldn't say.
I would. If I had a soap-stone.... (hhhmmmm..... wonder who I know might have one ....?...)
Got nothin' to lose, except maybe you've got to re-hone the razor.
Just because something has a lower rating on the Moh's scale doesn't mean it doesn't have some kind of an abrasive effect, it's all a matter of degree, right?. Whether or not one could tell the difference i couldn't say.
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I scratched my fingernail with a razor once. What's that mean?
Steel is harder than your fingernail.
It's interesting that the soap stone is 2.2 on the Mohs. What grit rating does it have?
I'm thinking it could be ground into a fine powder and used for a paste...
I'm thinking it could be ground into a fine powder and used for a paste...
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- #12
You know if a leather strop can ruin the keen edge of a blade, then soapstone must have some ability to either polish or hone the razor. I think I'll buy some next time I'm at Lee Valley and report back here to share my findings. It will be my little contribution to the wet shaving community.
Rotten stone is similar (ground limestone mostly)
I've tried it on a strop & it didn't work.
Just messed up the edge.
But soap-stone is cheap so just go ahead guys!
Best use for rotten stone is IMO if you have some old, tired looking wooden furniture, sprinkle a light dust of rotten stone over it, polish vigorously with a piece of felt & lo & behold the revived finish
There is no grit rating for a natural rock. It's primarily comprised of talc, which is a clay mineral (in some ways simlar to mica). This is talcum powder, right? Powdery flakes that slip past each other on your skin. That same feeling is why they call it soapstone.
Particle size can range from <0.1u to larger, macroscopic flakes, but it is very easily broken down. Problem is that if you ground it down, you have to be sure that it's concentrated (no quartz, etc. impurities).
the leather in a strop isn't what does the edge ruining, its the silica in the air that embeds itself in the leather that does it. Technically speaking the hardness of things is what either abrades or not. Wood will never in a million years cut steel and much less something like a diamond. Hence since nothing is harder than a diamond except maybe nano tubes, nothing will ever scratch a diamond except another diamond. Even our hands are abrasive when particles of other hard minerals embed themselves in them. Some dude from my home town, a barber, used to go to a place where they literally wash sand for concrete, he said all the minerals that come out of the sand were good for treating strops??? So I went there and there is literally a river of very very fine sediment got a sample rubbed some on a strop and voila works like a charm. Turns out that most of that sand is none other than.... SILICA!
Silica is the reason why soft sandstone was so heavily used & still is for grinding wheels
Here is what will happen, (I'm almost certain).
The razor will be drawn along the soap stone. As it is so soft the razors sharp edge will dig in slightly, shaving a thin layer from the stone. That layer will either curl over the edge or go under it, distorting the stones flatness. Either way, the end result would be a blunt or damaged edge.
Essentially, to sharpen a tool the stone need to be harder than the the tool it is working against in order to abrade away any imperfections and non-uniform material from the edge. If the stone is softer you will have the opposite result and the tool will wear away the stone.
This is why we do not sharpen chisels on wood.
While some sharpening stones may appear to be soft, the soft part is actually a matrix in which something very hard is suspended. Something like silica or garnet, etc. As the matrix wears away the hard mineral abrades the steel. To my knowledge there is no hard mineral suspended in soapstone.
The razor will be drawn along the soap stone. As it is so soft the razors sharp edge will dig in slightly, shaving a thin layer from the stone. That layer will either curl over the edge or go under it, distorting the stones flatness. Either way, the end result would be a blunt or damaged edge.
Essentially, to sharpen a tool the stone need to be harder than the the tool it is working against in order to abrade away any imperfections and non-uniform material from the edge. If the stone is softer you will have the opposite result and the tool will wear away the stone.
This is why we do not sharpen chisels on wood.
While some sharpening stones may appear to be soft, the soft part is actually a matrix in which something very hard is suspended. Something like silica or garnet, etc. As the matrix wears away the hard mineral abrades the steel. To my knowledge there is no hard mineral suspended in soapstone.
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- Thread starter
- #18
Thank you Legion for your valued input. Great points you made.
I've been thinking about this a lot for some reason. And when i first read Legion's post I thought "yep.. he's right" but i been chewing on this since i read the original post, and now I'm not so sure.
I'm posotive that it would be very likely that the edge could dig into the stone. I've done it often enough with a chisel and a regular water stone. But, it is also possible to control that, and eliminate that effect if your technique is perfect. And then as I was sitting here, i had this thought that an easy proof of concept might be to try it on a flat, smooth surface that was waayyy softer than the steel.... and thought of a couple things, like an empty toitel paper tube... of to the garbage can i go... no TP tube darn it.... hhhmmm I do see an empty bath-soap box..... Irish spring to be exact
it''s got an unprinted, smooth, flat side. Well i'll be darned if I wasn't able to do a dozen or more honing strokes, edge forward, before I wobbled and took a little divot out of the side. Twenty minutes after that, I had run my test razor succsefully on: a pack of smokes, a shampoo bottle, a paper back book cover (but not the pages, that was prone to digging in) and a couple other strange things. A surprising number of things.
As long as the surface is realtivey smooth it doesn''t just automaticaly grab the edge if the blade is flat and smooth and the stroke is even and light.
But what's really underlying my thinking is that substances that are low on the Moh's scale will still offer a certain degree of abrasion, but very slowly, and certainly what we might consider utra-fine polishing. Things like the celusose in the linen and cotton strops we use, the chalk said to be in Dovo's white paste, the graphite (?) in Dovo's black are all very low on the scale, (does the active agent in linen strops even fall into the moh's scale? IDK...) but can still provide an effect. Something like a solid talc in a smooth flat substrate might offer a high degree of polishing simply because of that function, but still allow one to keep a perfectly flat bevel.
All this is just a theory, a thought experiment, if you will, but I'd love to give it a try. 10 minutes with a lapping plate and some sand paper and a flat piece of clean soap stone, a few swipes of a test razor. Even a few edge trailing strokes. I'd bet it would polish the bevel like nothing else.
Not that I really imagine it to be the next greatest thing or anything, if nothing, it would wear awfully fast, and slurry dulling might be a real issue. And any wobble in the stroke would cause the edge to dig in so it sure wouldn't be very forgiving to use.
I'm going to hit the seconghand stores in the area and see if i can find some kind of soap stone thing I can subvert to the cause. I'm willing to spend a buck or two to give it a try, but not much more.
I'm posotive that it would be very likely that the edge could dig into the stone. I've done it often enough with a chisel and a regular water stone. But, it is also possible to control that, and eliminate that effect if your technique is perfect. And then as I was sitting here, i had this thought that an easy proof of concept might be to try it on a flat, smooth surface that was waayyy softer than the steel.... and thought of a couple things, like an empty toitel paper tube... of to the garbage can i go... no TP tube darn it.... hhhmmm I do see an empty bath-soap box..... Irish spring to be exact
it''s got an unprinted, smooth, flat side. Well i'll be darned if I wasn't able to do a dozen or more honing strokes, edge forward, before I wobbled and took a little divot out of the side. Twenty minutes after that, I had run my test razor succsefully on: a pack of smokes, a shampoo bottle, a paper back book cover (but not the pages, that was prone to digging in) and a couple other strange things. A surprising number of things.As long as the surface is realtivey smooth it doesn''t just automaticaly grab the edge if the blade is flat and smooth and the stroke is even and light.
But what's really underlying my thinking is that substances that are low on the Moh's scale will still offer a certain degree of abrasion, but very slowly, and certainly what we might consider utra-fine polishing. Things like the celusose in the linen and cotton strops we use, the chalk said to be in Dovo's white paste, the graphite (?) in Dovo's black are all very low on the scale, (does the active agent in linen strops even fall into the moh's scale? IDK...) but can still provide an effect. Something like a solid talc in a smooth flat substrate might offer a high degree of polishing simply because of that function, but still allow one to keep a perfectly flat bevel.
All this is just a theory, a thought experiment, if you will, but I'd love to give it a try. 10 minutes with a lapping plate and some sand paper and a flat piece of clean soap stone, a few swipes of a test razor. Even a few edge trailing strokes. I'd bet it would polish the bevel like nothing else.
Not that I really imagine it to be the next greatest thing or anything, if nothing, it would wear awfully fast, and slurry dulling might be a real issue. And any wobble in the stroke would cause the edge to dig in so it sure wouldn't be very forgiving to use.
I'm going to hit the seconghand stores in the area and see if i can find some kind of soap stone thing I can subvert to the cause. I'm willing to spend a buck or two to give it a try, but not much more.
I'm going to hit the seconghand stores in the area and see if i can find some kind of soap stone thing I can subvert to the cause. I'm willing to spend a buck or two to give it a try, but not much more.
I am glad you took the time to experiment.
A suggestion: call up an architecture recycler and ask about a small soap stone counter top, backsplash, or basin. Most geographic areas have at least one company who dismantles old structures before demolition and resells the fixtures.
Phil
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