my first oil stones

[Michael Bulatowicz]

A relevant side note: I have never abraded the surface of my Dan's hard black Arkansas stone, with diamonds or anything else. I see no advantage in doing so when it's still improving in its polishing capability. Of course, I'm making assumptions here: I have never tried abrading the stone surface to see what that does to the surface of the wood, so I can't say definitively that it would degrade the polishing capability, but by the same token why would I risk degrading a stone that keeps getting better?

[Robert Hazelwood]

A relevant side note: I have never abraded the surface of my Dan's hard black Arkansas stone, with diamonds or anything else. I see no advantage in doing so when it's still improving in its polishing capability. Of course, I'm making assumptions here: I have never tried abrading the stone surface to see what that does to the surface of the wood, so I can't say definitively that it would degrade the polishing capability, but by the same token why would I risk degrading a stone that keeps getting better?

Abrading oil stones is about keeping them coarser and fast cutting. I wouldn't abrade a hard black, it would defeat its purpose as a fine polishing stone. I don't ever abrade the translucent I use for polishing, just the fine india and soft arkansas. Neither of those is ever going to be a polishing stone, so I want them to cut fast. In my experience abrading these stones doesn't make them dramatically coarser, but you can tell it has more bite when sharpening and the job seems to get done a little faster. They remain fine enough that the translucent can finish the job.

[Adam AR Brown]

Wow, really interesting thread. Thanks for all the advice. I've ordered a Dan's soft Arkansas to start. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

[Michael Bulatowicz]

Abrading oil stones is about keeping them coarser and fast cutting. I wouldn't abrade a hard black, it would defeat its purpose as a fine polishing stone. I don't ever abrade the translucent I use for polishing, just the fine india and soft arkansas. Neither of those is ever going to be a polishing stone, so I want them to cut fast. In my experience abrading these stones doesn't make them dramatically coarser, but you can tell it has more bite when sharpening and the job seems to get done a little faster. They remain fine enough that the translucent can finish the job.

Thanks for sharing your experience, Robert. I have no experience with abrading Arkansas stones, so it's interesting to hear what others have observed when doing so.

For fast cutting, I generally start with a fine India if I'm using a steel friendly to finishing on the Arkansas; if I am using a steel like A2 or PM-V11, I may start with a 1000 grit water stone and finish with the Sigma 13k (plus strop).

[Jim Koepke]

Wow, really interesting thread. Thanks for all the advice. I've ordered a Dan's soft Arkansas to start. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

Looking forward to your thoughts after putting blade(s) to stone.

jtk

[Andrew Pitonyak]

Don't be confused by "grit" charts. People new to Arks get thrown off by this.

Technically, a soft ark might be close to 600 grit, and a black close to 1000 grit. But in actuality, the surface is entirely different from manmade stones, and the soft "600 grit" ark will cut like a 1500-3000 grit man-made stone. The black will cut more like an 8-10k.
Grit means nothing when talking about natural stones because the shape of the "grit" itself and the shallowness of the peaks and valleys are not taken into account. It's not like a homogenous brick of evenly sized particles, and in the case of novaculite, there's not even really individual particles. They're all fused together and the peaks and valleys are much, much shallower than with man-made stones, leaving an entirely different kind of edge and scratch pattern.

Everything Luke says here is right on the money. I have a document where I list the grit range according to different companies and things vary wildly for their claims. I pulled values for Preyda, Dan's, and Best. Best has an interesting write-up where they compare scratch patterns to suggest a grit range for their stones.

https://www.bestsharpeningstones.com...ng-stone-grits

Dan's has the best reputation I think, but I have not had trouble with my stones from Preyda, Dan's, Best, or Norton; I own lots of OIL stones. If you lived near Columbus Ohio I would suggest that you stop in and you could give them a try.



I did find that I had to change how I sharpened with an Arkansas stone to chase the burr before I got decent results. https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....age2&p=3143310

You will not sharpen quickly with an Arkansas, so keep it sharp and maintain your edge, much better than trying to make it sharp again.

If you want to test, a nice start might be to find the finest stone based on the company that sells it. For example, if you purchase something from Dan's, get the Black, which is less expensive than the translucent. For Best, it is the translucent. Also consider a Ceramic stone. I am partial to the Norton Ascent Ceramic stones because they have a guarantee on how flat they are and the Spyderco stones do not (and some people have had to flatten their Spyderco stones, but that is very old news and may no longer apply). The Norton Ascent places their Fine as roughly 4K and their Ultra fine as roughly 8K.

https://www.sharpeningsupplies.com/N...ine-P1781.aspx

[Luke Dupont]

I did find that I had to change how I sharpened with an Arkansas stone to chase the burr before I got decent results.

One thing you'll find with Arkansas stones is that flatness is way more important. Because they're so hard and not aggressive, they won't polish all the way down to the edge if the back of your iron or chisel isn't perfectly flat all the way down to that point.
Softer and/or more aggressive stones are more forgiving of imperfect flatness.

I've found it helpful sometimes to take a bit of sandpaper on the tip of my finger and just make a (entirely imperceptible aside from the scratch pattern) swirling hollow on the backs of chisels or plane irons to make sure they register flat and don't rock -- much like you see on Japanese chisels and planes. It doesn't take much at all, but it does wonders. It will come out naturally with sharpening (probably by the time you even get it flat) and is more about just removing some of the bulk and making sure it registers flat and isn't rocking/bulging in the middle.

Once the geometry is up to snuff, chasing the burr is much easier with Arkansas stones. Granted, I usually follow up with about 20 strokes on a bare leather strop which helps remove any burr and refines the edge just a bit further.

But anyway, I just want to really emphasize this point because it's that important: Arks are really unforgiving of bad geometry. So much so that I consider them a good test of whether something is truly flat or not (provided the stone itself is flat, which, if it's an Ark, it usually is). So if anyone finds themselves having trouble with arks, that's probably the number one cause.

[Cameron Wood]

These are some arkansas that I have- L-R: medium (unfortunately cracked), hard, & hard.
I trued them a year or two ago & they haven't been used much as I mostly use water stones. Spent 15 or 20 seconds each with a diamond plate (not the cheap-o in the pic) & you can see that they are dished.
Blame my technique, & maybe it doesn't matter to you, but don't assume your stone is flat because it's hard & you haven't checked.


IMG_3917.jpg

[Warren Mickley]

These are some arkansas that I have- L-R: medium (unfortunately cracked), hard, & hard.
I trued them a year or two ago & they haven't been used much as I mostly use water stones. Spent 15 or 20 seconds each with a diamond plate (not the cheap-o in the pic) & you can see that they are dished.
Blame my technique, & maybe it doesn't matter to you, but don't assume your stone is flat because it's hard & you haven't checked.


IMG_3917.jpg

My black Arkansas stone is 1.000 inches thick, the same as it was in 1976. It has not been flattened or abraded in that time. Abrading a stone like this will make it rather similar to a soft Arkansas or a Washita; it will abrade steel somewhat faster, but not polish as well.

If you want a stone that acts like a soft Arkansas stone, it is much cheaper to buy a soft Arkansas stone, and you save time you would spend with constant abrasion.

[Tom M King]

Neither the Hard nor the Black stones from the first ones I bought about the same year as Warren have never been flattened or abraded in any way either. I still use them today. They stay in my truck for the traveling sharpening kit.

[Cameron Wood]

Those illustrate the "doesn't matter" category, which does apply to knife sharpening.

The idea that truing a stone would mess up it's cutting quality is curious- realizing that all stones were cut and ground to get to their rectangular shape. If the stone gets glazed and doesn't cut but only polishes that's fine I guess, but not much different than you would get on glass or a steel plate.

[Rafael Herrera]

A glazed stone is a different scenario.

A hard arkansas is a very low abrassion sharpening stone, its intended function is to polish the final edge, not to remove a significant amount of metal. That's what the coarser stones are for. Glass or a steel plate will not finish an edge.

If someone insists in roughing a hard arknsas so he can feel it grinding the metal, that's his business, but as Warren indicated, it's not being used right.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

These are some arkansas that I have- L-R: medium (unfortunately cracked), hard, & hard.
I trued them a year or two ago & they haven't been used much as I mostly use water stones. Spent 15 or 20 seconds each with a diamond plate

I trued a few Arkansas stones and I used silicone carbide crystals on float glass. Note that it is very easy to round the ends when you do this this and (probably) near impossible to dish the center. Also, it is MUCH easier to wear down the ends than to wear down a hump in the middle. So, if you figure out that you need this, tread with caution and check often.

I watched a guy on a video do this on web concrete because there are abrasives in the concrete but it is hit or miss if it works on the concrete in question. Float glass and the silicone carbide crystals are a sure thing. Diamond plates are great, but you wear them down quickly doing this with those.

Lee Valley sells the glass and the crystals (if you were wondering). An easy place to just go and buy it. Well, OK, I bought some there a while ago.

I read an article about purchasing a Washita stone (back when they were easily available new) and people would make one side coarse and one side fine. Obviously what they were really doing was refining the scratch patterns on the stones and not affecting the the size of the abrasives. I have never done this and I won't attempt to describe how or why this might work. The important thing to understand about this is that the size of the abrasive that you use to flatten, polish, or abrade your stone will affect the finish the stone leaves on your tools. So if I had to remove a dish from a translucent stone I would obviously end up using a finer abrasive than if I was removing the dish from a Soft Arkansas stone.

[Andrew Pitonyak]

A glazed stone is a different scenario.

I don't suppose you ever dealt with that? I assumed I might be able to deal with that using an abrasive pad, but I simply never dealt with it on an Arkansas stone. If you have, curious how you dealt with it. I would be very paranoid with a hard fine stone like surgical black or translucent.

[Rafael Herrera]

I've only dealt with old stones that had a layer of dried up oil and dirt. I rub them on coarse SiC grit on float glass. That results in a clean and flat stone. If I managed to glaze one of my stones, I would do the same.