Help me pick an Arkansas stone

[John C Cox]

Something in my process could be amiss, or perhaps I got bad stones.

I checked the density of both stones I got from Natural Whetstone. One was 2.16 and the other 2.22. That puts them both on the soft side of "Soft Arkansas." Interestingly, the more dense of the two seems slightly faster, but it's also more "scratchy." The less dense one is very uniform and polishes more than cuts.

On Jim's recommendation, I picked up a cheap Smith's "Arkansas stone". It's pretty brash, and has a lot of boo-boo's on the face. I'm going to give it a once over on a diamond plate to knock down errant high spots and try that one again. Initial impression, the feedback of the stone is nice, but it feels "harder" against my tools than the ones from Natural Whetstone. Finish was similar to the other two - very slow and not really removing fine India scratches quickly. This may be improved with flattening.

I've got a genuine Norton soft Arkansas on order, so we'll see.

Also in the works is some actual honing oil. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn't, but I started on soapy water and moved to "Smith's honing fluid" which is what I can buy locally, but it's water based. Nobody around here sells "Sharpening Oil" anymore, so I'll try a 50/50 mix of baby oil and odorless mineral spirits.

[John C Cox]

Ha! They're called "Oil stones" for a reason.

All three of my Arkansas stones are completely different animals when lubed with WD-40 instead of water or water based stuff. In fact, they cut better the more I used them. It's almost like the oil deglazed the stone.

So... Method. With oil... I honed my Chinesium Buck Bro's chisel across the bevel on the India stone till all the lengthwise scratches were gone. Then tested an Ark, back to the India to reset the scratches crosswise, and so forth.

With oil, they're 100% COMPLETELY different stones. Good feedback. All 3 will make a burr. They're reasonably fast to clean off all the scratches from the India grit, and fairly easy to tease off the burr. All three leave a dullish mirror finish.

In order of fastest speed/best results:
NW "Soft". The beige/swirly grain rock that was hateful with water was the best of the 3 with oil. It's faster by maybe half than the NW "Hard," and leaves a far less scratchy finish, and it's easiest to tease off the burr. The current winner.

Smiths. Speed maybe a bit slower than the NW Soft, but it had a few uglies that left scratches. If you want to try an Ark, buy one of these, but lap it before you use it. Use it with OIL, not their "Honing fluid" or you'll hate the thing. Lapping went fast. This is a good "Entry" stone.

NW "Hard." The white/uniform rock was slowest of the 3 but also left the scratchiest finish, but the scratches were shallow. You can feel this when working the stone. This one also has sort of weird feedback. Sections of the stone feel like it's fairly slick and there's nothing happening, then the scratches are gone. Other sections feel distinctly rough. I think this stone could use some more lapping, but gosh, lapping it is hateful.

There's a moral to the story in here somewhere...

[Rob Luter]

I can see the allure of synthetic stones.

Agreed. Once I discovered Shaptons I was hooked. Spritz and go is nice, and boy do they cut.

[Rafael Herrera]

Brand new stones have relatively rough faces. They will settle down and smooth over time. You may want to use them for a while to get an actual feel for them.

[Rafael Herrera]

Honing oil has been a subject of intense debate in the past. It very interesting the difference in performace you got when using water.

I use food grade mineral oil, which I buy in gallon jugs. Baby oil, sewing machine oil, laxative oil, are also other names for mineral oil. FG mineral oil is thin, clear and odorless, which I prefer to some other honing oils which are cut with solvents and can have a strong smell.

--

I need to make a correction regarding the soft Arkansas stone I posted pictures of earlier. It's not a Dan's soft. It's an "Arkansas Abrasives" brand soft Arkansas I bought from ebay, no idea of the quality of the stones produced by this company. I only have a black Arkansas and a translucent from Dan's.

I do have a Natural Whentstones soft I got after talking to David Weaver, he did take down all his videos. He has a blog and there are some whetstones articles in them.

I made a video yesterday using this stone re-sharpening an Ashley Iles chisel. The video ends after I got a good burr.

[John C Cox]

Honing oil has been a subject of intense debate in the past. It very interesting the difference in performace you got when using water.

I saw many of the same posts. I'm just calling it as it happened.

I didn't have any honing oil handy, so I tried water, soapy water, and a water based "honing fluid." All I got was polishing with no cutting aggression.

There was a night and day difference with oil.

I've run into similar sorts of things like this that made me scratch my head. For example, both my DMT diamond plates, and my old Case Moonstone ceramic stone cut WAY better with spit than with water, oil, windex, or combinations of such. They're different stones on spit.

I didn't test the Arks on spit... Oil worked very well.

I guess that's just how it goes.

[John C Cox]

Just to circle back around after trying several out, here's my summary:

Arkansas stones, including soft, are finishers. They are not the stone to use to work out chips, sort out geometry, or deal with machine grind marks. The soft Arkansas stone comes AFTER a fine India or P800 sandpaper. A good soft arkansas will leave a dull mirror finish lacking visible scratches.

The Norton Soft Arkansas I got stands apart from every single other Arkansas stone I tried. It is aggressive, fast, and leaves a really even finish pattern. You can go hard and cut fast, then reduce pressure to wipe off the burr and and polish the bevel. It is everything I wanted in an Arkansas stone EXCEPT it needed a bunch of lapping to flatten it. This stone is fast to the point that I have to watch my technique or I will wreck geometry quick. Absolutely a winner, BUT it needed a lot of lapping to deal with a pretty significant belly. You can get an 8" combo stone of one of these glued to a Medium India for considerably less than their 8x2x3/4 soft ark bench stone. I didn't go that route, but it seems like a pretty good deal.

The Smith's 6" available at Ace and Lowes would be my recommendation if you want to try out an Arkansas stone on the cheap. If nothing else, this stone will give you a fairly good idea of what to expect out of soft Arkansas stones, it is pretty well behaved, and it's pretty cheap locally. It will need to be lapped, but it goes pretty quick on a coarse diamond stone. If you try it out and say "Yuck" - there's no point in bothering with Arkansas stones, and you're not out a fortune.

Dan's Hard stones are fantastically flat and come in with a nice surface texture. Seems like a lot of people use these as a next step after a fine India. If you don't have the gear to lap a stone, this is a great way to go. I'm sure this will settle down with more use, but it is really nice.

Natural Whetstone. Slow, soft stones which leave a scratchy finish AND need a lot of work to get flat. Mine glaze pretty quickly, but can be improved somewhat by lapping across the stone with 180 or 220 grit. Other people have gotten good stones from these guys but I don't recommend based on what I got.

[Rafael Herrera]

Can you send pictures of your norton soft Arkansas?

[John C Cox]

I would love to, but as a member here, I can't post pics or do PM's. I'd be happy to snap a few and shoot them to you if you have some other method of contact.

[Warren Mickley]

I would love to, but as a member here, I can't post pics or do PM's. I'd be happy to snap a few and shoot them to you if you have some other method of contact.

You can post pictures on the forum, just not see them.

[Rafael Herrera]

I'm just curious John, I have not handled a Norton soft Arkansas, but from looking at pictures on the Internet they look white without any spots on them. Norton owns the quarries where the Lily White Washitas were extracted from. They came up with that brand name because the stones where uniformly white when freshly made. When one finds a labeled Lily white stone, they are not white and rather yellowed. This is one of the labeled Lily White stones I own, after lapping, nothing like the stones below.

20230516_004710.jpg

Norton had a brief run in 2008 of what they branded as Lily Whites. They had a brief run of "Washitas" in 2020, but they were not all white. I just wonder what these Norton's softs are, are they extracted from the Lily White deposits? Who knows.

Lily Whites from 2008. (picture from Internet)
lily_1_1200.jpg

Washitas from 2020. (picture from Internet)
WS688-z.jpg

A side by side of a stone I bought with a vintage Washita, new Washita on left side.
20201202_223621.jpg

Marketing pictures of Norton Soft Arkansas (SB8) (pictures from Internet)
41lLqJDg9+L._AC_SL1280_.jpg41Yn8EWJisL._AC_SL1001_.jpg

I know that color alone is not the correct way to judge the stone quality, but the similarity of the SB8s above, the 2008 Lily Whites, and your description of your stone, makes me wonder.

P.S. Can you see the pictures I'm posting? If not, becoming a member might be worth it.

[John C Cox]

Ok, well, here's a try. The stone is the least dense Arkansas stone I have, at 1.97. The Dan's hard is 2.45 and a Norton Translucent is 2.68. The stone is "white" with fine, light gray mottling and very light rust colored smoke like streaks. It is hard to get a good pic because the figure is white on white.

Here's a picture of the unused side, dry, and then next to a Norton translucent ark.
4785B615-42BD-4CA3-8DF7-AD371FEF1381.jpg
4CC4D7FF-C06F-43FA-AEDE-373ECF2E6C29.jpg

[Rafael Herrera]

Thank you. Once they're used, they darken, not much one can do about it. Yours looks nice. A nice box and it'd be ready for the bench.

Where and which size Norton soft arkansas did you get?

If 1.97 is accurate, that's a pretty coarse stone. When I measured the specific gravity of my washitas, all of them hovered around 2.3.

If the weight given here is for the stone itself, this is a 2.08 SG stone, that's within the Washita range. Tempting to give it a try.

https://www.amazon.com/SB8-SOFT-ARKA.../dp/B0006NDPT4

[John C Cox]

Yeah, mine is getting gray on the other side from use. That's the one I got. Same vendor.