They work easily, I'd not go back to bench stones for these before-the-final steps myself, unless I can get a permanently-shaped piece of diamond [I have some prototypes paid for of that that have now been shipped from CN, we'll see how it goes], the advantage of diamonds in the short term before you get to your part you shave with is just too big for me to pass up upon, even with straight razors dying off people send me hone-for-hire razors in all sorts of geometric condition, these little blocks cut down the labor time exponentially vs even waterstones.
I recently ordered 2 11.5" Norton Stones, a M Crystolon and a F India. The Crystolon was flat but the India was slightly bowed, so I use the side that is bowed like a convex hone, it really helps finishing a knife blade, it cuts down on the time on the stone, even though I am only using half the stone for the finishing passes
hmm...Norton/Saint-Gobain used to be deadly accurate with flatness back in the day, I have a vintage 1970s soft Ark / fine India 2x6x1" and the India side even with a little oil on looks really really flat. You lucked out, you don't want to be reshaping that stuff!
Excellent video Jarrod. Would it be possible to see a microscope shot of the edge in the next video? It would be sweet if you could. Sharpening Supplies might have those small Arkansas stones. They would be listed under "slips and files". You can even find some that's already convexed.
SS does not have square files, that's what I personally want to hold on to if I am rubbing near a razor edge. Reliably, I think only Dan's offers them. The man who owned Natural Whetstone passed away but the ppl running it now, I would imagine could make them, though you'd need to flatten all four sides properly (I'm not too scared of a 1/2" x 4" pitch, though)...I used to buy from them pre-COVID and they had great rocks but the factory flatness was truly awful, which is a lot of $$$ cooked in to labor for what you saved vs. Dan's. I only have a binocular stereo microscope at the present, I can probably try to cook up some sort of contraption to put my cellphone camera over one objective, though...you won't be able to see shape in that 2D view, but seeing burr pre/post should be easy.
Hey Jarrod, great video again. Just a question from my side. Do you have any specific reason why you use acrylic or could I just use wood and one of this patches? And what is the length of the piece and what is the hight in the mid and at the ends? Would like to do convex honing, but I run a low budget 😂 and my wife kills me if I invest any further from our household treasury which we use for vacations etc. 😅
no, of course you can use wood, acrylic is just a luxury item. I like the extra density and the 1.5" thickness if I'm going to be using this (hopefully) daily. But to shape a piece of wood, here is the calculator I would use; www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/arc18.cgi?submit=Entry for an ellipse shape, you need to make two calculations, and add those arc heights, and that's the amount of size you would ultimately reduce from a beginning flat rectangle for example, these little 1x4" (25x100mm) honing slices have a principal diameter of about 2m and a diameter going across of 7.7m. With the width of an arc specified as 25mm and the radius as 3.85m, the arc height is 0.02029mm...next we determine the principal arc of the 100mm length, with a 1m radius the height is 1.25078mm, thus if you had a good caliper and could reduce your 25x100mm piece of wood by 1.27mm at the four corners and blend that as an ellipse shape, you'd have a good approximation of what we have here I have made by hand, before my shaping plate, many waterstones and coticules. The best way is to shape as if it is a cylinder, and once you have a very good 'caveman's cylinder' shape, then take down the height of the 2 outer long lines very very slightly, and blend that back to the center long line...you want only a tiny bit of convexity going across the stone, or none at all, but it is a lot easier to shape by hand a good ellipse with a small secondary axis (= a long secondary diameter) than it is to hand make a cylinder that never has a gap going across its surface at any line going across the short axis for me, ~1.8mØ down the length and ~7.5-9mØ across the width is ideal
14yrs ago I visited Solingen the first time and talked to an ~80yrs old grinder, who told me when he was young they used to use a single hard Arkansas wheel as the whole honing process until the strop, and that nothing was as good. That got me thinking, and eventually my office building landlord (native German) found an old 19th c. German grinding textbook, which mentioned in its razors chapter that if you use a wheel or wheel shaped abrasive to contact the razor where it is 0.1mm or thinner, the whole area
Thank you for sharing these honing sessions. I know they are for the customer, but I sure enjoy them.
I hope you are keeping well. Take care.
you are welcome kind person
Man it's amazing how you make these small size stones work
They work easily, I'd not go back to bench stones for these before-the-final steps myself, unless I can get a permanently-shaped piece of diamond [I have some prototypes paid for of that that have now been shipped from CN, we'll see how it goes], the advantage of diamonds in the short term before you get to your part you shave with is just too big for me to pass up upon, even with straight razors dying off people send me hone-for-hire razors in all sorts of geometric condition, these little blocks cut down the labor time exponentially vs even waterstones.
You have an innovative way to sharpen a razor! I bet they hate you on the straight razor forums!
yes, indeed it goes over every bit as well as you would imagine
Another great video Jarrod!
thank u!
Thanks for sharing 👍🏻
I recently ordered 2 11.5" Norton Stones, a M Crystolon and a F India. The Crystolon was flat but the India was slightly bowed, so I use the side that is bowed like a convex hone, it really helps finishing a knife blade, it cuts down on the time on the stone, even though I am only using half the stone for the finishing passes
hmm...Norton/Saint-Gobain used to be deadly accurate with flatness back in the day, I have a vintage 1970s soft Ark / fine India 2x6x1" and the India side even with a little oil on looks really really flat. You lucked out, you don't want to be reshaping that stuff!
Excellent video Jarrod. Would it be possible to see a microscope shot of the edge in the next video? It would be sweet if you could. Sharpening Supplies might have those small Arkansas stones. They would be listed under "slips and files". You can even find some that's already convexed.
SS does not have square files, that's what I personally want to hold on to if I am rubbing near a razor edge. Reliably, I think only Dan's offers them. The man who owned Natural Whetstone passed away but the ppl running it now, I would imagine could make them, though you'd need to flatten all four sides properly (I'm not too scared of a 1/2" x 4" pitch, though)...I used to buy from them pre-COVID and they had great rocks but the factory flatness was truly awful, which is a lot of $$$ cooked in to labor for what you saved vs. Dan's.
I only have a binocular stereo microscope at the present, I can probably try to cook up some sort of contraption to put my cellphone camera over one objective, though...you won't be able to see shape in that 2D view, but seeing burr pre/post should be easy.
Hey Jarrod, great video again. Just a question from my side. Do you have any specific reason why you use acrylic or could I just use wood and one of this patches? And what is the length of the piece and what is the hight in the mid and at the ends? Would like to do convex honing, but I run a low budget 😂 and my wife kills me if I invest any further from our household treasury which we use for vacations etc. 😅
no, of course you can use wood, acrylic is just a luxury item. I like the extra density and the 1.5" thickness if I'm going to be using this (hopefully) daily.
But to shape a piece of wood, here is the calculator I would use;
www.handymath.com/cgi-bin/arc18.cgi?submit=Entry
for an ellipse shape, you need to make two calculations, and add those arc heights, and that's the amount of size you would ultimately reduce from a beginning flat rectangle
for example, these little 1x4" (25x100mm) honing slices have a principal diameter of about 2m and a diameter going across of 7.7m. With the width of an arc specified as 25mm and the radius as 3.85m, the arc height is 0.02029mm...next we determine the principal arc of the 100mm length, with a 1m radius the height is 1.25078mm, thus if you had a good caliper and could reduce your 25x100mm piece of wood by 1.27mm at the four corners and blend that as an ellipse shape, you'd have a good approximation of what we have here
I have made by hand, before my shaping plate, many waterstones and coticules. The best way is to shape as if it is a cylinder, and once you have a very good 'caveman's cylinder' shape, then take down the height of the 2 outer long lines very very slightly, and blend that back to the center long line...you want only a tiny bit of convexity going across the stone, or none at all, but it is a lot easier to shape by hand a good ellipse with a small secondary axis (= a long secondary diameter) than it is to hand make a cylinder that never has a gap going across its surface at any line going across the short axis
for me, ~1.8mØ down the length and ~7.5-9mØ across the width is ideal
@ thank you very much for the explanation. Now I got some stuff to do ❤️
where did you learn this stuff 🤩? Can you recommend any books on straight razors\ sr honing?
14yrs ago I visited Solingen the first time and talked to an ~80yrs old grinder, who told me when he was young they used to use a single hard Arkansas wheel as the whole honing process until the strop, and that nothing was as good.
That got me thinking, and eventually my office building landlord (native German) found an old 19th c. German grinding textbook, which mentioned in its razors chapter that if you use a wheel or wheel shaped abrasive to contact the razor where it is 0.1mm or thinner, the whole area