Thread: Chinese polishing compound query

I have been using the Veritas Honing compound for several years. Here, it's sold by Lee Valley (#05M08.01).
I use it for wood carving gouges, crooked knives, adzes, draw knife, spoke shaves, etc. with no complaints at all.
I have never looked around for CrOx honing compound product from any other source.

Veritas used to say that it was a mix of CrOx & AlOx, which leaves a scratch pattern of approx 0.5 micron.
I think that's the nominal particle size for the CrOx from most sources. AlOx is supposed to be half that, 0.25 micron.

Anyway, in manufacture, it's very hard to get exact separations of particle sizes.
If 0.5 micron is "nominal" then there will be some smaller and some larger particles in the mix.
Possibly the Chinese product is made in a hasty fashion where there is a lot of smaller and a lot of larger particles.
The amounts may account for the price difference.
The Chinese stuff might be just fine. Don't feel bad = Veritas is a stiff price here, too.
It takes a 10X magnifier to see the scratch pattern. If you can't see it with your bare eye, I'd ignore it.

I can't speak about the chinese import stuff specifically. I have a stick of the veritas compound and a stick of the yellow flex cut compound. Both are good. The green chrome stick seems to cut faster.

And I cannot speak to the quality of the Carbtec stuff...

I will give this suggestion... One stick of this stuff is likely to last you the rest of your life. I have barely made a signficant dent in the corner of my green stick - and I have been using it 10 years now... With that in mind - I suggest you get good stuff rather than cheap stuff.... It is very likely to have a lot more active ingredient and the stuff is likely to be a lot more consistent - which will give your tools a better edge.

Thanks to you both for sharing your opinions on this matter. I will be buying the Veritas compound rather than the Chinese but I was just interested in how they compare.

Cheers.

I live at 53N in the west slope of the mountains.
My shop is in the basement and can be 12C in the winter mornings. Time for a little extra electric fire.

When I need to charge/recharge a strop with honing compound, I carry the stick around in my shirt pocket for a while.
The carrier is some sort of wax that I can soften a little with body heat.
I believe that wax leaves a rust-protective film on my tools, as well.

Was watching a Youtube segment on strops. The "author" used a heat gun to heat up the leather before rubbing the honing compound onto it to help penetration.

Yvan

Sure, a heat gun is a little over the top but the principle is exactly the same as my shirt pocket.

I use the inner surface of cereal box cardboard. Just scribble with the "big green crayon". Always fresh and clean.

Leather is too soft and any pressure deforms the surface to round off the bevels. So I gave up on that some years ago.

For all my adzes with inner bevels and 2-way sweeps, old tennis balls are a perfect fit.

I like the cereal box tip!

Leather for strops predates wood fiber paper and box card. Just a carrier for the honing compound.
The guy who taught me free hand sharpening believed in always buying good equipment.
So I bought a really good, 2-sided leather strop.

No matter who makes it, the sticks of honing compound appear to have the abrasive(s) mixed
with some sort of a waxy carrier. That mix is done hot and poured into bar-shaped ingots.
Over the years, I'm convinced that the wax softened my strop leather.
Any pressure on a tool edge and you can see the leather deform as the edge passes by.
This has got to round off the bevel to a far blunter angle than desired.

So I put the leather strop away. The card stock gets stuck to any hard flat surface with dabs of masking tape, electrical tape, etc.
I have a granite counter top off cut for a heavy flat base.
In the original "Scary Sharp" technique, everything was supposed to be glued down to a hard flat support.
I am too lazy to do any of that. The sheer weight of a gouge flattens the sand papers.

Years back, I began to explore the adzes and crooked knives which are carving tools made popular in the Pacific Northwest native carving community.
Everything is a curved edge. Waterstones just don't fit nor do flat sandpapers.
You wind up wrapping the abrasives around anything (pipe, rod, etc) and moving them over stationary edges for sharpening and honing.

I have seen film of a prominent native wood carver, Mungo Martin, sharpen a crooked knife with a long slim oval river stone and a bucket of water.
I'm still searching for better quality, finer grained river stones. Living in the Rocky mountains, I have many to pick from.

Making good edges has been a satisfying thing to learn to do. Applies to the whole house.
Open up an electric razor and hone the cutters.