Thread: Arkansas Stones?

Gday Chris, Arkansas stones have been in popular use in the US, but they are a natural stone and I think supplies are supposed to be diminishing.

They are actually a type of oilstone, ie. a honing oil is used to supposedly prevent the stone clogging. There is a sharpening author called Jurantich who advocates using them dry, though, but I think that has to be from new.

Arkansas stones can be any of a range of grits, not sure how coarse they get but the fine ones used to be considered the ducks guts in the US.

I'd probably try a bit of sharpening with it, and suss out how fine it is compared to your existing stones. The finer Arkansas stones (surgical black is one type I recall) are reputed to be quite fine, but slow cutting compared to (for example) waterstones.

A bit of googling should give you more info.


Cheers...............Sean

If it is a true Arkansas stone it will produce a very good quality edge, but good quality man made stones are just as good these days

G'day Sean,

Thaks for the reply. I'll have a go on some sharpening - maybe on the plane blades I've just rejuvinated from turning into rust buckets.

I could've googled which would've meant trawling through pages of stuff, but thought it'd be quicker with some words of those more wize than myself.

I'm learning as I go.

I have the black and the white arkansas stones - bought them about 27 years ago for hunting knives for about $80-90 from memory.

They work well but slow.

I use honing oil with them and just wipe it clean after each use.

Cheers

G'day Scooter, China and Teejay,

I'd like to add and say thanks for your posts. Your responses covered what I was asking about which weren't covered in older threads.

When I said googled, I meant looking in the Google search engine, and by looking in Google it would've turned up thousands of pages of rubbish.

Just wanted to clarify this inlight of another thread elsewhere.