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Thread: So how bout them Arkansas' eh!
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16th July 2023, 10:58 PM #1SENIOR MEMBER
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So how bout them Arkansas' eh!
Years ago when I was sniffing around car boot sales and antique stores in the UK I happened on, what I thought was, a hard white Arkansas stone. It might have been used a couple times at best, there was little to no oil in the wooden box it was glued in to... I asked what the guy wanted and he said 10 pound. I know a little about them from many years back, enough to know they're worth quite a bit more than 10 pound, so I grabbed it.
Fast forward to now. I've pretty much stopped using any stones and this one has, like all the rest been sitting in the cabinet unused in all those years - not even brought out to look at... So I put it up for sale, saying it's a hard white Arkansas, which is a mid-level Arkansas, along with the 60 other items... To be honest I didn't even look at it before I put it up, so saying it was white was a bit off... There is sat for a month and not a single bite, so I drop the price to $60. No bites until a couple more weeks.
Finally, I get a nibble. This guy writes, it doesn't look white, it looks more grey. He then goes on to say can I guarantee it's a translucent Arkansas. So I start to respond, thinking, this is a private sale I ain't guaranteeing anything of the sort. And! I go on to say, I didn't say it was grey or translucent, I stated it was white... I'm just about to hit send when I think, maybe I should just check...
Sure enough, it's not white at all. Bugger, I think I've put up a misleading ad, it's probably a lower grade one. But as I bring it into the strong light I notice a translucence about it. So, I get out my flashlight and shine it at the edge. Sure enough the light easily goes all the way through, 40mm. Well f%^& me! It is a translucent Arkansas, not a white after all! So, I start looking up the grades - it's the finest grade you can get! And, the damn thing sells for $250 in Aus!
I rewrote the reply and thanked the guy for making me take a closer look and found out it was in fact a translucent stone. And then told him it's no longer available.
After all that, I thought I should at least try it out and ya, it leaves quite a polish. Nearly as good as white buffing compound on an MDF wheel. They rate them at 8000 to 10000.
I guess the question though is: does anyone actually use them to put that final edge on their chisels and such. It was nice but it felt like it was a very slow process with it.
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17th July 2023, 12:13 AM #2
Can we see a picture? The are nice things . I use a black one sometimes. I have a couple of them. Ive got a small white slip stone . The Black one that is flat is slow going and hard. And leaves a mirror finish. Natural oil stones are very nice. Ive got a couple of Charnley forest and a few other types of Oil stones that I picked up from Camberwell market in the 80s.
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17th July 2023, 02:27 PM #3SENIOR MEMBER
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There it is. They're faint in the pic but the machining marks are still prominent by eye. Not seen much work at all.
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17th July 2023, 03:21 PM #4
Thanks. It looks good .
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17th July 2023, 11:47 PM #5Senior Member
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I don't use a Arkansa stone but do use a natural stone I "suspect" is Turkish oilstone, particularly for precise flattening the backside's edge of plane blades.
Raise a slight slurry with diamond plate to speedup the cutting. I also a small have a small remnant stone I use as slipstone.
Your stone is a beaut.
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19th July 2023, 12:07 AM #6GOLD MEMBER
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Grind and hone before you get to the fine stone and work only the very tip of the edge with it with some pressure. It'll actually end up being faster than using a jig with a "fast" cutting fine stone, as well as being tolerant of anything you put on it.
If I'm using a finish stone, it's generally going to be some sort of arkansas stone like that. With touch finishing the apex of a tool, it can be finer than something like an 8k grit waterstone. if you're used to using guides or honing a whole "pane" of metal in a secondary bevel, then it's going to be a no-go.
Those stones do their best work when you set up the prior work so that you have a few degrees of room left for the edge finish and work only the tip. The sky is the limit with natural stones if you have time, but the process I described is good for a 20 second process on the finish stone.
here are some pictures to gawk at.
An 8k grit waterstone that's that's got a little bit of its own loose grit running around on the surface (just what they do).
https://i.imgur.com/vyk9GHp.jpg
Purple slate with a slurry to set up a razor bevel to be finished:
https://i.imgur.com/3aBtECa.jpg
A razor on purple slate (same cutting speed and about the same finish as a translucent arkansas).
https://i.imgur.com/b67wN96.jpg
And a dan's black ark (as fine as your trans - not all black stone are, but the firsts and seconds sold by dan's are). On a tool. This is the 20 second thing.
https://i.imgur.com/O4Th2Tx.jpg
The purple slate illustration is important in that it gives you an idea of the range of a single stone used two different ways. The light pressure and longer duration of honing that you'd do on a razor is not really practical in a shop, but you can still adjust pressure and area honed.
To do this stuff well is not difficult, but it's an art lost in a world where the gurus teach one way to do things so that beginners can feel good about the class and buy the next class.
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19th July 2023, 12:09 AM #7GOLD MEMBER
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(i find the dan's black to be better and faster to use day to day than any 8000 waterstone, and it's finer working as long as you focus the work where it needs to be done and at an appropriate pressure level - which is more or less firm and lightening up with the last few strokes. In my opinion, using the fine stone at the same angle any other stone was used is a terrible idea, but it's everywhere and opportunity is lost to do less work to get better functioning tools).
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