Thread: Anyone got information on this stone.

David, assuming the waterstone I linked to is the same or similar, I recall paying about $30 for it from Carbatec. Carbatec is a chain of stores similar to Highlands Woodworking. They align with Lee Valley and stock Veritas tools (among many other brands). At the time I purchased this stone, Lee Valley were selling what appeared to be the same stones, and for a similar price. It did occur to me at the time that they may have had the same source.

After using it recently, it struck me that it had a very similar feel as a Shapton Pro 12000/15000. The Shapton is hard, slick, and not much slurry.

Regards from Perth

Derek

I could probably confirm that the chinese stones have no alumina in them (Ok, I definitely could) by sharpening something with a lot of carbide density. Not many natural stones of that type have any alumina in them - japanese come to mind. There's always a chance.

The shaptons do have a similar sticky hard feel (if they aren't soaked 15 minutes per instructions - they're more slick if they get a short soak, and softer feeling) like the gray stones sold through woodwell - the answer as to whether or not those may have been the same would be solved by whether or not carbatec sold shungee rosewood and other chinese or taiwanese style planes, the type that Terry makes or made for a while. If the answer is yes, then almost certainly mujingfang. I never saw any other distribution channels of the gray stones until more direct transactions started to occur, and of the amazon type (like the $7 milled steel plates being sold on amazon here - or atomas being sold now for $50. We were pretty well manhandled by the woodworking retailer distribution system getting those for $100. many mouths fed in between that offered little value to us and the manufacturers getting but a small fraction of what we paid).

Things have gone the other way, maybe, where getting a $7 plate here and shipped by amazon and then covering returns for good reason or not....there can't be much room left in a $20 retail price with shipping. or an atoma 400 for $49 in the US at the moment, including shipping.

Shapton's pro stones are pretty loosely graded, too - so they will feel faster than their actual rating, because the groove size is also deeper than the 1 micron-ish rating would suggest. it's possible that with a 15 minute soak, the harshness is a bit less. SP13k is very different - its rating is accurate, it's closely graded, and it is a bit soft to start.

I took a picture yesterday of XHP (the alloy LV uses as PM V11). it's a good test here because it's got a bunch of medium sized but relatively uniform chromium carbides. 10V would be more dramatic because it has slightly smaller vanadium carbides, which are much more relatively hard vs. the stone than chromium, but chromium carbides are harder than silica abrasives.

So, this may not be that easy to interpret - i flattened the back of this iron on a chinese stone (this one is only about 60 hardness - I was experimenting - the three I had from LV were at the top of their spec range as far as I could tell - I hoped to lower the issues with edge stability in rougher work, but it didn't work. However, that makes it so that even that small decrease in hardness will allow the chinese stone to hone this easily. Not just finish it, but actually hone some off. thus the scratches are a bit more prominent).

https://i.imgur.com/PagxB7E.jpg

if you look at this picture - when it comes up if it isn't full window, paste the link in a new window - you see a lot of turbulence from scratches, but you can see little balls in them. I lifted the iron a bit at the end of the stroke to make sure I'd be honing the tip, thus the little tiny microbevel look.

Those round balls are chromium carbides. The nuance here is they are much softer than alumina, so if I took a picture of this honed with a shapton stone, you'd never see them - just scratches.

With a fine stone, this doesn't make too much difference. the level of honing here is 5-6k I would guess (this is really highly magnified), but silica stones are really sensitive to hardness - you trade really slow cutting for finer finishing. the average person is much better off with a very fine synthetic stone, though. Matching stones to steel to try to get this range of gaming hardnesses is a feel thing, and feel takes experience.

I never found all of this feel to yield anything over just using a finer abrasive, though. For example, if you wanted to finish this edge finely, it would look almost scratch free with cheap 1 micron diamonds ($10 an enormous amount in terms of honing cycles - perhaps a decade's worth) on hardwood. Safe to say, if you wanted to pick up the job for this stone and finish it with a finer edge and cut the carbides, 1 micron diamonds on wood would also do it - the wood makes them cut as fine at 1 micron as any synthetic stone that I'm aware of.

So, what is the point of all of that? if you're using natural stones on A2 or V11 or something, even if it seems like the result is the same sharpness, it won't be.

here is another steel sample - 52100 - finished with autosol. 52100 also has chromium carbides and iron carbides - but nothing harder. autosol is something like 3 micron calcined alumina or something of the sort. When it's used on a wooden backer instead of something hard like metal, it will finish edges very finely.

https://i.imgur.com/7m5tvAG.jpg

wear at the edge from planing will wear away the matrix around the steel better and make this a lot easier to see - as in, pretend you're brushing sand away from around a rock. the more you brush, the more rock is exposed as the sand leaves. This is sort of like that, except carbides will eventually break and leave the matrix in certain cases (seemingly all for vanadium, which is super hard but breaks very easily - in steel with a lot of carbides, cracks always start in the carbides).

when you plane with wood, you can prevent breaking from happening as early so the visual is more spectacular with just sharpening, where they probably break more easily and come out.

here is XHP (V11) after planing several hundred feet. the carbides are bigger than 52100 by a good bit. There's more carbon and chromium to make them. behind the "balls", there is a tail where the wear of the steel matrix is slower as the ball is protecting the matrix. This is essentially why steel with carbides wear more slowly. But this is a steel that generally has round carbides due to the PM uniformity. Without powder metallurgy, XHP (V11) would be unusable.

https://i.imgur.com/vGxX2OJ.jpg

it's better to use it and A2 with fine synthetics, though. Breaking carbides instead of cutting through them is just a way to slow down honing while coming to a worse result at the same time. The only way for the carbides to be less of a challenge is for the whole steel to be a bit less hard. if you have something like 10V at 59 hardness, even a natural stone will sharpen it (it's far more wear resistant than V11, especially in things other than wood - like abrasives or metal) as the carbides are crushed in the matrix and the matrix sharpens more easily. If both are at 64, a natural stone will do very little.

Cheap lapidary diamonds win -they cut through everything like nothing - including vanadium. The honing with vanadium will be a little slower even with diamonds, but they leave rows through vanadium carbides like a plow turning over earth.

I'll give you guys a little treat, even though I know I'm really the only one who gives even an aged white dog about any of this.

that, and it's the case on the internet when you go way deep on something, a lot of people would rather believe what they believe - i'm going on comments about durability from actual tests of edge life. I'll stay out of that topic because carbides of various types in different alloys is a whole cacophony of stuff - the charts give a general direction but not everything works the same. Some steels, like 10V, will wear slowly but they don't pick a shaving up as easily and as well in side by side testing, so it's aggravating - even if you do a perfect job.

I'd go so far as to say, if you have to have carbides, chromium carbides (mixture of iron and chromium) are the hand tooler's carbide. Vanadium is the metalworker, abrasive diemaker and wood turner's carbide.

here's the treat...

I'm going to put some diamond flour on wood and finish the same iron so you can see what the difference is. Except i'm not going to use really fine diamond flour. I'm going to use diamond flour that's $2-$3 per and 2/3 micron grade, listed as "bonding grade" rather than lapidary. You don't have to be sparing with it - it comes in a four ounce bag for $10 shipping included from china, and you can let the good times roll.

on a wood substrate, I think we'll find a high polish finish, anyway.

the chinese stone finish shown on the back of this with carbide balls included is matte. if the sort of proud carbide thing occurs, it never seems to get to a bright polish.

waiting for a zoom meeting at work yielded time to do this already:

* sprinkle diamond flour on chinese stone and hone as normal - whether or not all carbides are eventually cut depends on the balance of diamonds and slurry. I prefer wood vs. this, though there is some merit if you have a natural stone that you just love that barely cuts (like a completely broken in arkansas stone) and something ornery to hone:
https://i.imgur.com/cSimeJ0.jpg

* finish with diamond flour on wood (albeit harder wood than I should've used). the wood here might be gumi, or something else that looks kind of like it. Something softer like maple or cherry is better (even finer).
https://i.imgur.com/R91QCgu.jpg

Note, this is 2-3 micron diamonds, as mentioned. Bonding grade is probably something less closely graded that could be electroplated to plates or something whereas close grading is absolutely essential for lapidary supply for obvious reasons - who would like a nice gemstone with spider webbing on it.

This is a not-stropped edge all along, too, other than wiping on jeans. the performance on hardwood is convincing and can replace the finish stone and better almost anything even with this low cost coarse diamond.

finishing after a medium stone is something like 15 seconds on the back of a tool (or less) and 20 strokes on the bevel side.

*and* - in this case, there are no carbides that haven't been cut, and there isn't a type of carbide that I'm aware of that this wouldn't plow right through. This is an extremely high level of magnification, too - 300x on my scope, or less than one thousandth of an inch of edge length.

You need nothing more than offcuts and some kind of oil or oily wax as the lubricant. When the offcut gets dirty , you can scrape and then plane it or you can just get another offcut.

oops....I think I need to check my math, the edge length is less than 1 hundredth of an inch. It's about 9 thousandths, or put differently, slightly less than half of the edge length would be covered by the thickness of a sheet of office paper.

For some reason, this discussion of carbides and a well timed advertisement caused me to read the ad copy of LV's claims for V11 chisels again. I'm baffled by the claims that the steel is proprietary (in US english, that means nobody else has the permission to use it) and especially the claims about how the edge stands up better than "brand X" steel (they said "other tool steels or something) with claims of prowess down to 20 degrees.

the boast of roasted maple handles is also weird - as I'm testing varnish on an offcut of roasted maple, I'm reminded of how the wood is changed (it's stiffer, but fragile and much more likely to split or fracture).

I think XHP makes a nice semi-stainless slicing knife, though. It's functionally stainless for anyone who doesn't cut a block of salt and then spritz with water and let the whole thing lay and rust.