Thread: John - Flattening Arkansas Stones

(Edit to add.. For anybody missing the context here, I was trying out Arkansas stones and seemingly, every single one came in significantly out of flat. It is a royal pain to lap them, unlike water stones, as they're very hard and mostly not friable.)

Thanks. I eventually got there - I don't have a belt sander. Shame, as I'd probably have a hundred thousand miles on one by now. My biggest hurdle was simply not making things worse every time I made progress. It is ridiculously easy if you're not careful. I think my lapping took 3x longer than it should have because I kept going backwards in new and creative ways. For example, loose grit on float glass or lexan tended to put a huge belly on stones fast and diamond plates are way too slow. I managed the same with loose grit on the sand paper. That would have sped things up if I was starting with a dished stone, but I was starting with a belly, and it reversed forward progress.

Eventually I settled on wet/dry sandpaper on Ye Olde Surface Plate. (I think it's probably up there near the best $80 I've spent in the workshop.). Soft arks would tolerate wet sanding pretty well, but the Norton Hard (translucent) simply would not. Dry lapping, starting at 60-grit was the only way to make forward progress. I seriously considered buying a belt sander...

At the end, I learned a lot. One of those things is: Try to buy stones that are already flat. My Dan's Hard showed up beautifully flat straight out of the box. I wish he sold a soft Ark that rivaled the cutting of my Norton, but maybe that doesn't matter now that it's lapped.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

(Edit to add.. For anybody missing the context here, I was trying out Arkansas stones and seemingly, every single one came in significantly out of flat. It is a royal pain to lap them, unlike water stones, as they're very hard and mostly not friable.)

Thanks. I eventually got there - I don't have a belt sander. Shame, as I'd probably have a hundred thousand miles on one by now. My biggest hurdle was simply not making things worse every time I made progress. It is ridiculously easy if you're not careful. I think my lapping took 3x longer than it should have because I kept going backwards in new and creative ways. For example, loose grit on float glass or lexan tended to put a huge belly on stones fast and diamond plates are way too slow. I managed the same with loose grit on the sand paper. That would have sped things up if I was starting with a dished stone, but I was starting with a belly, and it reversed forward progress.

Eventually I settled on wet/dry sandpaper on Ye Olde Surface Plate. (I think it's probably up there near the best $80 I've spent in the workshop.). Soft arks would tolerate wet sanding pretty well, but the Norton Hard (translucent) simply would not. Dry lapping, starting at 60-grit was the only way to make forward progress. I seriously considered buying a belt sander...

At the end, I learned a lot. One of those things is: Try to buy stones that are already flat. My Dan's Hard showed up beautifully flat straight out of the box. I wish he sold a soft Ark that rivaled the cutting of my Norton, but maybe that doesn't matter now that it's lapped.

Yeah, until you get a belt sander, you'll want to have something at least close to flat.

Once you get a belt sander, flat or not won't matter. The only small belt sander I'd get at this point is the bucktool bd4802. It's almost identical to the price of the over under stuff from ryobi or whatever, but I broke one of those a long time ago. I have beat the living schist out of the two of those that I have now grinding things and they are just dandy (direct drive - I've never used a disc on either, but for small operations even relatively heavy to go along with the high speed belt grinders, they are just great and the idler would shred anything stone wise you could bring to them).

I use them to make this type of handle (at least the initial shaping) also.

https://i.imgur.com/6XprmjB.jpg

A sander that uses common belts that is not similar in function to the over under junk - and not similar in a good way. at least twice as powerful despite the amp rating because the drive is direct - might be underrated on the motor size - and 2200 feet a minute or so when a lot of the junkers are some fraction of that, in some cases near half.

I may get a swayed stone off of ebay at some point to remake my original video.

I forgot what was also on my mind - I don't mind the ones that are out of flat now, especially if they're really old and started almost square and there's tons left. Things over time have changed in some ways, but others haven't. Dan's has the best fine stones I've ever seen. Everything else is forgettable. Natural whetstone has fast cutting softer stones if you're willing to condition the surface fairly often (but you have to do that), but it's been so long that if they're mining a different blob of rock, maybe that's not the case. My two 10x3x1 pieces of "soft" and "hard" (the hard is more like a soft) were $25 each 12 or 14 years ago and they've gone up from that.

Halls black showed me something Leonard Lee talked about - black stones that release little bits by surprise. I think they may be preyda now. The stones are OK, but they have no cutting power once settled in (none have much, but they have too little to be useful), are coarse when they're not, and then they let go of what must be a sand grain or fraction of that sized glom of particles from a smooth surface and you hear the click as it goes under the edge.

Norton....I swear what they have goes by how long it's been since they mined (that's a guess). New stuff in trans could be great, or it could be marginal and coarse, and at the price, it's not worth the risk.

Washitas are where it's at, but someone talked too much about them or something and the prices are stupid now. For eons, you could get nice clean unmarked stones aplenty in boxes for $50 per. A washita and MDF or the buffer afterward is just deadly. The action and range that they have is just so wonderful I don't know if anything else matches them for me at any price. I've honed straight razors on them before - and they aren't blistering sharp, but two weeks on a linen and shell strop an they're indistinguishable and the next honing 300 shaves later doesn't need to be more than a few strokes to thin the bevel that's there and not remove the edge.

Nothing else in the world is like a line and shell edge - edge doesn't dent, ever, cuts hair almost effortlessly, doesn't cut skin - well...as long as you don't slice with it or push it in, but it doesn't have any burr or tooth and won't catch hair behind pores (no razorburn).

Having overbought, I think the characteristics are different enough between various sellers of stones that I'd say pretty solidly, I wouldn't buy the fine stones other than vintage from anyone but dans, the softer stuff is just all over the board with dan's softs being weak cutting, and some of the strongest cutting softs (but with no potential for any fineness) coming in plastic boxes with swirly multicolor patterns and names like "case washita" written on the outside. Not remotely similar to a washita.

Dan's storefront price on first quality stones is frightening, though - I may have said this already, but at the very end, I went through taylor tools before they got to be the big mover of mid level import stuff that they are now and got a 10x3 black that's far thicker than an inch for $300. The prior stone I had from dans that came from the seconds page was a trans listed as an inch thick size was 0.78" or something - within their spec, but really a no go without having the box fixed somehow so that more stone was exposed. I dumped it on ebay or somewhere before finding someone who would have leverage at dan's to get me my grail stone and then admittedly, it has had the cover off little. I bought it for razors.

Word is the Russians are buying up vintage Arks and Washitas and cutting them up to make the stones for the guided honing hickeys. The prices alone should be a hint that there's a market, but alas...

I believe the "solution" would be to get somebody like Dan involved... Goad him into buying a quarry of good Washita stone, and then quality stuff would be back on the market. If I win the lottery...

The Norton's soft Arkansas I received is very nice. It cuts relatively fast and has a very nice feel/action. It's low density, though, at a hair under 2.0, but not fragile feeling. It sort of reminds me of crockery. It is definitely a fine cutting stone, though. It will clean up nicely after a fine India, but won't erase the deeper scratches left by a fine DMT diamond plate. From what I hear, that puts it in "Soft Arkansas land" but probably not "Washita land."

The Dan's hard I got is funny. It's a really nice stone, but dry, you would swear it's a carborundum stone that got baby powder spilled on it. It's got that sort of gritty look. Oiled, though, it's beautiful and black. Texture wise, more like a hard "Soft Arkansas" than a soft "Hard Arkansas," if that makes sense.

25CF34D1-178E-42A7-8F21-4976BA669B40.jpg

I talked to dan directly, actually. Well, in so much as you can...what happens is if you call and have a bunch of questions, the CS person will track him down and just ask him your questions and relay the answer.

I asked them about the pike mine, and he called it the perryn rock or something like that. Dans' was selling a washita stone, but it was just a very fragile novaculite stone and not like a legit washita, which they told me before I bought it - it wouldn't be the same thing.

Norton st-gobain owns all of the original "perryn" rock or however you'd spell it, the old pike mine, and nobody else can get any of it. You can apparently walk through the area and pick up rock, but not legally. So we won't be getting any legit washita type stones from anyone, but norton may be selling some as softs. I always felt like some of the later softs and the washitas looked suspiciously similar. But norton asks a lot for all of their stones, including the softs. It's easier just to find an old washita or buy the unique ones that look worth having. My days of buying them are sort of over - they're over until i find a 10" long one or one that's unusual in a great box and still at a tolerable box.

I forgot about the knife people and washitas. Those sharpening things aren't the right format for an arkansas stone, but it's not like people in most of the knife areas care. I'm sure some of them will be rubbing washita on 10v at 64 hardness and wondering why it's not doing much.

This report from 1890 lists 11 quarries where Washitas were mined. Somewhere else in the report they are mentioned, but I don't remember if it provides an accurate geographic location. There's lots of good information about Arkansas, Washitas and their differences, from the point of view of 1890 technology.

Annual report of the geological survey of Arkansas ... v.3 (1890). - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library

John measured his modern Norton's soft ark at about 2 SG, quite a low value. Wherever Norton is mining this novaculite, it's certainly possible it could be from their Washita quarries.

Here are descriptions of Washita samples from different quarries. The best one at the time came from Sutton's quarry no.6, wherever it was.

Annual report of the geological survey of Arkansas ... v.3 (1890). - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library

I'm curious if I got an outlier, or if Norton is intentionally picking their soft Arkansas down at the soft/aggressive end of the spectrum. While it won't fine polish, it's a good stone to bridge the gap between their fine India and a hard Arkansas.

The fine India stone seems decent. It is probably my inexperience, but it seems kinda hard to control. It really wants to chatter, and it's all but impossible to flatten when the time comes. It is getting better as it settles in, though.

I think my next stone will be a Washita.

in a little while, the fine india will be an entirely different stone. It may be possible to make one the way they are when they're new, but I've never done it (and don't want to try).

if your soft stone is 2SG, it sounds like it may just be from the pike mine. That's at the low end of the washitas I ever measured, and I don't think I've ever had anything that calls itself a soft that's there.

It would make sense for norton to take stone out of what dan calls "perryn rock" however it would be spelled. The rock is really big clear pieces, just pull it and saw it.

Didn't you have a picture of stone from dan's a while ago from a factory tour? that's the first I've seen someone talk about getting nice big clear stone for the fine stones, but dan said something like "as long as people are willing to pay for them, I'll go down and get them".

Norton or someone created a rumor that the decline in quality for hard stones was because they were becoming scarce. Dan's implication is it's functionally unlimited. It may have been "scarce if easy" for norton, and the reality is, the market for their stones is tiny compared to the enormous consumption of industry for things like wheels and belts and loose abrasives or blasting media. And who knows what else.

Norton Soft Arkansas Bench Stone

This description pretty much says the same thing as a washita would be - between the india and hard. But you can manipulate the washita surprisingly well with pressure as long as the steel hardness is right for it and you have more than a single point of contact. As in, I'd have had no need for a hard arkansas and rarely use one, but for carving and gravers and probably dental tools where the sharpening contact can be very small, much more likely.

* dan's black (albeit not buffed on the opposite side, which makes every edge cleaner - so this is about as good as it gets by hand with no buffer or compound). https://i.imgur.com/JhQUlZ1.jpg

* washita - heavy pressure (https://i.imgur.com/ar1veAw.jpg)

* washita- light pressure and buffed (https://i.imgur.com/1pE7ojq.jpg)

to the extent the last washita edge looks better than the dan's black, it's due to the buffer working over the opposite side and removing the meeting scratches.

Note, the two washita pictures are the same item being sharpened by the same stone.

if someone would've been short of coin in the old days, they could make up most of the difference with technique on most tools.

This fast washita was being used by a carver in a factory - he left a note in it and it had carving tool grooves in it. it's just a really good stone (unmarke) unless you want the finest washita -it's on the stronger side and not on the finer and slower side of things.

When I did a plane iron test, there was little difference in planed length between a washita finished edge with light pressure and one off of the black ark. I only did one iteration, but those two and an 8k waterstone all lasted around the same.

2.5 micron loose diamond and 5 micron loose diamond, much less distance (and terrible feel) and 1 micron diamond went about 15-20 feet longer than the arks. In perfect wood. In practice, it would be less easy to get an interval like that on anything other than smooth planing smooth wood. Except you'd hate the loose diamonds in those sizes and know it right away.

Found this on ebay. NOS soft arkansas. I can't date it, but it seems post 1950s. Clean white stone. It looks like what Norton is offering today, so they still seem to be consistent. Compare with the mottled Dan's softs. Are they equivalent? who knows.

s-l1600.jpg 013109a.jpg

Here's the back/unused part of mine. The gray us oil stain and shadow from flash. The stone is white with light gray mottling, and a few wisps of very fine rust colored "smoke."

If you looked at the stone from any distance past a foot, you would call it white.

849CBD08-0EF8-4204-8265-5FB93CACCAF1.jpg

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Here's the back/unused part of mine. The gray us oil stain and shadow from flash. The stone is white with light gray mottling, and a few wisps of very fine rust colored "smoke."

If you looked at the stone from any distance past a foot, you would call it white.

849CBD08-0EF8-4204-8265-5FB93CACCAF1.jpg

looks like a washita. If it's dead on 2 SG and not more dense than that, I think it's in the washita category in terms of coarseness, anyway.

I don't know the history on pike/norton softs. They may be some variation of the washita stock and maybe they always were. I believe I had one at one time, but I wasn't lucid as far as stones go at that time. Back then, you could get a norton india 8x3x0.5 for about $20, the soft wasn't a whole lot more and the trans could be bought from hartville tool for $60 or so. 8x3x1/2.

Joel relayed something about it being easier for them to make clear 0.5 inch stones 3" wide than 8x2x1 (which were $169 at the time and the price difference drew a lot of heat).

I was probably still using a guide most of the time and bargain hunting. Oilstones are hard to use properly with a guide.

the only place I saw one of those softs was $60+tax and ship, which is just too much for me to follow just on curiosity at this point.

Well, apparently, I have to learn everything the hard way. I flattened my fine India stone the other day, and it's dead. I somehow massively glazed the thing. As in doesn't cut, just polishes. So now, I gotta give it a go with some silicon carbide grit to see I can get it cutting again. I swear.

Which brings me to... One thing I do like about the more friable stones is that I can lap them to bring them back to life. That Natural Whetstone soft "Hard" (the density is 2.16, so it is definitely a soft Ark) is a pretty decent stone with a very nice feel after a quick go on P220 sandpaper. The down side is that while it does well with moderate to high pressure, it just leaves a scratchy finish with low pressure. Price wise, it's in the range of a mid-price synthetic waterstone, and dressing those is a known thing. It's already bought, and it's pretty useful dressed, so that's it's lot now.

That Norton doesn't do that. I've only flattened it that first time. While I won't say it will never need to be dressed, it is still cutting great, the difference is that I let off the gas and it cuts a lot less aggressively without leaving a scratchy mess.

For what it's worth, I've only used Lee Valley's 90x SiC grit on my India stones.

Originally Posted by truckjohn

Well, apparently, I have to learn everything the hard way. I flattened my fine India stone the other day, and it's dead. I somehow massively glazed the thing. As in doesn't cut, just polishes. So now, I gotta give it a go with some silicon carbide grit to see I can get it cutting again. I swear.

Which brings me to... One thing I do like about the more friable stones is that I can lap them to bring them back to life. That Natural Whetstone soft "Hard" (the density is 2.16, so it is definitely a soft Ark) is a pretty decent stone with a very nice feel after a quick go on P220 sandpaper. The down side is that while it does well with moderate to high pressure, it just leaves a scratchy finish with low pressure. Price wise, it's in the range of a mid-price synthetic waterstone, and dressing those is a known thing. It's already bought, and it's pretty useful dressed, so that's it's lot now.

That Norton doesn't do that. I've only flattened it that first time. While I won't say it will never need to be dressed, it is still cutting great, the difference is that I let off the gas and it cuts a lot less aggressively without leaving a scratchy mess.

that's the magic of a washita if there is such a thing. You can find soft stones that will work briskly to slowly, but they won't for some reason generate the same edge fineness that a washita does. which is odd given washitas weren't an expensive stone. the virtue of the softs working before a fine stone, though, is they don't seem to leave any brash grooves or burrs and the next stone's work is quick.

I'll yield to the silicon carbide idea (I have the grit, but haven't tried it).

A low cost half sized coarse diamond card is also not a bad idea. How the indias arrive and how they are in the long term are two different things. They will eventually "get dead" just from use and where you can bring them back to with a coarse diamond hone is only part of the way back - but it's a good "part". silicon carbide is a good alternative because it's no threat to remain behind as large contaminant for long.

So I decided to bow to the hype. I have zero experience with Washitas, and they vary a lot, so I sprung for an actual boxed Norton Lily White. Expensive, yes, but it should tell me something either way.

It is a used stone, but dimensionally 100%, with only minimal if any dishing.

Initial checks... Interesting. Density checked at 2.39, or 1.5% lower than my Dan's Hard Arkansas. This density could potentially be the effect of residual oil, though I didn't see any obvious stains or gummy residue. It has the glazed, mirror shiny look like somebody degreased it and then used it with water. I'll test it before I lap it, but I'm expecting it to need to be rejuvenated with a coarse diamond plate. And yes, I'm saving the original box.

Interestingly, it is barely translucent around the edges. Once again, could simply be residual oil in the stone, but interesting.