Arkansas vs India

[wintermute]

When it comes to sharpening blades, I'm a bit of a Luddite knuckledragger. I've pretty much stuck to manually sharpening with soft and hard Arkansas stones my whole life - and I'm happy with that. I was just wondering how an India stone differs from an Arkansas and if it's something I might want to get. Thanks.

 

[Dog of War]

Norton India stones are aluminum oxide, which is harder than the novaculite in Arkansas stones - about 9 Mohs for aluminum oxide vs. 6.5-8 Mohs for novaculate (all I really know about the Moh scale is that higher number means harder. )

India stones are only available in grades that are coarser than the finer Arkansas stones, ranging from about 220 grit for coarse India to maybe 400-500 for fine India. Hard black Arkansas runs about 2000 grit, so can produce a much more polished edge.

In practical terms, what this means is that your India stones with cut faster, but won't give you as polished an edge. Arkansas may be very slow on high alloy steels, especially those containing vanadium. Also India stones don't tend to dish and wear like the softer Arkansas.

IMO coarse and medium India stones would be a good addition to the hones you already have, let you work faster on modern steels ... however diamond hones might be an even better bet.

Hope that helps some.

 

[LedSled]

When I tried to hone my first knife in ATS-34, my Arkansas stones got retired. They did a wonderful job on vintage knives. You didn't even need to strop to chop hanging hairs.

Indias are fine. Diamond hones cut fastest. I happen to like Norton's waterstones, which are in between. Do some searches. There's all kinds of info here on the forum.

 

[SIFU1A]

yep with the new steels ark stones dont work very well, the india stones do though and are imho a good value for how well they work , sure diamond stones are better BUT they are 2X as high too.........