High grade, Translucent sharpening stone. I scored this yesterday. A beauty.

I

IXLR8

Joined
Feb 1, 2009
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189
I have been looking for a really nice high grade Translucent for a while now. I ended up contacting Dan Kirschman of Dans whetstone.
I told Mr. Kirschman what I was looking for and he went out of his way to accommodate my request.

I highly recommend Dans Whetstone. They were friendly, courteous and extremely professional.
Mr. Kirschman met and exceeded my expectations.

The Translucent stone arrived yesterday, and this is what I ended up with.
I use these to finish an edge.

Thanks for looking.

47OlixY.jpg

6 x 3 x 1/2
 
jmclfrsh said:
What type of edge finish does this produce?

Pretty cool looking!
Click to expand...

Ifs a very hard stone, 1400 grit or so. The Japanese equivalent of an 8000 grit finishing stone.
Apparently , grit tolerances differ from the United States to Japan.

The best, highest grade translucent stones come from Arkansas. These are used to finish edges things like surgical scalpels and are hailed as the best finishing stones in the world.
There are many articles on the net about Arkansas translucent stones.
They don't all look the same and the range of colors can vary quite a bit.
This one is colorful and just happens to be .....like you said,,,,,cool looking.
 
IXLR8 said:
Ifs a very hard stone, 1400 grit or so. The Japanese equivalent of an 8000 grit finishing stone.
Apparently , grit tolerances differ from the United States to Japan.

The best, highest grade translucent stones come from Arkansas. These are used to finish edges things like surgical scalpels and are hailed as the best finishing stones in the world.
There are many articles on the net about Arkansas translucent stones.
They don't all look the same and the range of colors can vary quite a bit.
This one is colorful and just happens to be .....like you said,,,,,cool looking.
Click to expand...

Novaculite (a fine chert) is the material normally associated with "Arkansas stones." It can become translucent and 'glassy' when heat-treated. I wonder if that's how your sharpening stone was prepared?

http://arkarcheology.uark.edu/novaculite/index.html?pageName=Heat+Treatment+of+Novaculite
 
Bob W said:
Novaculite (a fine chert) is the material normally associated with "Arkansas stones." It can become translucent and 'glassy' when heat-treated. I wonder if that's how your sharpening stone was prepared?

http://arkarcheology.uark.edu/novaculite/index.html?pageName=Heat+Treatment+of+Novaculite
Click to expand...

I don't think this one was heat treated. I haven't ever heard that translucent stones were heat treated. As far as I know this one was cut from stone, then shaped and polished.
 
Interesting. That reddish color looks to be an effect of thermal alteration as well. The large pre-cut stones could have been heated perhaps?

I once found a 'cave' at the base of a bluff at a prehistoric quarry site. The cave interior was just large enough for a person to sit in, and the cave walls were glass-shiny heat-treated novaculite. The native Americans were evidently building fires in the cave to heat-treat the novaculite before even removing it from the bluff.

Of course other types of lithic material are naturally translucent or even transparent.
 
Bob W said:
Interesting. That reddish color looks to be an effect of thermal alteration as well. The large pre-cut stones could have been heated perhaps?

I once found a 'cave' at the base of a bluff at a prehistoric quarry site. The cave interior was just large enough for a person to sit in, and the cave walls were glass-shiny heat-treated novaculite. The native Americans were evidently building fires in the cave to heat-treat the novaculite before even removing it from the bluff.

Of course other types of lithic material are naturally translucent or even transparent.
Click to expand...

I really couldn't tell you. I imagine stone has gone through many geological changes over the course of millions of years. As far as I know, this is a natural Arkansas stone. I can call tomorrow and have this question answered though. From what I have seen over the course of years, the translucent stones come in a variety of color from yellows, to browns, light greys, white and like the one above, pinkish grey tones. The only one I ever had before this is a real old greyish white. It's all chipped up and small. I had decided it was time for a new, larger high grade one......and went on a search and found the one in the picture.............or rather Dan found it for me. Really and truly this is my first really nice translucent stone.
 
That is one fine stone you got. I have a translucent from Dan's and its amazing! I love the hard black surgeon stones and translucent stones they give amazing hair whittling edges! I recently got a black translucent I had only heard of those from my dad, and let me tell you that I heard angels singing as the blade cut through the fabric of space and time!

The hard black translucent is not like the standard translucent. They are more dense and I mean quite a bit!! Its like running the blade on super slick glass there is almost no feel of grit. Its a final polishing stone after it then I hit the strop. If I had to guess it would be around 1600-1800 grit US or 10,000 Japanese. I love this rock its like no other natural stone I have used before. The standard translucent stone will serve you perfectly for a lifetime and be a wonderful heirloom! I love mine from Dan's they give a true razor's edge!
 
IXLR8, beautiful stone. I've got a black translucent also. I lapped one side flat at 120 grit and the other at super ridiculous mirror finish level. Definitely puts a nice edge on - on both sides.

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Test finished piece of hardened steel:

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I used a toolmaker's cast iron lapping plate with loose silicon carbide grit - 120 grit to flatten both sides, and left the coarser side with that finish. Lapped the finer side up through 1500 mesh, then used a Suehiro Gokumyo 20,000 grit (JIS, .5 micron particle size) stone to loose grit lap the surface of the Ark. This was accomplished by flattening the Suehiro with a 140 grit Atoma diamond plate and leaving the slurry from lapping on the stone, then lapping the Suehiro and Ark together using the slurry as a loose lapping grit. Periodically I would rinse off the stones and reflatten and reslurry the Suehiro, then lap some more. I went through about 5 iterations of this before calling it done. Total time start to finish was probably a few hours. The stone is 3" x 10" BTW.
 
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I picked these up a while back and absolutely love them.
Found a gentleman who's father passed and was getting rid of all the stones he inherited.
Had some real beauties. So e were ENORMOUS!!! some of the most beautiful and rare colors I've seen. Deep reds, swirled into a cream.

While even the soft stone takes a long time to cut, and the translucent even longer, they produce some of the finest edges I've produced.
 
IXLR, I've chatted with Dan before. They do a good job of finishing their stones. They offer good products. Translucent's are only 1000 American grit.

BOB, No one heat treats Arkansas stones. As they are heated in the earth when formed.

eKretz, When lapping / leveling a Arkansas stone at higher grits they can easily become glazed over and that's what it looks like yours has become. This won't cut or sharpen and that has to be removed. The Blacks are finer than the Translucent. I've seen 1100 grit stated for them. Being a natural they cut slow and polish. Complex stainless steels are difficult for them to cut as the carbides are harder than the stone. DM
 
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I have some novaculite that was heat treated and like Bob said it is glassy.I bought it from a flint knapping supplier and was heat treated to improve its knappability when making arrowheads.Beauty of a stone IXLR8.
 
Mine cuts just fine, as evidenced by the finished piece I depicted. You just have to know how to make it cut. It is meant to be a finishing stone only - especially on the finely lapped side - so it's only used after something like 12,000+ JIS in my case, for a final polish. As also noted, the other side is lapped at 120 grit, and even that side will still put on a hazy mirror finish. These stones are NOT meant to set bevels, and you won't be able to do that with them no matter how they're finished, short of perhaps lapping on gravel. That's why they also mine and sell the far less dense versions - soft and Washita.
 
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Thanks for all the replies. Turns out the stone IS heat treated but Dan Whetstone didn't do it. It was done naturally over time, geologically. So it is indeed a natural translucent Arkansas Stone.

I really like the black mirror polished one by the way. I wonder if that finish could be achieved on a stone like mine. I bet that would be beautiful.

Tmack yours are beautiful too.
 
Sure you could lap yours. It would really look nice, but it does really slow down the cutting speed. It's the only way I've found to get a true bright mirror finish from a translucent/black ark though. Once it's lapped as fine as mine you can hardly use any oil or it won't cut at all. I put one drop of oil on the stone and rub it back off with a paper towel to use the stone. After every 30 - 40 strokes on the hone I add another drop of oil and wipe it back off to clean the swarf away and hone some more. The very nice thing about having it lapped this fine is that the stone will NOT load up. The swarf just sits on top of the surface and can be easily wiped away.

And yes it DOES cut, the paper towel wipes come away with plenty of gray/black swarf, depending on how long I spend honing before cleaning. If you don't wipe off the oil it will not cut, as the finish is so smooth and flat that the steel just floats on a fluid film of oil like a hydrodynamic bearing. If I degrease the stone and honed test piece, when I set the test piece down on the stone it will float for a split second before settling down on the stone - until all the air is displaced. If the stone isn't level the test piece will actually float down the stone a ways, just like a maglev train but on air instead of a magnetic field.

As noted before, some folks (the knappy ones) heat treat the novaculite to get it to flake better. Ours are just naturally heat treated through geothermal activity.
 
Oh boy,
I have decided not to use this stone. I doubt that I will ever be able to find another one this pretty. I have been told that stones like this, are very rare and hard to come by.
So, I'm just gonna get another one for use. This one will be used as an exhibition piece. Though I imagine it wouldn't hurt anything to use the flip side occasionally. The flip side is also pretty but not quite as nice as the above pictured , side.
 
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