- Joined
- Mar 8, 2008
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- 25,901

I've been experimenting with these for over a year now, and it's finally time to go public with them! Much like sintered alumina ceramic stones, these are ultra-hard fully fused stones produced without binder under enormous heat and pressure until the grains lock together, much like sedimentary stone does in nature. A common issue with alumina ceramics is that since they do not shed grit, the surface does eventually blunt and needs periodic refreshing. While sintered silicon carbide ceramic is no exception to this, its higher hardness reduces the rate of this wear, and its higher friability allows the grains themselves to fracture under pressure to expose fresh surface, which further extends the life of the surface before requiring dressing. Inexpensive lapidary diamond may be used to recondition the surface if necessary, but I have yet to need to do so with any of my test pieces despite using them extensively.
When seeking out a suitable grade of production for my purposes I did end up with some test pieces with significant warps in them that I lapped flat with lapidary diamond on glass, and it worked fantastically, but none of the test pieces have needed resurfacing from honing wear. All I've ever needed to do was wipe steel dust off the surface with the side of my thumb and keep on honing. These have been my finishing stone on almost all of my edged tools, regardless of if they're set up with a coarse slicing edge or a finely polished push-cutting one. They cut almost alarmingly fast for how fine they are, as well.