Just trying to think around the problem here. But, in the past, i was given a stone, by @joamo , and it had some cracks that were toxic. I filled them in, with a good epoxy. This did the trick. Is there a way you could use a Dremel Tool, with a cutting disc, remove the toxic line out, maybe 1/32 inches deep??? Just a very narrow channel, and fill it in with epoxy?? If you want, you could use the dust from the Koppa, and lapping stone, to mix with the epoxy, to give it a little bite. ..
Yeah my thought was if I pick the line the result will be a wider defect which annoyed me and I went for the carbide saw. Next time will try the epoxy.
So went to isopropyl alcohol with this one to take out the faint smell. Well not only it removed that but the color of the stone also improved significantly.
Good job Alex, I’m trying to de-oil 2 wooden stands now, one’s coming along well and the other is fighting me - I think that it’s saturated with it. It makes the stone kind of waxy looking and darker. When you get the ‘oil’ out of it, the stone is a true color.
Thank you Steve. Yeah the initial color had me disappointed. Much happier now that it showed it's true colors Sorry couldn't resist.
There are lots of jnat fans here, so here’s a little eye candy and maybe something that you haven’t seen or noticed before. Alex Gilmore calls these ‘living edge stones’ and they are a tribute to the miners who would leave no good stone behind, no matter how small. The only worked surface is the honing surface, all other surfaces are natural. They’re like a little jellybean out on the edge of the formation, and they flattened one surface to hone on. I wouldn’t really call these rare, but they are slightly uncommon. This one is a treat to the face as well as the eyes, it’s also a first class razor hone, from Alex G.
Okay, here I go with one of my favorite JNats and a new tomo I’m testing out. Previous honing on the Manaslu 300, I had tried a bit harder tomo that didn’t quite respond as well as I had hoped. Where’s my velvet squeegee? I’m hoping my test shave in a couple of days proves this to be the better “match.”
Some tomo nagura I’m working to match with some of my current JNats. Sadly, I wound up discovering that the white spot on my previous hone pic was a “bubble” that needed to be lapped out. Talk about deflating. Hopefully, I will discover some magic with these tomo and forget about yesterday here soon.
Those three little stones are Naguras, used to make a slurry. . Bubbles are usually toxic, and can crumble, leaving chips and pieces, that will harm an edge. .
It’s difficult to identify defects by images. My ho ho test for fragile/crumbling thingys is to poke them with a toothpick. If they shed material, you need to fix them if you can because defects that are that fragile can shed coarse particles into slurry.
What kind of stones are the nagura you are testing? Tushima,kitta, ozuuko........ How hard are they? How hard is base stone?
Exactly ^^^ this. I had to lap away the gorgeous Hatanaka stamp much earlier than I had anticipated. My next tests will likely be on other hones due to my mourning. You can see the white spot / bubble near the middle of the hone toward the bottom on this picture. It was growing and shedding and needed to be removed:
The gray one is Shobu and very hard. The middle one is next in hardness with the rightmost one not far behind. I have a number of hones to test them on, so stay tuned. Nakayamas, an ozuku, etc. My ozuku is my hardest hone with the nakas not too far behind. I have about a half-dozen bench sized hones and a bit more than that in koppa sizes. I've only had a few months to play with Japanese natural hones, so I have a lot of learning ahead of me and will be posting my experimentation here.
Just thinking, cant you just take a dremel and bevel the hole(bubble) out a little. A small hole in the middle of a good stone shouldnt effect the performance. Just make a small funnel shape out of the bubble. This should keep it from shedding. From what I've read, some here have tried to lap out bubbles, only to find many more bubbles, the deeper into the stone they go. I would "Err on the side of caution", and address the one bubble, with as little lapping as possible. .
