What is difference between Arkansas stone and India stone

On Jan 1, 5:33=A0pm, jridenou snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

Arkansas stones are natural products, mostly quartz, finer grain than the finest India stones. India stones are a man-made product, mostly aluminum oxide. You can get a finer surface finish with an Arkansas stone, they cost more and good ones are getting scarce, particularly the black(super-fine) variety. Right now, I use diamond hone plates for moving a lot of metal, ceramic hones for finer work, I save the black Arkansas for producing the very finest finish. Arkansas stones need oil for removing the metal from the pores, they're a bugger to clean up once the surface is plugged up and doesn't cut anymore. Ceramic stones can be cleaned with water or used with oil, India stones are best used with oil but they can be used dry. Arkansas stones come in three varieties, Washita(coarsest and softest), white(fine and hard) and black(hardest and finest). The deposits in Arkansas are playing out, it's hard to find a stone equivalent to what you could get 20 years ago. Most of what is sold as Arkansas stones these days would have been graded as Washita back then and pretty poor ones at that. It's hard to wear a white or black one out, usual problem is they get dropped or chipped. This is a real problem when you depend on that stone's edge being sharp and straight for stoning sear notches. I usually keep mine wrapped up and boxed when not in use and don't leave them on the bench. Ceramic stones are a good substitute, just not quite as fine as a black Arkansas, not as expensive, either.

Stan

India stones are man-made oilstones made from aluminum oxide. They were actually named for American Indians, who had nothing whatsoever to do with them. d8-) I think it was originally a Norton brand name.

Arkansas stones are natural noviculite and they come from -- you guessed it -- Arkansas. Here's a quirky and incomplete history from Norton:

-- Ed Huntress

Quirky isn't the word for it- it reads like a bad high school paper .

-Carl

If you're brave, put them in a oven at 250 - 300 deg. F until the old oil appears on the surface. I leave them in for half an hour up to an hour. Wipe quickly with an old towel. Don't tell your wife what you did to her oven.

This works for Indias and Crystolon stones, too. If you're not brave, soak in warm kerosene for a week and then wipe them off. It's not as effective but it's better than nothing.

Norton sells a nice big translucent Arkansas for just $180...

Except for a light-gray translucent (my finest) and a black surgical (almost as fine), my newest hard Arkansas stone is around 60 years old. I have six or seven flat ones in various sizes, five or so hard Arkansas slips in tapers and rhombics, and a dozen or so Washitas, and they're all as flat as new. It's a long-term investment -- if you don't drop them.

-- Ed Huntress

>

I don't think they pay their PR writers very well...

-- Ed Huntress

I haven't got a wife to worry about but that does sound like a very good excuse to get a a small or even large temperature controlled furnace. I have 2, a small muffle furnace with about a 6" x 6" x 5" chamber and a 18" ID ex pottery kiln which I had in use today to dry a pre-fire some insulating castable.

Someone gave me a Belgian stone for honing small planes and woodworking chisels. How does this compare to either of the two above?

RWL

Hardness is mostly.

I want to say Arkansas is natural stone - I made a couple years ago. India are man made - Union Carbide (r) ?

Mart> When talking about abrasive stones what is the difference between

About 11,000 miles ±

I was driving through Arkansas on vacation a month ago near lake Washita and happened to see a sign for a small company that made Arkansas sharpening stones. The owner was nice enough to show me some of the stones he was boxing up for shipment. I told him I was looking for a replacement for my translucent hard Arkansas stone I had dropped years ago. He said he happened to have one on hand, which was unusual since he normally only cuts soft Arkansas. He said the hard stones required oil cutting and different tooling/saws than the softer stones which were water cut. Paid $6 bucks for a really nice 2 x 7 x 1 translucent stone, rings like a piece of steel when you tap it. For such a hard smooth stone it seems to cut fairly quickly and gives a quick polished edge. I asked if the hard stone was getting harder to find, and he said he didn't think so, just the demand for the hard stones was less. (I had heard the same story that the hard translucent & black stone was getting harder to find). Looked like he had about 20 tons of raw soft Arkansas material on hand and the driveway to the shop appeared to be paved mainly with Arkansas stone chips...

Hmm. I have a theory about things like this. It's a cranky, untested, unresearched theory, but it's one of my favorites about today's markets. Hard Arkansas stones fit right into it.

My (patented, copyrighted, trademarked, but free) theory says that people take their hobbies 'way too seriously today (why that is happens to be another of my theories, but one theory at a time...), and that hobbies like woodworking, fly fishing, golf, and so on have gotten so serious for some people that the high end of the market has no practical limits ($4,000 fly rods; $200 sharpening stones; $220,000 shotguns -- no shit, I get a magazine called _The Gun_, a commercial mag from Griffin & Howe, that's full of them). Furthermore, the high end of these markets *defines* the markets, the aspirations, and the goals of other people who may pursue the hobbies -- particularly the latest generation of hobbyists. It's screwed up the whole perspective. I have to admit some small culpability here because Prince tennis racquets was one of my advertising clients a long time ago and we were pushing that image stuff. But jeez, things hadn't gone completely nutz then, 26 years ago.

Being a cheap bastard by nature, it annoys me; I consider it a sign of social decadence. d8-) Also, I'm jealous. But mostly I roll my eyes about the people who pay those prices. I want to tell them to get a life. And I want to tell them that they're driving the market crazy for the rest of us. I don't *want* to envy the flyrods, smoothing planes, Arkansas stones, or other things that are really nice, that speak to the desire we hobbyists all seem to have for the sublime, but the prices for which they've driven all out of sensible proportion.

So, back to earth, those prices, in my opinion, have little to do with costs of production or normal competition. The competition among the suppliers seems to be to see who can be more outrageous than the next guy. Griffin & Howe is a lost cause in that regard and always has been. But when solid old Norton charges $200 for a sharpening stone -- which has almost no real commercial purpose, BTW: there are far more efficient ways to sharpen tools -- I know the game is lost. That *can't* be a competitive price. It's more likely a "brand image, no competition" price.

[ranting curmudgeon mode off] I'm glad you found a great stone for a sensible price. Maybe I'll take a drive down there and stock up. d8-)

(BTW, to those who have been told for decades that a black, "surgical" Arkansas stone is the finest, it's not. The translucent stones that oldjag describes are the finest. They're the ultimate, the sublime, the ne plus ultra.)

-- Ed Huntress

Question: I read somewhere that when referring to the type of stone, the word Arkansas is pronounced with a 'sas' at the end instead of 'saw'. Can you provide the correct pronounciation? Thanks!!