Grinding and Honing / working up the grits

When honing a plane iron or chisel you may have a preference to type of stone or materials.

Names like India stone and Ceramic Stone are commonly heard.

Many materials are used as abrasives to grind and hone steel 

Man Made

Silicon Carbide

Aluminum Oxide

These materials can be also glued to paper producing sand paper

Also

 Diamond

And Natural (mined and cut right out of the ground)

Washita

Arkansas

 Some stones insist lubricant is needed to cut steel and so often we classify them accordingly

Oil Stones - Water Stones - Non lubricated Stones

In this class we will explore a variety of stones and sandpaper.

It is not obligatory to hone with only one category of material at a time.

the important thing to remember is that one must respect the order of grits.

The rule to remember is that the lower the number, the courser the grit.

For example;   A 320 grit is courser than 600 grit.

As a matter of fact, one can divide the grinding and honing process by grit,

Eg:  Grinding <  320 <  Honing

The confusing thing though is that there are other systems of grits too.

For woodworkers, the other system is Japanese 

As you can see a 500 U.S. grit is equivalent to a 1000 Japanese grit

 Most Japanese waterstones are Aluminum Oxide which has a characteristic called Friability.

Diamond Stones are the most durable.

So we use them here at RTC

Search the blog for grinding and honing articles. 

Perhaps comment about your experience.