Do's and Dont's for sharpening stone use and care 

William Sleight awesome thank you. And I believe this to be accurate

Jeff Edge awesome! How did u like it?

This is a old video. I'm still using it today. I'll never look back.

Howard Petterson more u use it, the more u will like it

dfailsthemost Hey man not having alot keeps us somewhat humble. its nice to have hand made things that you have created. I make the majority of mine. I know how being broke is man. Im there now. Glad to hear you are enjoying this. Take care

Osbaldo Hernandez don’t really understand what u said.

Osbaldo Hernandez but what kind of stone is it?

It looks brown for the rough side and red for the fine side but I told the old man what does he put on his stone and he says he uses 3 in 1 and it works good but I noticed that the oil just sticks on the stone instead of removing metal

Osbaldo Hernandez that sounds like a emry stone. Like emry cloth or a emry board/nail file. I’d say that thing needs a good cleaning. Then use mineral oil on it. Water will flow through it cuz it’s very porus

B Harrell I personally have never used it to sharpen. But it being a lower viscosity than regular oil, I’d say it would probably work good. I still like my dawn and water though 😃 Thanks for the compliment

Kenneth Lee sounds like to me it needed to be flattened and roughly lapped. I dont understand how the stone glazed tho? that takes alotta use. What do u mean by convexing the stone?

Re: Rooster, the glazing is sorta like what you see on a shiny, polished trans/black. When you tilt the stone in the light, you can get a bright reflection. It starts in shiny streaks. (Even my flat-lapped ceramics will develop these streaks between lappings). But on this particular hard (and to a lesser extent, some of my soft) arks, these streaks develop almost instantly, and they quickly progress to cover a large percentage of the flat-lapped surface. It doesn't take "a lot" of use. Even flat-lapping this stone against an india stone can leave a glazed surface (on both stones). I have experimented with roughing the surfaces with diamond plates down to 60 grit, and even this is only a temporary and partial improvement. (And the rough lapped surface degrades the keenness of the edge you can make). On a trans/ceramic, one might like this super polished surface; on these stones it might be useful. But on the porous arks, this surface isn't contiguous. There are lots of sharp edged divots which make the stone not so good for burnishing/apexing The convexing is just what it sounds like. I rock the stone against the lapping surface to give the stone a very slightly curved or crowned surface. Because there are no flat spots to glaze, the stone wears evenly. When sharpening a flat/straight bevel, I just rock the blade against the stone, slightly, to frequently change the contact area. And I preferentially use the ends/edges of the stone (and rotate the stone, periodically, to keep it symmetrical). This is an improvement over what I did in the past, which was to round just one edge and primarly focus pressure towards that edge. What happens here is the stone wears very unevenly and starts to 1. slope towards that edge and 2. starts to dish in the middle of that edge. Lapping this out wastes a LOT of stone. Convexing the stone in all directions and rotating it while using it means you only ever have to lap tiny bits off the ends/corners of the surface to keep it in shape. I am consciously doing this now to many of my abrasive stones, of all types: india, SiC, ceramic, ark... whether by actively lapping them or by how I shape them through usage. If you have ever used machinist file stick shaped india stone, you might be familiar with a method for using them. Usually you hold it in your hand and are using primarily one spot on the end. After you dish a spot in the end, instead of lapping the entire surface flat, you might just lap the worn bit at an angle. And then curve that in to meet the rest of the stone. And eventually the entire end gets curved into a banana. This is a bit of the same principle, just applied to 3 dimensions, radially, rather than 2 dimensions. With knife X strokes, in particular, this means the blade and stone contact over a relatively small area, no matter if it's a straight section or a curve. I think this allows room for swarf to form/exit, and allows the stone's abrasives to eventually pop out when worn. And the knife will always find a new path over the stone on every stroke, compared to a perfectly flat stone where the straight portion of the blade is always going to find (and very lightly touch) the flat areas... and cause glazing. The slightly convexed stone wears super evenly, as a result, and you hardly ever have to reshape or resurface it. The huge problem with trying to flatten a stone that glazes easily is that the little dishing that you eventually create in the middle of the stone and/or the middle of the edge(s)? These spots are going to bite like crazy compared to the flats. The LOW spots biting much harder and grinding way more quickly than the high spots makes for a very bad sharpening experience which grows exponentially worse and out of control, over time. A lot of folks just let the stone get completely dished and use it like that. I prefer to use the convex surface over concave. The problem with a concaved surface is that as you sharpen into it, you can get into a situation where as you build up momentum in the stroke, the edge DIGS into the stone. As the angle gets progressively steeper, the edge is cutting into the stone, sharpening itself, and cutting into the stone, again... ad infinitum. This is wastefully eroding stone in a generally (for final sharpening) unproductive manner. Even on my trans arks, when I used to round off one edge and use that side of the stone... when it started to get dished in the middle of the edge, this trans ark would get super grabby in the dished area, destroying edge and stone quite quickly with one errant stroke. Consider the situation with a convexed stone. If you use part of it to lap a flat surface, you could create a low spot. If this flat surface were to have gotten glazed, it will not matter. It would be quickly eroded from the outside in, receding away. It is self-healing. Thus, the slightly convex surface wears much more evenly, bites the same on all spots, and you can maintain the same shape indefinitely with a little care and infrequent maintenance. It's also much easier to resurface and fine tune than a dished surface. If you try this, on say, one of your narrower stones, like say a 4x1 dans pocket stone, I will bet there's a good chance it will change the way you use stones, forever. There's a time and place for flat-lapped stones, but for sharpening knives, extreme flatness is perhaps overrated.

Ronald Thomas Thats a good question. And no i do not. really its whatever u can find to work with. find a good surface that works for you. Just enough to.get you through what you need.

dfailsthemost i have not seen these. Hmm im going to have to look into this.

Howard Petterson hmm interesting

No I just sharpen like I do on every other Stone. And it turns out fine every time.

Thank you.... Finally another recognizes that. And with kings I've never tried that. But I do like kings.

Jeff Edge yes you can but you will have to de oil the stone with de greaser and boiling water. I have a video on here showing how I do it

I don't use oil on my Arks. I get much better results from my dawn and water.

Dravous Wild great question. And im very sorry for the late response. i just now seen this comment. People say you cant sharpen anything other than carbon steel on Arkansas. This is not true. I always use my dmts first to to the hard work and set the initial bevel and sharpness. Then use the Arkansas for honing. The novaculite is much harder than people think. Now if you were to try to do the entire sharpening process on Arkansas you would fail miserably. No way possible. I hope this answers your question.

aidan wyman well you dont want a burr on the finished edge. Sounds to me like your stropping to hard and rolling the edge. The burr don't make it sharp its a process to make it sharp.

Ok thank you

aidan wyman keep working at it. You'll figure it out 😀

Olga Dachdecker no, none of my current stones were ever used with oil. I will however be doing a video on de-greasing stones. also just because there called "oil stones" by some don't necessarily make them oil stones.

Wilson Miranda I see what your saying, but if I'm in that kind of situation I'll have my gear and I'll just use it dry if I have to. if it's that cold I don't think I'm gonna worry about my edge until I get onto a warmer situation. Unless I'm field dressing game.

I'm glad I don't live in a place with that temperature

southerntrader124@gmail.com

AKTrapper idk about you, but I’d just be worried about survival. I’d find some sort of abrasive surface and use that

@@roughroosterknifesharpenin5531 Mitch at Native Survival has one I just found. He just uses a untouched rock with good results. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-5cnk1A-PsgQ.html

Ok awesome. I don't give a shit. You have commented this repeatedly. Do what you want get inferior edges. Don't care