Thanks Everyone!
We originally had these made to replace the Norton stones because Norton closed the N.H. stone factory, laid all those people off and set up shop in Mexico. If they want to do that, it's their choice I guess.... but, it's
our choice not to give them another dime of our business because of it.
So we started looking for an American company that could make us a stone that was comparable to the Norton India. Wow, I didn't think it would be that tough! We got samples from a few places and have been working with one company for close to a year now. Been back and forth with samples, "can you make them harder"?...more samples, "gotta be perfectly flat"... After many more samples and experiments with different grits, I think we have almost accidentally created a stone that is superior to the Norton.
Jake and I were discussing this last night and as he said, they do have a brief break-in period. It’s a brief period though, like a diamond stone. They definitely get better the more you use them. At first I thought they might even be more aggressive than diamond stones. After giving them a thorough 9 day punishment test at the Harrisburg show, we concluded that they’re not quite as aggressive as the diamond stones but close. I think they fall somewhere between diamonds and India stones as aggressive stock removal goes. The thing that gets me is the fact that I can get a blade to shave very effortlessly using just the coarse stone, and it is very coarse BTW. (I’m not even gonna tell you what the grits are cause you wouldn’t believe me)...(Sorry Soilarch). They are very hard and we guarantee them not to belly or dish out. We’re very excited about these too and would really like to hear everyone’s thoughts about them.
Oh yea, we will be replacing the x-coarse silicon carbide stone in the knife kits with one similar to the new stones so that we can guarantee the whole 4 stone set. Thanks,
Ron