Honing (metalworking)
Honing is an abrasive machining process that produces a precision surface on a metal workpiece by scrubbing an abrasive stone against it along a controlled path. Honing is primarily used to improve the geometric form of a surface, but may also improve the surface texture.
Typical applications are the finishing of cylinders for internal combustion engines, air bearing spindles and gears. Types of hone are many and various but all consist of one or more abrasive stones that are held under pressure against the surface they are working on.
In terms of sharpening knives, a honing steel does not actually hone knives, but simply realigns the metal along the edge.
Other similar processes are lapping and superfinishing.
Read more about Honing (metalworking): Honing Stones, Process Mechanics, Honing Configurations, Economics, Performance Advantages of Honed Surfaces, Cross-hatch Finish, Plateau Finish
Famous quotes containing the word honing:
“It is easy and dismally enervating to think of opposition as merely perverse or actually evil—far more invigorating to see it as essential for honing the mind, and as a positive good in itself. For the day that moral issues cease to be fought over is the day the word “human” disappears from the race.”
—Jill Tweedie (b. 1936)