Liquid honing is the original name for what the industry now calls wet blasting. In the late 1940s, Norman Ashworth was working alongside Sir Frank Whittle on the development of the jet engine when he engineered a process that combined water and abrasive media to produce a finish no dry process could match. He called it liquid honing. Three generations of Ashworths later, the name has largely been replaced in general use by 'wet blasting,' but it survives as the technically precise term for the same process - and it's the name attached to where the whole industry began.
Why 'honing' was the right word
Norman Ashworth didn't call it 'wet spraying' or 'water blasting.' He called it honing, because that's what the water-cushioned abrasive stream actually did to a surface: not a series of blunt impacts, but a controlled, flowing, lapping action - the same principle behind mechanical honing, just delivered through a liquid medium instead. Water and abrasive media are mixed into a slurry, then projected under compressed air onto the component, cleaning, finishing, and degreasing it in a single pass without embedding media or generating dust.
That naming choice is also why the process was adopted so quickly by the jet engine industry: aerospace components needed a finish that improved fatigue life and surface integrity, not one that damaged it. Liquid honing did both.
From liquid honing to wet blasting
The process has been known by several names since - vapor blasting, vapour blasting, aqua blasting, wet abrasive blasting - but 'liquid honing' remains the term closest to Ashworth's original engineering intent, and it's still used today, particularly in North America and in technical and patent literature. Vapormatt's own R&D has continued in the same direction Ashworth set: engineering the process for repeatability rather than treating it as a manual skill.
See how that engineering legacy continues in Vapormatt's R&D and patents
A process still owned by the family that invented it
No competitor can trace a process back to its own invention. Vapormatt can: the fourth generation of the Ashworth family still owns and runs the company today, and the closed-loop, recycled, precision-controlled machines built now are a direct engineering continuation of the liquid honing process Norman Ashworth built in the 1940s.
Is liquid honing different from wet blasting?
No. Liquid honing was the original name given to the process by its inventor, Norman Ashworth, in the late 1940s. Wet blasting is the same process under its more commonly used modern name.
Who invented liquid honing?
Norman Ashworth, working alongside Sir Frank Whittle on jet engine development in the late 1940s. His company, now Vapormatt, is still owned and run by his family.
Is liquid honing still used as a term today?
Yes, particularly in North America and in technical literature, though 'wet blasting' and 'vapor blasting' are now the more commonly searched terms for the same process.