Interestingly enough, it has been released without any fanfare. Why is it listed as a prototype? And what do you guys think about it? Sounds like a great finisher for my personal needs as I almost never go below 6K (JIS)...
Yes, this is a great finishing/polishing stone, I'd recommend it if you have a good sense of how it fits into your lineup of stones, and that you want or need something like this. I've been using mine, and posting it about here in the forums for a few weeks now. Haven't done any actual review, but have used it a
lot already. I have a few threads recently that mention the stone and sharpening results with it. Like here:
What grit do you use for profiling
Here is how I'm using this stone in my lineup of stones. I have 2 categories of stones in my sharpening collection (with a few other SiC stones like my Norton Crystolon as well):
- For everything BUT high vanadium or super hard steels: AlOx stones. Norton economy, and Baryonyx stones including Artic Fox field, bench, and Ptarmigan.
- For high vanadium steels: diamond stones. Atoma 140, Ultrasharp, DMT.
Although the diamond stones get every bit as good results on regular steels, better on high vanadium, and often work faster too, I still prefer sharpening a lot more with the AlOx stones, especially the Baryonyx ones. I use the Baryonyx AlOx stones whenever possible, only resorting to diamonds when I have to.
For the majority of knives I own, they are steels in the first category, so I can use AlOx stones for most of my sharpening. In that sharpening routine, I do not see the Ptarmigan as a necessity, it's a luxury, but hey this is BF, right?
Here's the sequence I've been using on all steels in the first category above and getting fantastic results:
- AF for minor-to-moderate edge repair, edge reset that falls short of a full edge reprofile, and apexing.
- Ptarmigan to finish--5 to 10 super super light edge-leading strokes per side.
- You COULD also use Ptarmigan as your maintenance strategy, if you want to go "stropless" and just do light backhone passes on a stone. I've used it that way and it worked great. Though lately, I've resorted to a wood strop + 1 micron cbn compound for my maintenance, since that will maintain ALL my knives of all steel types and removes slightly less metal, with a reduced risk of boogering up my edges during the "backhone" stone-stropping step.
Admitting that Ptarmigan is not a necessity, and that it's not optimal to use on high vanadium steels: it is a fantastic finishing stone and I would definitely recommend it to somebody who wants to use it in that role. It holds water well similar to AF if you submerge for about 30 mins, so you can use it throughout a sharpening session. It has a softer bond I think than AF, so it'll easily and quickly form a light slurry if you want that, even using very light edge-leading strokes.
