Cracked Japanese Natural Stone

E

Ernest DuBois

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Mar 2, 2013
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It's been stored up for years and I don't remember even what stone it is exactly, a dark one, dark gray and big like a brick, I think it's medium fine, so for use just prior to honing but it is cracked and there is movement and I wonder if there is a way to fix this.

E.DB.
 
Is it cracked on the face and cracked all the way through? You can epoxy the cracked side to a wooden, glass or plastic base. That will help keep the pieces together and from cracking through. With out knowing what binder they used, gluing the crack itself may cause it to wear faster our slower than the surrounding stone.
 
It's a natural stone and I would have to go up and get it to say just which one, but anyway, natural so no binder. Gluing it then to a base sounds straight forward enough. I guess the crack is all the way through as there is movement though I have never separated the halves. So, better to leave the crack free and glue only the bottom to a wood base?
I seem to recall the use of urushi to repair natural stones but know no details.
E.DB.
 
I would use a glass base or maybe granite. You can also lacquer the sides and wrap with tissue paper which will prevent it from coming apart.

If it has cracked from rapid drying sometimes the crack will close up once placed back in water. Happened to my Aoto.
 
In any good knife shop in Japan you'll see many smaller, odd-shaped stones for sale. It's quite common to use smaller triangular, square, or completely random sized pieces of stone. If you go to the old mines in Arashiyama, Kyoto Japan, and buy directly from the families that own them, this is what they are selling now that the commercial production has stopped. In the West we are accustomed to only seeing the nicely shaped rectangular stones being sold, and forget that it's not the shape of the stone that makes it work, it's the grit size. If your stone breaks in half, just modify your sharpening stroke. That's what Japan's 'Master Sharpeners' do.


Stitchawl
 
Well Stitch I do like this kind of approach to the over-all question, I just thought since as of yet it's not an all-out break I might salvage it as a whole if I could for the sake of convenience. Well, I wasn't thinking of tossing it anyway.
I have done some scrounging myself in the tailings of the mines down in the Ardene where the coticule stones are quarried and proudly come away with very usable shards.

E.DB.
 
"I would use a glass base or maybe granite. You can also lacquer the sides and wrap with tissue paper which will prevent it from coming apart.

If it has cracked from rapid drying sometimes the crack will close up once placed back in water. Happened to my Aoto. "

+1

---
Ken
 
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