Japanese water stones

R

Ravaillac

Joined
Feb 14, 2005
Messages
1,650
After having tried many cheap stones and being unimpressed I'd like to try japanese water stones which have an excellent reputation.

I'm thinking about purchasing two large stones and maybe a small field-sharpening one.
What grain sizes combination would you recommand for allround knife/axe sharpening?
I'm planning to get the stones from this shop. Are the ones sold alright? Which ones would you recommand (natural vs artificial)? Do you know a cheaper dealer?

Thanks in advance for your answers.
 
Any woodworking shop have them carpenters use them a lot for chisels, you may first have a look it in local store.

Thanks, Vassili.

P.S.

This combination - $25
stones-01.jpg
 
Having used both and well, I would go with natural - mine are Ice Bear Japanese made King brand.

Coarse grade (around 250) is really only needed for edge reprofiling or serious damage removal such as chips. Coarse is never needed in sharpening, unless you have let the blade get rediciously blunt!

So, you use Medium and Fine. I have an excellent set with a Medium (around 800/1000) and a Fine (6000). The Fine needs a little stone called a Nagura which make a cutting slurry. This is simply just rubbed on the stone until a nice bed of it is mixed up. The fine can also be used to remove light residue/burrs from the blade - acids such as awkward red nettles and dried in fruit stains can be removed in a few minutes and a lovely finish reapplied.

So, try a set with Medium and Fine, the little Nagura stone and most importantly, a mount to place the stones on when working. I love working with waterstones and Ice Bear are amongst the best :)
 
I use a combination stone for several years now with great satisfaction. I bought it where I bought my Global kitchen knives. Every such store in Europe (Germany) should have those stones. I forgot what I paid for it.

Marcel
 
I have the same combination stone that nozh is showing, and while it is a good stone to try japanese waterstones, I like others a lot better (which unfortunately are also a bit more expensive).

As grit combination, I would recommend 1000/8000 rather than 1000/6000, but that is my personal preference of highly polished edges. I am a big fan of the "Bester" brand stones. They are very affordable, stay longer flat than the King stones and cut a WHOLE lot faster. Unfortunately, I have never seen one that is finer than 1500 grid. But a Bester in 1000 would be my first choice. The recommendation for the 8000 grit stone is a bit more difficult as it gets pretty expensive there. My personal experiences with the Naniwa stones are very good, but Shapton stones have an excellent reputation and some people seem to like the Takenoko stone very much as well. If you want to stick with that store, the choice for me would be pretty easy, as they have only one 8000 grit stone. Good luck. It may take a while to get used to them, but I am sure you will be very happy no matter which ones you decide on.
 
Also look here: http://www.dick.biz/ (under tools, then "sharpening tools") They have some nice natural stones. Also check http://www.shokunin.co.uk/shokunin.htm They have a wide selection of stones, including some large brick size coarse stones. They also carry the highly reviewed Arashiyama (storm mountain) in 1, 6 and 8 thousand grit and a mountian stone in 10k grit (the kanji on the stone is Kitayama or North Mountain, which is also very highly regarded). The King super stones are also nicer than average.

In the coarse 120-340 grit, it is best to get a single stone as the coarse stones wear quite fast and you'll probably use them a lot (particularly since you mentioned "axes" 1000 grit stones also get used a lot so a single stone there would probably be good. If you want to save money with combo stones, then do it with the fine finishing stones since they wear slowly and you don't use them as much. So, maybe a 220-300 grit, an 800-1500 grit and a 4000/8000 combo stone would be a good set. That little 800 grit sickle stone would be a good field stone for touching up the old axe.

If you go natural, you'll want an arato stone (big as you can get) a binsu (about 800-1200 grit) and an awase stone (finishing about 5000-8000 grit)

In Europe you can probably also get Belgian blue stones reasonably, they're about 4000 grit and the Belgian corticle stones run about 8000 grit (they are waterstones that use garnet as an abrasive)

For hard, high vanadium tool steels and some stainless steels you'd probably be better off with the artificial stones as they use silicon carbide, aluminum oxide and chrome oxide as abrasives. For regular carbon steels and regular stainless, the natural stones and Belgian stones will do a decent job.

If you want to relate the Japanese grit sizes to your European standards, here is a table I made to show the abrasive particle sizes in microns plus the allowable statistical error margins. http://members.cox.net/~yuzuha/jisgrits.html
 
Can the nagura be substituted for with something? The only shop that sells Japanese waterstones here does not have them curiously enough, ordering from a foreign retailer is not a good option atm for me.
 
You can pick up the nagura elsewhere. Sometimes they package an artificial nagura in with with a finish stone (many of the 8k & 10k stones come with one). They basically help form a polishing paste or mud on the stone and are generally used on 3000 grit and higher stones. The artificial ones can also be used for minor field correction (helping smooth a rough patch or unclogging a part of the stone that has become glazed).
 
Way-O said:
Can the nagura be substituted for with something? The only shop that sells Japanese waterstones here does not have them curiously enough, ordering from a foreign retailer is not a good option atm for me.
Click to expand...
www.dick.biz - is german website, so it is EU.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
Thanks for the link Vassili. Seems to be a good store, and I bookmarked it for later. But I'm not going to order a three euro nagura and pay 15 euros on top for postage :)

Their guide for Japanese stones was an interesting read. (link to .pdf file) I thought the forming paste was always good thing, but they seem to imply that generally it's best to rinse it off.

If I'm not too worried about the slurry, any good ideas for removing clogs beside the nagura?
 
Well, as they say, the paste can be very much intentional. Usually you would want to rinse the mud off, while in the middle of sharpening, but right before you are ready to transition to the next finer stone, you let it build up. The exception is your finishing stone. You always have mud on your finishing stone.

The nice thing about waterstones is, that they practically do not clog or glaze at all. Not like other stones. All you have to do is rinse them of with lots of water. The only time they glaze is when you do not use enough water. If that happens, you just add water and continue to sharpen and the sharpening itself will wear the glazing off. The downside of this is that waterstones have an appreciable wear rate, they dish. They will last you a long time, but you need to true them once in a while. You can do that with a coarser stone or with a glassplate and some coarse silicon carbide powder or with a diamond stone. On the very fine stones the blade may leave traces of glazing, but they are not "permanent" either. Usually you can rub them off with your thumb if they are stubborn, and three quick swipes with your Nagura will take them right off. If you take care of your finishing stone by using a Nagura frequently and don't try to "reprofile" blades on a stone that is too fine, it should not dish appreciably. Usually the finer the stone the harder and denser it is. The 220-320 grids dish by comparison very quickly. If you really get into sharpening, you can use different Nagura stones to adjust just how the finishing stone feels and behaves. This is a very economical way, as natural finishing stones can cost thousands of dollars. But neither do I have the knowledge or access to a wide variety of Nagura stones to attempt that, so I leave that to the professional (japanese) bladesmiths and carpenters.
 
Way-O said:
Can the nagura be substituted for with something? The only shop that sells Japanese waterstones here does not have them curiously enough, ordering from a foreign retailer is not a good option atm for me.
Click to expand...

I don't know about Finland but all of the sites that have been linked to in this thread are in the UK, Netherlands or Germany. The second web site I linked to, Shokunin, is part of a big tool conglomerate web store in the UK. They have natural and artificial nagura stones and some goodies I can't find in the states, like the Arashiyama 1000 grit stone or some of the more obscure varieties of King stone (like their diamond ceramic). Anyway, order the nagura with other things (they hardly weigh anything anyway) or, if you get a fine finish stone, you may find a nagura packaged in the same box as the waterstone. You can get by without one but they are handy for the fine polishing stones. Basically they are a type of chalk stone (I have not tried using chalk in place of one, but hey, it is worth a shot if you really feel like experimenting)
 
yuzuha said:
Anyway, order the nagura with other things (they hardly weigh anything anyway) or, if you get a fine finish stone, you may find a nagura packaged in the same box as the waterstone. You can get by without one but they are handy for the fine polishing stones. Basically they are a type of chalk stone (I have not tried using chalk in place of one, but hey, it is worth a shot if you really feel like experimenting)
Click to expand...
No you don't understand. I don't need any other stuff. I already ordered a big 1000/6000 combo stone before the weekend from a local shop (which does not sell naguras). Apparently it's the the same as this one. I was expecting it to arrive today, but it should be here the next morning. I guess I didn't do my homework well enough this time, even though I thought I did. It's funny how just now I read all this stuff about the naguras. I had been planning to buy it for a couple of months and thought I looked into this stuff. Feels like it just appeared out of the blue. Kind of frustrating and embarrassing. But happens.

I guess I'll have be inventive and make the best of it. I'll report back here when I get around to trying the stones.
 
I see. Well, if you can find a piece of natural chalk stone that doesn't have other kinds of grit in it, you could try that. You could even try pool table chalk (yeah, strange use, but chalk is chalk), though you can get by without nagura on a 6k stone.
 
I used a half-round silicon carbide file to raise the slurry on the 6000 side of my stone. The file didn't seem to wear out at all, so no unwanted bigger particles were in the mix AFAIK. It worked decently and got rid of the small clogs that formed when I used the stone as is.

Does the nagura wear itself when rubbing on the stone, making the paste a mixture of sorts? This is the impression I got. Now the stuff is just from the waterstone itself. I'll order a nagura in the future when I need something else from the mentioned shops. But in the meanwhile I'll make the best of it without one. Any suggestions are appreciated of course. Thank you for all the info so far.
 
I've been thinking of jumping on the waterstone bandwagon. Here in the US I've been told that Lee Valley has good stones for nice prices:

http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=43071&cat=1,43072

There's a $12 starter set of two 4"x1" stones, 1000 and 4000 grit, and a $28 8"x2" set. I'm thinking of trying the little set, to figure out if 4000 is fine enough for me - if I decide I'm going to want an 8000 anyway, I don't want to bother getting a big 4000. I understand (or rather, I read :) ) that I can go from 1000 straight to 8000 with waterstones, do people here agree?

And they have $7 artifical Naguras. I wouldn't need one of those with a 4000, do I have that right?

Right now I do my hand sharpening on one Gerber and three DMT diamond stones, 220 - 1200 grit.
 
HoB said:
As grit combination, I would recommend 1000/8000 ...
Click to expand...

Taking a small knife, ~4" blade, used to the point where it won't slice paper, no chips, just dull, how long does it take you to set the edge on the 1000 grit side with an ATS-34 class steel?

-Cliff
 
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top