Your favorite low grit stones .

S

Spartan00

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Feb 4, 2016
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Hey guys . Wanted to talk about lower grit stones . I've been sharpening awhile now and have a nice selection of water stones and we'll as the entire dMt lineup except xxc.

In the market for a really coarse stone . Leaning towards the atoma 140 just because people say it feels better than the dMt xxc.

Right now my coarse stones are dmt xc, bester or beston 220, shapton pro 320.

I was actually looking for the nubatama araTae but can't find it in stock.

I play around a lot with my grinds . I zero grind some but I thin my knives when needed . I have a belt sander but I'd like the control of a stone to be honest .

Suggestions ? Like I said not really interested in the dmt xxc .
 
Also anybody up on carborundum stones? Found a huge stone labeled carborundum in my grand dad's old box of stuff . Feels pretty coarse but also feels like it could be loaded up.
 
Spartan00 said:
Also anybody up on carborundum stones? Found a huge stone labeled carborundum in my grand dad's old box of stuff . Feels pretty coarse but also feels like it could be loaded up.
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not really, but IIRC, carborundum mean siliconcarbide like crystolon, norton (or st. gobain) bought the carborundum company ... they come in coarse/medium/fine as in wood sandpaper "fine" probably no more than 320
 
It's got 180 on it . Not sure if that's the grit or what . Leaves a scratch pattern between a broken in dmt f and xf
 
It's 10x10x3 grand daddy worked in a tire plant stone was used for the men to sharpen their knives to cut the skids of rubber.. pretty cool regardless.
 
Carborundum = Silicon Carbide. 180 grit is about on a par with a Norton medium Crystolon stone. 10x10x3 is a big old flat plate of a stone. I'm trying to envision a bunch of 8x2x1 stones laid side by side and stacked three deep to create a similar slab.
 
Not sure about anything especially unique, I use the three way ?, medium, and hard Arkansas. After that I use a small grey stone that my grandfather gave me 40 years ago. It is so fine that I use it to polish. Why such a coarse grit? You may be looking for a metal file...
 
Spartan00 said:
...and we'll as the entire dMt lineup except xxc.

In the market for a really coarse stone . Leaning towards the atoma 140 just because people say it feels better than the dMt xxc.
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I have the DMT XXC. I haven't seen or used the Atoma 140, but I've read a lot of praise about it. I've seen the diamond pattern on that stone and it seems like a very smart way to set the pattern, as opposed to it just being sort of "random" like the DMT. The XXC cuts like CRAZY. It's very fast. Mine started off sort of "bumpy", but mostly broke in to feeling more smooth. It still has a tendency to "grab and slide" which can feel a little bit bumpy. This normally only happens if I'm using a very small amount of force, or if I have not used any water to lubricate the plate. I LOVE the XXC; it's fantastic.

I was actually looking for the nubatama araTae but can't find it in stock.
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Yeah, I noticed that too last time I went looking (recently). Ken Schwartz is the sole US importer, and AFAIK only distributes them through CKTG. He also sells direct. If he has any left, he would almost certainly sell you one and ship it himself.

That said, I haven't used the Aratae. It looks crazy coarse. Jason B doesn't have much praise for them and says that they leave scratches that are so coarse that it takes too long with other stones to remove those scratches. So the net time savings isn't enough to make it a practical stone. I don't know for sure; just saying what Jason told me when I asked.

Good luck.

Brian.
 
Clawdan said:
Not sure about anything especially unique, I use the three way ?, medium, and hard Arkansas. After that I use a small grey stone that my grandfather gave me 40 years ago. It is so fine that I use it to polish. Why such a coarse grit? You may be looking for a metal file...
Click to expand...

You familiar with zero ground Saber grinds say an Emerson or SPYDERCO endura? .I like to remove the secondary bevel and just have one bevel from grind to edge . Also if you use a knife a lot it gets thicker the more you sharpen and you need to thin it .

A lot of it is just playing around with different edges. Never seen a knife that didn't benefit from a thinning down of the primary grind ...

On another note I'll snap some pics of this gigantic stone brb.
 
I really like this Shapton 120



Stays pretty darned flat, cuts super fast and doesn’t slow down . . . it just keeps cutting. Super product.

Carborundum ?
This stuff tends to be kind of crumbly. I don’t have a lot of experience with it. This Norton (which Norton in general I really like and their 8000 yellow stone is stellar) . . . well anyway . . . as far as I can tell this grey Norton 220 coarse stone is carborundum and . . .
. . .
well
the best that I can say about it is that it MIGHT keep your shop door from blowing open if the wind isn’t too high. Other than that it has no useful purpose.
It is very crumbly, just wears away and wears away and gets all sway back and STILL doesn’t remove any significant metal. It is like trying to sharpen something on a tray full of microscopic ball bearings. Just couldn’t be worse if they called in a team of experts and gave them the task of eliminating any remaining good attributes.



Either or ? Great or crap ? No middle ground ?
The inexpensive white stone shown in front of the Shapton is usable but glazes and stops cutting. To get it cutting again I take it to the extra coarse DMT. (sorry you still might consider getting one of them for flattening your water stones).

PS:
Sparton I meant that MY Norton 220 was useless. Your Big O" honker may be an entirely different animal and perfectly usable.
 
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I was just curious about the stone . I miss typed it's 10x3x3 . I've got a pile of stones and was going through them and say it .

Question on the atomas are they all the aluminum with the abrasive taped down? I WANT the replaceable one
 
I had a 60 grit Nubatama but did not find it's grinding speed to be that great and the scratches so large it could easily damage the blade and made removing them with "finer" stones incredibly tough. I found the Nubatama Bamboo 150 to be a far better option with more positives than negatives.

When stones are this coarse there are some things to consider. Some coarse stones wear quickly and produce a thick mud while others wear slowly and just mainly cut the steel. If I am sharpening a folder or other 50/50 type edges then I like to use a harder slower wearing stone to reduce the amount of mud produced. I do this because the excessive mud of a softer stone has the tendency to build up and roll above the sharpened bevel, washing out the shoulder and putting scratches in places not wanted. The harder stone produces a crisp grind line with little to no wash-out or unwanted scratching.

For wider bevels you can still use hard stones but if there is anything sharpening has taught me, its that finding flat bevels and perfect grind lines are like finding a unicorn in the forest. When you lay a blade on the stone and rework primary grinds you quickly find high and low spots in seemingly perfect knives. For this reason a stone that produces some mud will not only aid in grinding speed but the mud "fills in the gaps" allowing for a more uniform finish. The Nubatama Bamboo 150 pretty much fills this role perfectly, it runs the line of being hard and slow wearing but able produce more than enough useable mud for quick grinding.

Another very notable waterstone in for this type of work is the Naniwa Pro 400 (new Chosera). It's a harder stone but is fairly muddy and insanely fast for its stated grit. It will produce very crisp grind lines and remove metal as fast as stones much coarser than it.

P.S. The Atoma is a must have, but not really and option IMO for grinding large flat bevels.
 
Jason B. said:
P.S. The Atoma is a must have, but not really and option IMO for grinding large flat bevels.
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For clarity, I think Jason means the super wide primary bevels on Japanese style cutlery and perhaps Scandi grinds.

For any kind of normal edge bevel (3/8" wide or less), diamond plates seem to work fine.

Brian.
 
bgentry said:
For clarity, I think Jason means the super wide primary bevels on Japanese style cutlery and perhaps Scandi grinds.

For any kind of normal edge bevel (3/8" wide or less), diamond plates seem to work fine.

Brian.
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:thumbup:
 
Most of the time if I need anything more coarse than a DMT XC I switch to the belt grinder.

I may have to pick up one of the Nubatama Bamboo 150.

I have used a Norton boat stone in 60-80 grit to thin out some edges, looks like this one:

https://www.grainger.com/product/NORTON-Boat-Stone-34CC97

is rated 180, but the one I picked up is far more coarse than the coarse side of my Crystalon.

It makes too much mud when used with oil, water slips right through - works best dry with a quick dunk in a bucket every so often. It does tend to make oddball deeper scratches that are tough to work out further down the line.

Aside from the cosmetic aspects noted by Jason on wide bevels that practically necessitate a stone with some mud, the diamond plates rule, second only to the belt grinder.
 
As stated above the Atoma 140 and Nubatama 150 are a great combo. As far as anything Nubatama contact Ken Schwartz directly. PM me if you have any trouble finding contact information.
 
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