Natural Hone Setup

I've been mulling over getting an entire lineup of natural stones from an extra coarse to a superfine polisher. There is certainly alot of info on here about all the naturals available, but it is spread to the four winds. I feel it would be good to have the information somewhat more collected. That's where you guys come in. I'm just beginning to get a hold on all these different stones. I'm dividing the stones into some categories where I understand them to be, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not very familiar with the Japanese naturals but from what I understand there will be something in almost every category below. Also, help me flesh this list out. It would be great if you guys chimed in about your favorite stone in each category or just some properties of these stones.

Repair Stones/Metal Movers Note: I have heard that natural bevel setters are slow cutter and generally far inferior to some of the synthetic stuff, but let's include them just to be thorough.
-Some Japanese natural (I don't know the name, but I'm sure someone can help here)
-Soft Arkansas Stone

1-2K Level
-Japanese Natural(Again help me with the names)
-Hard Arkansas???

Sharpening Stones--4-6K
-Dalmore Blue
-Tam O Shanter
-Belgian Blue
-Surgical Arkansas
-Japanese Naturals

Polishers--8K-16K
-Yellow coticule
-Escher/Thuringians
-Translucent Arkansas
-Water of Ayr
-Japanese Naturals
-Chinese 12K

Superfine Polishers--16K+
-Maruichi Nakayama
-Nakyama Asagi
-Nakayama Karasu

Again, I'm not stating these classifications as facts because I'm far from sure. Hopefully the elders can correct my mistakes.

-Hank

In his DVD, Master Knife Sharpener Dave Martel states that "In general natural stones below 4K are junk and man made stones above 4K are usually junk". Shapton would be the exception to the second portion of the rule in his view. I certainly agree with the first portion of the statement. When you are trying to remove metal you are going to want the cutting speed of diamond or some other quick cutting media rather than the novelty of using "only natural stones". Set the bevel on something fast like a DMT, Shapton, Norton, Spyderco etc. and then if you want to get into the benifit and cool factor of Naturals, then use them to polish the already sharp edge. Then you get the best of both worlds imo.

I agree with that quote.
In general, nature's coarse stones have many problems:
- wildly varying grit sizes
- slow cutters
- dish out easily -> hard to get flat bevels

I was told that even many blacksmiths in Japan use King stones up to 1K to do the rough work, and only switch to naturals for polishing and finishing.

Natural stones are great for honing and polishing, but for metal removal they kinda suck.
That's where DMT, Norton, Shapton et al rule.

Btw, the name you are looking for is Aoto.

I have an Iyoto stone that's less than1k, but as Bruno said, it dishes out really easily. Binsui is another coarse grit Japanese stone. Aoto is ~2k/3k which is where the good stones start.

A coticule is hard to beat as the ~8k stone, anything higher is really unnecessary, though nice if you can spare the money.

An Aoto, a Coticule and some CrO would cover nearly all the situations you'd run into, but you'd need to lap them somehow, the DMT D8C is just about the best there is for the price.

The Translucent Arkansas should be in the previous category, iirc. Actualy, I think it's even lower *grit*

I have used one briefly and all I can say is that it didn't work well for me at all. Admittedly, I didn't give all I had.

Cheers
Ivo