Thread: Jnat Finisher honing with Water Only

Yes, I've been happily raising slurries on many of my jnats for several years with an atoma 1200. In fact, I originally bought the atoma on the advice of So Yamashita for the sole purpose of raising a slurry on a rather hard jnat. It's always worked well for me.

Having said that I'll often just finish with water and keep going until it evaporates for a couple of dry strokes. Whether you get benefit from that could well depend on the stone though.

James

James
I also learned from So-san about the diamond nagura (DN) years ago, and my worn out Atoma's have tamed many a hard stone. I know that JNS does not recommend using a diamond plate for raising a slurry, it is a great tool and a modern application. Some suggest that using a DN is a waste of good stone. I disagree in that if you use a tomonagura to raise a slurry, it is going to be either the tomo or the base stone that is providing the slurry, and tomonagura are not cheap themselves if they are of the same qualtiy as the base stone.

There are inexpensive tomonagura that might be excellent quality, and those should be picked up whenever possible, ultra quality tomonagura are cut up from ultra quality larger stones. The beauty of the DN is that the slurry is pure base stone particles, it costs no more in dollars or U.K. pounds than the tomo slurry and it matches the base stone perfectly.

It is common to think that a smaller piece of a base stone can be cut and used as a tomonagura for that same base stone, this hardly ever works because one of the two stone being of equal hardness will scratch another leaveing gouges. A DN elimanates this problem. I can assure you that if the diamond plate had been invented 50 years ago some fellows would have used them as DN too. In the really old days though they had access to quality semi-hard stones and super fine grit medium hard stones for razors. Our problem, challange, or gift however you want to look at it now is that so many excellent medium hard stones are so expensive and hard to get and the ultra hard stones are the common goto razor hone. The ultra hard stones can be fine or act as a fine stone too, but they can be ornery. A spanking with a diamond nagura can straighten them up in a hurry.

Alex Gilmore

I find that a much harder tomonagura can work well if your patient enough to prep the tomo. Rounding a corner with a dia plate and using it with light pressure will raise that finer slurry. Or use the dn slurry and break it first with another blade of knife to get it finer before you use the blade your working on. Or use slurry from a prefinisher on your finisher. The work is done on that and the finer finishing stone will max out the edge imo. I think we have to be creative. None of these ideas we have are original.

Originally Posted by bill3152

Or use slurry from a prefinisher on your finisher. The work is done on that and the finer finishing stone will max out the edge imo. I think we have to be creative. None of these ideas we have are original.

Bill
Sounds like a whole sharpening system all rolled into one. Nice work.

Alex

Originally Posted by alx

There are inexpensive tomonagura that might be excellent quality, and those should be picked up whenever possible, ultra quality tomonagura are cut up from ultra quality larger stones. The beauty of the DN is that the slurry is pure base stone particles, it costs no more in dollars or U.K. pounds than the tomo slurry and it matches the base stone perfectly.

Alex Gilmore

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Maxim sent me a tomonagura to match my Nakayama Maruichi Asagi from old_school. In appearance you would think it was cut from the Maruichi Asagi. The tomonagura makes a slurry identical to slurry made by my DMT 325 credit card and there seems to be no difference in the finished edge from either slurry.

Bill 3152 recently sent me a set of three nagura stones for start-to-finish honing on my j-nats. I will be trying them soon. J-nat honing can be complicated and I keep experimenting.