Thread: HAD - What's your prized hone?

Oh no, this is like picking a favorite song, or a color, or picking one child over another. HGH hands down, but I am very biased.

,,,,,,,,,maybe just a little,,,,,,,,,,,

Dumb question here. what's an HGH? I can't find a full name for the acronym

Haida Gwaii Hones. A natural harvested and shaped on the Haida Gwaii . Hence my extreme bias.

Highest Grande Hone,,,,,,,,,,,

O.K., sounds like a fun thread.

The first image is a vintage Nakayama Maruka kiita, my most expensive hone that is BTW, not that expensive as things go in Japan but would be considered exhorbitant here. It is yellow moreso than the image shows, not khaki, light tan, yellowish-brown, etc. In full size Japanese bench stones, anything above a given price and you're paying for regularity, size/thickness, and appearance. You should not expect such a stone to perform at its price point relative to smaller, more irregular, and drab stones. It's a final finisher and produces a very smooth shaving edge.

The second image are two stones that do my "heavy lifting". Both are plenty fine enough to shave off of and very fast. I use the suita to set bevels on undamaged, not mistreated razors and as a pre-finisher. It is very much like a coticule in that it could very well fulfill the "one hone" ideal. The "coarse" tomae on the right is a mid-grit prefinisher and can set bevels but the suita is a bit faster. Both produce edges about like a Norton 8K in fineness, or a little less than 5k on the JIS scale Naniwa uses. I also frequently use a Shapton Pro 2k for edges that need a little more "attention".

The last image shows the stones that keep my Gokumyo 20k in the drawer, and my current fave is the middle kan koppa. Want to know what the razor feels like off it? Take your index finger and run the side of it up your cheek at razor pressure. That's it, feels like "nothing". The other two are very smooth too, but produce slightly keener-feeling edges, though the HHT says not that much difference if any.

If I had to choose based on performance, thethe ones in the last image, simply because I had to try a number of hones to find them and are therefore harder to replace.

Cheers, Steve

Originally Posted by Druid

Hmmmmm, difficult question.

My most prized is probably a tie between my Nakayama Kiita, and standard grade La Veinnette ...





But, my Thuringian bout takes high honors also ..

Congratulations on that Nakayama. I actually tried out that very stone and it is a sweet one!

Cheers, Steve

A 5x2" Y/G Escher, only one of the herd I kept, a Suehiro G-20K. Dat's all folks .......

Originally Posted by rlmnshvstr8

Threw in pics of your carries just for good measure just to make sure no one comes after your stash of hones huh?

Na, got rid of the judge a while back, that pic is about 4 years old...just the only one on file i have with my escher. My "deterrent" weapons can be found in another thread here. Of course I would never show my entire hand...

Originally Posted by shooter74743

Na, got rid of the judge a while back, that pic is about 4 years old...just the only one on file i have with my escher. My "deterrent" weapons can be found in another thread here. Of course I would never show my entire hand...

Don't forget the Ace up your sleeve or should I say on your ankle.