My First Jnat! Any idea what it is?

Hello all!

Well, the past few months of 80 hour work weeks have been wearing me down. I felt the need to treat myself with my first Jnat, so I have been spending my little downtime perusing the various places to purchase these special stones.

I know it is a gamble given the not so nice things I have heard about one of the Ebay hone purveyors, but I was struck by how another vendor from Japan presented his stones. Instead of rating the stone by hardness or equivalent grit, he showed close pictures of the slurry on his finger, stone wet/dry, amount of slurry generated by honing a blade with water only, and how an edge reflects after honing on the stone. I appreciated this method, and decided to take the plunge on a smaller stone that had struck my fancy.

Here it is:
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It appears to be an have been well used, especially with the marks on the bottom.

I have had the opportunity to run a few razors over it, so I will share my thoughts.
First: It is very easy to build a slurry with my extra fine DMT card, and laps fairly easily. This makes me think it is on the softer side.

Second: The feel is amazing! It is velvety smooth, which makes honing on it just feel good.

Third: The smell of the stone (weird I know) is very nice. It has a nice earthy scent that I would love to have in a shave soap. :hmmm:

Last: The resulting edge is nice and smooth. So far I have had the best success using it as a final finisher with a tiny amount of slurry after the blade is already shave ready. My smoothest edge to date was taking a Joseph Allen and Sons through a lapping film progression down to 1 micron (freaky sharp/kinda harsh), then backing it off/smoothing it out with this hone with just a bit of DMT generated slurry.

I am looking forward to spending more time with it, and learning what it is capable of. Maybe get a set of nagura would be a nice addition?

Does anyone have an idea regarding what type of stone this may be? The closest that I have seen to this pattern was on some of the Soubudani stones on JNS. I would greatly appreciate any info that you guys have to offer.

Without any stamp on it, and without any defining characteristics, it will be very difficult to tell what it is (i.e., you won't be able to definitively say something like shoubu, hiderayama, ozaki, etc, )

I wonder if it might end up being a bit different color once some of the surface is lapped off, when they sit for a while, I think maybe the surface oxidizes a little.

The next thing to do is just to take it from a prefinisher and completely finish with this stone and get an idea of what edge it will create. Hopefully it will ultimately work on clear water, which will suggest that you have control over slurry (that range is ultimately what makes the stones great to use).

I can't make any definitive statements about the smell, but i did have a hideriyama stone some time ago that was on the soft side and it smelled like freshly turned earth when you used it (and the smell was pretty brisk/strong). many of my other stones don't make any significant smell unless you put your nose right against them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DaveW

i did have a hideriyama stone some time ago that was on the soft side and it smelled like freshly turned earth when you used it (and the smell was pretty brisk/strong)

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Exactly! Definitely adds to the experience.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DaveW

The next thing to do is just to take it from a prefinisher and completely finish with this stone and get an idea of what edge it will create.

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I have a wedge that I am going to try this with today. Will be shaving with it tonight hopefully.

Thank you for the information. :tu