Thread: Natural Combo Ozuku Asagi Stone

Hello Gents,

I am here today to show you one of my recent acquisitions; I bought this Ozuku Asagi from a fellow SRP member he was nice enough to sell this super unique stone to me… once I saw the pictures I knew that I HAD to get it. As you can see, it is a natural combination stone, double sided with two tones.








Fascinating stuff!!!



The seller told me that this hone is finer than an Escher hone, and challenged me that if got a finer stone he will return my money back. Well, I HAD the results below


The Star of the show





I have chosen well-known razor for this challenge, good old Henckels Inox Steel.




Honing Progression:



a. Preparing the edge:

The razor was already in a good, so I have degraded the edge using a vintage coticule, and here is the edge after degrading. Every time I hone the razor on a stone, I will return to this coticule degrade the edge again and verify it under the microscope until I feel that the edge similar to the below baseline picture.







b. Finishing:
I will use water only no slurry at all, I believe this helps to revel the capabilities of the stone without interfering. Since there is no slurry, I used circular strokes about 20 for each side and finished with 60 x strokes, I used a hint of pressure on the circles and weight of the blade only for the x strokes.

Note: these are the results of my hands/skills; I know that there are many variables in the process, which I tried to narrow down as possible; I am only sharing my experiment, I hope that the discussion will focus more on the results than other thing…


1. Ozuku Asagi: The Yellow side, it’s a hair softer that the Green/Blue side, I concluded this after being able to produce a slurry using Translucent Arkansas stone, while I couldn’t produce any tiny bit of slurry on the Green/Blue




2. Ozuku Asagi: The Green/Blue Side, it is finer as it looks to me.




3. BG Esher:


It looks finer than a BG Escher, but none are as fine as the below:

4. Vintage Translusent Arkansas:



However I do not want to return the stone, neither I am getting my money back I feel guilty enough that nobody is enjoying this but me

Finally, from earlier playing with these hones I am sure that I can drive the performance of the hones by using slurry, but I preferred using the water to avoid creating a coarser surface using diamond plate, since all of my stones are polished.

Here is a bonus picture of a Rouge Du Salm edge:
Progression: slurry to clear water, as you can see its way finer than the vintage Coticule




sorry for the low quality photos.

Regards,

Rouge du salm is my current favorite stone. I have a crazy fine 10" one. I think it was cut cross grain too so it seems to make it even more hard and fine than usual/my others.

Not really fair to compare a Jnat to an arkie. They work differently(one is pure abrasive the other is abrasive in binder). To max out your Jnat you need to produce a slurry and break it down fully then look at the scratch pattern, it will be MUCH finer than what you get on plain water. It is also how they are intended to be used to be used for razors.(Traditionally)

Originally Posted by DireStraights

Rouge du salm is my current favorite stone. I have a crazy fine 10" one. I think it was cut cross grain too so it seems to make it even more hard and fine than usual/my others.

Not really fair to compare a Jnat to an arkie. They work differently(one is pure abrasive the other is abrasive in binder). To max out your Jnat you need to produce a slurry and break it down fully then look at the scratch pattern, it will be MUCH finer than what you get on plain water. It is also how they are intended to be used to be used for razors.(Traditionally)

This is the one I used to hone this razor, it's 7" combo with a coticule, the coticule isn't very fine but it's moderate on everything, however the RDS is very nice hard finishing stone.





As for the comparing the Jnats to the Arkansas stone, it is done for fun only the mean goal of the post is to share my new Jnat, actually the Jnat performed amazingly good the overall bevel is more consistent while the Arkansas couldn't remove the deeper scratches due it slow cutting speed, however I think using a fine Jnat slurry stone on my Translucent Arkansas give always a better results than the same slurry stone on a Jnat.

J-Nats work best with slurry. You are not evaluating your hone properly by using water only.

Originally Posted by mainaman

J-Nats work best with slurry. You are not evaluating your hone properly by using water only.

Totally agree, even Eschers and Arkies (if you are not a traditionalist), however I am not evaluating the stones, I am comparing the edge of the stones on water only, I have done this to see the abrasion speed, grit, etc...of these stones on clear water.

I can use slurry and achieve the best edge I could but as I said I was experimenting and thought of sharing the results.


Evaluating is a different story for me, I will hone different steels and will try almost all my slurry stones and take it up to a very high number of x strokes to tryin to achieve the finest scratches pattern that the stone can give

Cheers,

Pretty stone . How was the shave out of it .......
Once i was very convinced that the finer scratch patern is the most important thing ever .
Now i think after a felow member convinced me that the most important is what the stone make to the very edge of the razor .
So how was the shave , off it . I have a black hard slate that is making the edge look 8 - 9 k scratch and nasty but shaves .... wow
It is very good and pretty stone indeed but im more intrested abbiut the feeling it gives , sir
Congratulations a good Jnat no doubt

Originally Posted by RusenBG

Pretty stone . How was the shave out of it .......
Once i was very convinced that the finer scratch patern is the most important thing ever .
Now i think after a felow member convinced me that the most important is what the stone make to the very edge of the razor .
So how was the shave , off it . I have a black hard slate that is making the edge look 8 - 9 k scratch and nasty but shaves .... wow
It is very good and pretty stone indeed but im more intrested abbiut the feeling it gives , sir
Congratulations a good Jnat no doubt

Thank you for your kind words, it's indeed a nice stone I am very happy with it, the fact that it's a natural combo is very impressive and makes it one of a kind although all natural hones are unique in someway.

Honestly I haven't tried these edges of I clear water honing, I just stropped the arkies and saved with it, it's very comfortable shaver...... The other stones I tried with different razors although the coticule requires I bit of pressure when you are shaving which leads to a small discomfort when applying Alum on the face. I tried this Jnat with a Puma razor the results were pleasing.

Slates, like Thuringians and Cnat give a very pleasing shave because of the straightness that they leave on the edge, if you check the above edges of the BG, Coticule and the Jnat you will note that the Escher edge is very straight compared to the others although no slurry was used the Famous German hone managed to leave a relatively straight edge. BTW all the bevel pictures above are fresh from the stone no stropping here.


Regards,

Lovely stone. I'm jealous.

Great. Stones

Once again, just goes to show, Arkies are DA' bomb! Lol. Still one of my absolute favorite edges anyway. Other stones can get pretty darn close, but my black translucent Ark is still pretty near top of the heap in my collection of 30+ natural stones. Totally agree with Rusen that the look of the edge often means nothing in terms of shave comfort though. I've had some awesome looking edges that were terribly harsh and some sawtooth looking edges that shaved like a dream (under 150x).