Thread: King 4/8 vs Norton 4/8

Originally Posted by shooter74743

I sold off my set of Super Stones & my Norton 4/8 years ago when I learned the Shapton GS stones. To me, they do more work & I do less. My normal routine is Naniwa Chosera 1K, Shapton 2,4,8,& 16K or G20, followed by YG Escher. This combination works on every razor I have ever encountered since I started using it. If I am feeling frisky with a good hard steel blade, I will stop at G20 for a wicked sharp feeling blade. I do miss the norton 4/8 from time to time though & will most likely end up with another one as I loved the 4K for my kitchen knives.

I still have a couple lower grit Kings for my knife making.

Please don't get me wrong, IMO you can't go wrong with Naniwa, Norton, or Shaptons...Shaptons are just my pick & what work for me.

This is interesting as I just sold my entire collection of Shapton Glass hones to bekk, and replaced them with a 1K Pro Naniwa and the 3K 5K 8K and 12K Naniwa SS hones. I did not do this because the Shaptons were no good, in fact they are terrific hones. But... when I got the 12K Naniwa a couple of months ago, I instantly fell in love with the softer feel of the hone vs the harder Shapton hones, and so I lusted for the switch, which is entirely a personal preference thing.

It's all in what you, as an individual, like. If you *like* the feel and action of a King hone, and it does the job that needs to be done, there is absolutely no reason to use something else.

In the great scheme of things, we are very fortunate to live in a time where we not only have oodles of choices, but the disposable income to purchase what we want. 50 or more years ago, the situation would have been very different. In fact, the choices we have today in DE blades for example, is amazing, back in 2005 I can only recall about 5 different brand blades being available, now I'm sure there are well over 100.

Of course I can go back to the days when the TV only received one channel, and it was in B&W... then came the dreaded torment of having to get up off the sofa, walk over to the television to see what was on the other two channels. The only remote you could get back then was the "Honey, could you change the channel for me?" one. Now, I will admit... when it worked, it could also start your car when it was cold, serve beer and snacks while you watched the TV etc. but it was very finicky and often refused to work. It also required way more than a couple of AA batteries... things like chocolate, flowers, jewellery, new dresses and shoes, and the list goes on.

Seasons greetings,

Kaptain "Tongue in cheek" Zero

As much as I wanted the kings. I opted for the combo norton 4/8k. My brother got me $100 lee valley gift card and they have free shipping for a few days. I paid $14 (the tax) for my Norton.. now let the learning begin I just pray they don't have that soft feeling of a naniwa.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Originally Posted by S0LITARYS0LDIER

I opted for the combo norton 4/8k... now let the learning begin I just pray they don't have that soft feeling of a naniwa.

Don't worry--they do not. The Norton 8k is quite hard and virtually non-porous so it is a splash and go hone. The 4k benefits from about a 5 minute soak but it too is pretty hard for a 4k hone.

I have the Nortons, the Naniwa SuperStones and Choseras, and the Shapton GlassStones. I like all of them. I don't like the Naniwa SuperStone 1k because it is too soft for a bevel setter and loads up too quickly but after I burned through one of them I still went ahead and got two more. That's because I really like the softness of the SuperStones and that softness works very well for the rest of the hones above 1k. Now I only use the SuperStone 1k to "condition" the edge to progress up the rest of the SuperStone ladder.

The GlassStones have a very different feedback but I really like it and they work gloriously well.

Originally Posted by Utopian

The GlassStones have a very different feedback but I really like it and they work gloriously well.

Indeed they do, both feedback and in how they work. If I could have afforded to, I would have probably kept the Shaptons and bought the Naniwa hones as well. As it stands, I'm sort of glad I felt the need to sell them, as I was able to help out someone else, and now we both have great hones.

Regards

Christian

I started with a Norton 4/8 and it was awful. I'm convinced I must have gotten a defective one because the "4K" seems to be closer to 1k. Being my first stones I didn't know any better and found myself making a 1k-8K jump. Very frustrating, but I think I'm better at honing because of it.

Originally Posted by BeJay

I started with a Norton 4/8 and it was awful. I'm convinced I must have gotten a defective one because the "4K" seems to be closer to 1k. Being my first stones I didn't know any better and found myself making a 1k-4K jump. Very frustrating, but I think I'm better at honing because of it.

I think it was one of Lynn's videos I saw him mention you may need to lap up to 1/8" off the 4k side to get passed that rough junk texture. Before I did that, mine was also awfully rough. I still make that 1k-4k jump, though there are times I think I would like an intermediate step between the 1k & 4k, and the 4k & 8k.

I mistyped. I meant 1k-8k jump. I lapped that thing for days on a 325 DMT then 220 grit sand paper and back to the DMT. A rough texture is not the same as a larger grit size though, and I'm convinced that my 4K has a larger grit.