Thread: where to find good stone

Im looking to gather some info on reliable places to get good honing and sharpening stones. After about 12k selection and availability becomes very slim.

Natural or synthetic. Do you have any brands in mind

After about 12k,you are,for the most part, chasing rainbows and unicorns.

What do you have now ? When I was learning I chased every stone known to man. I had a lot of hones, to the point where, trying most all of them, I wasn't learning any of them. Finally listened and took a Norton 4/8, along with a Chosera 1k for bevel setting, and left the rest alone until I 'knew' those hones.

My main mentor told me that until you are getting good shaves at the 8k level you won't know if you are going to your 12k (or whatever) too soon. So my advice is to stick with the 1k, 4k, 8k until you're getting satisfactory results.

Straight Razor Designs, among others sells all the brands and they support this forum, so that is a pretty good recommendation.

For the vast majority a 12K is as good as it gets, but if you want to push your edge a little further then the obvious choice is the Suehiro Gokumyo 20K If you have the spare cash I would say definitely buy it.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

What do you have now ? When I was learning I chased every stone known to man. I had a lot of hones, to the point where, trying most all of them, I wasn't learning any of them. Finally listened and took a Norton 4/8, along with a Chosera 1k for bevel setting, and left the rest alone until I 'knew' those hones.

My main mentor told me that until you are getting good shaves at the 8k level you won't know if you are going to your 12k (or whatever) too soon. So my advice is to stick with the 1k, 4k, 8k until you're getting satisfactory results.

Straight Razor Designs, among others sells all the brands and they support this forum, so that is a pretty good recommendation.

You can take a lot of different paths but this one will always lead you to a good shave. It's a good setup to have and fall back on when chasing all of the other natural hone rainbows doesn't pan out.

Tools from Japan (Tools from Japan, Japanese woodworking tools direct from Japan.) have all the high end synthetics covered.

A rather curious question given the OP's name.

That's what I thought, but after 15,000 or so razors he,ll have earned it. Tc

Just get on e-Bay and buy everything you see that looks cool. Along the way you'll get satisfied and wind up back to the basics.
I did the 1/4/8k Norton thing for a year. The 12k made everything feeeel sharp as it would ever get. So I bought a Zulu and it smoothed it all back out. After the 12k you might just want to do the same thing. Some like certain things for certain blades but my set up works on everything I got and because of my friends I have tried just about every hone known.

After 8k your polishing , , , are you going to feel it ? :<0)

Some folks have had lots of success digging stones from river beds and other quarry like places. They have found some stones that seem to work. They are dirt cheap as they just lay around so may be look for one.