Thread: Escher vs Jnat for finishing

Originally Posted by ovidiucotiga

Japanese used to cut smaller good quality pieces into naguras....westeners....ddont....

I do!

I think finding a good stone for tomonagura is even harder than finding a good stone for honing, though.

Anyone wanting to cut tomonagura on the cheap, if you have a workshop and a vise, find a rigid frame hacksaw and a lenox 18 tpi bimetal blade (the 18 tpi blades don't have wavy teeth). You can cut several stones on one blade, and it's reasonably fast.

At any rate, I don't like hard tomos that much (something a step off that will shed its particles is a lot nicer). I always feel like if I give a hard one to someone, they won't be able to get slurry from it without crosshatching it, and some people probably won't be up for that. Hard tomos are often aggressive if you get a lot of particles free (maybe the particles stick together for a while and gradually break apart). The softer stones that are out in droves (shoubu, etc) are often a step off of true fineness (they finish a razor, but have to clear off more than a good tomo).

Some thoughts. By no means fact but my conclusions.
Concerning Jnats. Everything is true and false.
I am lucky enough to own a magical stone which is a Nakayama Maruka.
It is fast and very fine.

Currently I have 6 Tomo's in my starting line up.
Three of them are very hard, 2 soft, 1 quite soft and they all work for me.

For the first few years I swore by soft Tomo's and now i swear by hard ones.
So hard that I have to make the slurry and then transfer it to the hone.
I think the surface structure of the hone plays a much bigger part in the honing process than the composition of the tomo.

I also think that what happens at the early stages of honing defines the end result. In other words, bevel setting is much more important than finishing.
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