Thread: Oozuku tomae

Originally Posted by alex1921

Does stone hardness affect in any way the risk of splitting? Softer stones being riskier?

I suppose it's possible if they are allowed to get very wet, but I think most of the cracking has to do with layer faults or cracks that you can see. Some of the layer faults, you can't.

I buy a lot of stones off of the japanese auctions and I've noticed that the ones that crack in shipping laterally often follow at least most of a layer, and then perhaps at some point, they depart from that. Many of the others crack at a structural crack that wasn't open, but that was just weak.

Seal the sides, back doesn't matter as much.

If there are 'tells', like sparkly black Nakayama skin, leave a section unsealed for provenance.

Cheers, Steve

Here's a stone a friend of mine bought cheap (relatively). You can ignore all the cutting and dust, that was just the agreement we had, to make some slurries and size it down to be suitable for razors...

On this picture, it looks fine.



When I got it wet and let it dry out a few minutes:





So that's just an illustration of layer problems, combined with age. It got sealed, naturally.