Thread: is that good or not this stone?

Hi,
I'm about to buy a stone (with nagura), but I do not know exactly what its value is.
It should be a Nakayama but I do not see the specific symbol. Can you help me?

Hopefully a JNat expert can provide some information about the stone.
Has the seller tested the stone? Did they give you any information about how the stone performs? Two stones from the same quarry can still perform very differently.

Looks very good -buy it . I think this patern of round is specifik for Nakyama mine . Lookf hard and very fast stone .

JNATS can be tricky as not all are razor quality stones so you have to trust the seller, I have gone thru lots of stones until I found a few that had no issues and did an excellent job.

Does the seller allow you to test the stone with a possible return if you don’t like it, i was lucky enough to deal with some straight up sellers that allowed me to test the stones I was buying and my favorite go to stone can with two tested tomos’s that’s a fast finisher and yes it’s a Nakayama Kiita.

Most folks think JNATS need to be hard and harder the better but I had a soft kiita at one time that was excellent but in the end it did a better job as a prefinsher than final finisher, I was taught the best way to test a JNAT is using a diamond plate for slurry generation as this gives you the truest base stone slurry to work with then dilute down to straight water to get the best edge possible.

As far as the stone you have pictured it does have a Nakayama look to it but looks don’t honestly mean much and in all honesty their just names and don’t mean a lot, some sellers throw the more popular mine names around to get peoples interest and help the sale but that’s not a bad thing if it’s truly a Nakayama but just because it is does not mean it will hone a razor well and that’s where you have to put time in with the stone, when I was getting new stones I would take two test razors and hone, shave and repeat for about two weeks on the same stone using varying slurries to get the best possible edge and then make a command decision if it was worth the cost.

It has Nakayama & Maruka stamps.
If the stamps are genuine it should be of the highest quality.

Originally Posted by mihai

Hi,
I'm about to buy a stone (with nagura), but I do not know exactly what its value is.
It should be a Nakayama but I do not see the specific symbol. Can you help me?

If the stamps are authentic, the stone should be a high quality "for razors" hone.

The one who sells it is expert in sharpening knives, has many stones. For razors has less experience.
Someone else told me that the ideograms are not set up well and that more than ever the stone comes from Russia from a counterfeit expert.
The owner says the stone starts harder, you get the feeling that he does not do anything then suddenly starts getting it from metal.
The stone has the mark Maruichi, which does not guarantee it would be an Nakayama stone, but does not rule out the possibility.
I have just noticed this name (Maruichi) in the link it gave me, even though the page is not mentioned. Do you know anything about this page? https://www.gentlemansblade.com/prod...ing-whetstone/

My personal suggestion is contact Alex with Japan Stone, he’s a great guy to deal with and has a try before buy policy on JNATS and he tests every stone he sells and matches a tomo with it but like I said you have to put the time in with the stone to figure it out.

Originally Posted by mihai

The one who sells it is expert in sharpening knives, has many stones. For razors has less experience.
Someone else told me that the ideograms are not set up well and that more than ever the stone comes from Russia from a counterfeit expert.
The owner says the stone starts harder, you get the feeling that he does not do anything then suddenly starts getting it from metal.
The stone has the mark Maruichi, which does not guarantee it would be an Nakayama stone, but does not rule out the possibility.
I have just noticed this name (Maruichi) in the link it gave me, even though the page is not mentioned. Do you know anything about this page? https://www.gentlemansblade.com/prod...ing-whetstone/

I do not see a Kan pattern on the stone in the link.
You have to understand that currently there is a significant amount of stones with fake Nakayama stamps being sold. Why is that? Because the reputation of the mine for quality stones, which means higher profits on sales. Most stones out there right now are freshly stamped, and that is easy to tell. So all of a sudden there is a huge influx of Nakayama stone when the mine was closed in the 60's of the last century?
A lot of the sellers online have no clue what they are selling, I doubt many know what a quality Jnat is because they may have never tried one.
The Russsian guy is the worst, I am yet to see a credible stamped nakayama from him. Just look at his stone labels and it is clear the whole operation is fishy.

What's the price on that stone? It looks like a tool stone to me, so expecting it to be on the softer side. It may well be fine, but it may not be what you're looking for.

The Mejiro nagura looks legit, although it's a bad picture and the Asano stamp can be barely seen properly.

I'd ask him to send you a video of him raising slurry with that nagura on that stone. If what you see is mostly slurry from the nagura, then the stone is hard enough. May be a lot to ask, but it may be a lot of money as well....