Now, I can read German, and SWMBO can read spanish and some french, but I have no resource for Japanese. I am starting out making a hone line up, and I either want to get some Shaptons, or get Nortons and some good finishers (the two arguments being, better to just buy something outright than buy something else and end up spending again to upgrade, vs. since most of my work is maintenance, buy a set workable in the low ranges, but very good in the high ranges as I will mostly only be touching up)
I have a Swaty on the way, and will probably get a Welsh Dragon Tongue. I will experiment between the two as post-8ks. However, what I'm really after is an escher or a japanese stone, both for history and quality reasons. But the trouble is, its hard to bargain hunt japanese stones if you don't know the language.
On the wiki here- Hones - comparison table - Straight Razor Place Wiki- there are a few hones listed near the bottom. However, wherever I look awaseto seems the same as aweseto toishi- it seems toishi is just the word for stone. And am I correct in assuming Awaseto, awaseto, awase-to, awase-do and awasedo are all the same, just translated differently due to japanese using characters, so the phonetics gets messed up? Also, what should I be looking for as far as colour and slurry in the top stones (8k+)? Are they green with black slurry? Any other advise would be great! Thanks!
PS: can anyone tell me what the famous samurai's used?