The Aoto Thread

[Pyment]

This morning I had a chance to get started with some of my new hones. These are pics of the participants.

1) The 3 hones together before lapping. At the top, is the aoto. In the middle is the Dragon's Tongue, and the bottom is a Ohira Tomae.

2) The aoto after lapping, I actually chose the worst side to lap as it had some of that brown veining and I wanted to see if it affected honing.

3) The Ohira Tomae after lapping. The Ohira is from one of the shallower layers of the mine the Tomae layer. I expect this to kind of be between sharpening and begin polishing the edge. There had been some surface black spots (ink, oil, ?) that lapped out easily

[holli4pirating]

I am keen to read more about this method, Can you post some links for it? Thanks

I'm not sure what you mean by links, but if there's something else I can post to help I'd be happy to. Let me know.

[Pyment]

Next we have the ebay razor. I have this one around to test hones and haven't polished it at all. It has been used to test other hones so is fairly sharp. It has the advantage of having a chip.

then we have pics of the hones with water on them. The color doesn't seem to be coming through very well, but the Aoto is dark blue and the Ohira Tomae is a grey olive green.

[Pyment]

I tried to get the pics of the edge at about the same magnification (200X), same part of the blade and the same lighting.

1)I took a few swipes on the DMT1200 to try and get some scratches from that grit stone without removing the chip.

2) this is after about 200 strokes on the Aoto. I think the chip has decreased in size. There is still some water on the edge that makes evaluating the scratches hard. Maybe they are a little smaller?

3) I then went to the Ohira Tomae (the set up man in this rotation) the TPT showed this got significanly sharper

4) I tried out one of my new finshers Nakayama Kiita Najishi it also has some red veining and some interesting purple spots. This looks like a good cutter and a fine grained finisher.

[kevint]

I've been playing with my Aoto a bit more, so I have more to report. I've just taken 9 razors from my Norton 1k to the Aoto. Using a new method I've recently learned, I did 40 circles with a firm stroke per side, followed by 10 firm X stokes. I didn't use any slurry, and I kept adding water as it was pushed off/absorbed into the stone. The razors wer from various Sheffield and German makers.

All of the bevels are much, much more polished than before I started, and they are all cutting arm hair much easier; feels something like around a 4k range to my untrained senses. The hone only wore a little unevenly; I could barely feel it from the feedback. I've not checked for dishing, but I'd guess there must be a bit because a very light slurry did form. I think in the future, I'll do a quick refresh after every 4 or 5 blades, juts to keep things in tip top shape.

And now we come to what I really like about this hone - the feedback is awesome. You can really feel the edge start to bite into the hone as she becomes keen. It is very noticable and a great sign that you're ready to stop your circles and give a few X passes to even things up.

I'm really liking my Aoto; now I just need to figure out what to go to next. Tonight, I'm going to play with a synthetic nagura on my Dragon's Tongue followed by (maybe the coti and then) my Asagi.

I am always glad to hear advocates for firmness.

[sparq]

Interesting seller
Tell him you are not asking how natural stones work or not . You are saying this particular stone defective. cuts similar like 500 grit (deep scratches) which is not suppose to be do so.

In case if he says it cut's in early precess similar like 500 grit then inclusions brakes down and ends up around 2-4 k level tell him please take this stone back and send me one of those which is he talking about it.
GL

Sham,

He is not trying to be reasonable. He pretty much gave me the finger in his replies. He is not going to get a positive feedback from me and I cannot recommend his business to the members of this forum either.

[sparq]

2) this is after about 200 strokes on the Aoto. I think the chip has decreased in size. There is still some water on the edge that makes evaluating the scratches hard. Maybe they are a little smaller?

If you cannot really tell a difference in a chip size after 200 laps on a hone, then this hone is nowhere even remotely close to a bevel setter. That is my experience with the aoto, too. Besides the issues with inclusions, it is way too slow to replace synthetics in lower grit range. It is way too slow for kitchen knives, too.

[Pyment]

You're probably right.

I was trying to avoid slurry on that one. It is faster with slurry:

[holli4pirating]

As with many naturals, you need a slurry to really cut; just water will only polish. It's nice that you posted photos to show the extent of the difference, Py. Thanks for sharing. How much work did you put in to remove that chip?

[Pyment]

I didn't keep track, but would say it took less than 1/2 the work - maybe 70 laps?

I had a second larger chip I was paying more attention to.