Thread: My Little Japanese Stone Family

Originally Posted by mainaman

those naguras are not making slurry from the stone, they release their own grit which is used to sharpen. The finshing job is done with the stone slurry raised with a diamond plate. All in all naguras are fun but not really necessary IMHO.

Exactly, what he said ^

Just because I have nothing better to do now, I took a scan of the surface of my hone. I really wanted to show off the really neat looking colours and patterns. You can see that the surface is mainly Kiita but you can see where the Asagi is coming through a bit. (The colour is a little bit off, the scan makes it look kind of orange....)

As a bit of history on the stone, I have a great story to tell you from Alex, which I really hope he doesn't mind me sharing!

"...Ishihara-san grew up in the mine business and he of course knew all of the old miners including Kato-san who owned the Nakayama Mine until he quit in the late 1960s. Miners used to do a lot of trading, and they traded what else, stones. When Kato-san decided to close up the Nakayama Mine he hired Ishihara-san to do some bull dozer work. The stone that you have came as part of the trade with Kato-san. Because only Kato-san and now Hatanaka-san the current owner of the rights to the Nakayama mine are the only ones who can legally ink stamp the Nakayama stamp, Ishihara-san sold me several stones that are just attribuited to the Nakayama mine.....At least now you have an old mined stone to compare others by, and the deep red/brown skin on the back that glissens a bit is typical of Nakayama stones."

So I have an old mined stone that came from a trade with the old owner of the Nakayama mine! I think that's pretty damn cool.

i've got a koma nagura of maksim aswell and its really hard. its hard to create slurry out of it on my ohzuku. mejiro and botan are much softer.

Originally Posted by sicknote

i've got a koma nagura of maksim aswell and its really hard. its hard to create slurry out of it on my ohzuku. mejiro and botan are much softer.

When I create slurry from my nagura, I find it's a LOT easier if I don't use a flat surface of the nagura on the larger stone, but to tilt the nagura and use an edge. You're focusing the force onto a smaller area and it should be a lot easier to raise a slurry like this. Try it! This works on other stones that are a bit harder to raise a slurry on.