Thread: My new nagura...

A little history might be in order.

Slurry stones were "invented" by Japanese sword polishers long before there was sandpaper or diamond plates. They were used for de-glazing sharpening stones, knocking down high spots, and producing a particular type of finish. The coarser stones give rise to a hazy finish (kasumi), as seen in many Shigefusa knives.

At the polishing level, the ideal was tomo-nagura, or "same-stone" slurry. The sword polisher would use a broken-off piece of the same stone he was finishing with to produce the slurry. Finishing stones are very hard and fine-grained, and the result was a mirror finish.

To me it doesn't make a ton of sense to use a soft, coarse nagura on a hard, fine finisher. The polishing effect will be limited to whatever the grain of the nagura is, not the finish stone. Far better to use a tomo-nagura, or, in the absence of that, a diamond plate to raise a slurry from the finishing stone itself. There can be issues of diamonds coming off the plate, but in the rare event that happens, you can feel them with your fingers and get rid of them.

Coticule users have always understood this concept. Many coticules are sold with the equivalent of tomo-nagura slurry stones, that is, pieces of the same coticule or at least the same *color* coticule (blue or yellow) to be used for raising a slurry.

These are just my opinions, of course, and if a Botan is working for you, enjoy it!

Originally Posted by wsfarrell

To me it doesn't make a ton of sense to use a soft, coarse nagura on a hard, fine finisher. The polishing effect will be limited to whatever the grain of the nagura is, not the finish stone. Far better to use a tomo-nagura, or, in the absence of that, a diamond plate to raise a slurry from the finishing stone itself. There can be issues of diamonds coming off the plate, but in the rare event that happens, you can feel them with your fingers and get rid of them.

You can use the polishing stone after the nagura and get the desired result.

Wsfarrell,
the idea with these nagura is to progress from the rougher Botan, through Tenjyo and/or Mejiro, then Koma, and then finish with tomo-nagura. I take it one step further and finish with just water on a clean stone as per this guide: Eastern Smooth: Honing on Japanese Naturals
It's so cool to know we're sharing (in some sense) with an old tradition

Originally Posted by mainaman

From what I hear from people that know stones koma should be pretty hard stone.

Yep, One I have is really hard.

I don't have any explanation to that, but on Iwasaki book, he spell koma as こま (look for #4) but koma nagura with asano stamp written as コマ



that's coming from Eastern Smooth: More than you want to know about Nagura...(LONNNNNG)

Stamp on my koma from Morihei made me think about it. He also spelled koma like こま名倉 and not コマ Any ideas?

Originally Posted by Traskrom

Yep, One I have is really hard.

I don't have any explanation to that, but on Iwasaki book, he spell koma as こま (look for #4) but koma nagura with asano stamp written as コマ



that's coming from Eastern Smooth: More than you want to know about Nagura...(LONNNNNG)

Stamp on my koma from Morihei made me think about it. He also spelled koma like こま名倉 and not コマ Any ideas?

I would leave interpretations to those that know Japanese, it could be way of expressing the name or something totally different.
I am very curious to find out why the kanji is different though.

Originally Posted by mainaman

I would leave interpretations to those that know Japanese, it could be way of expressing the name or something totally different.
I am very curious to find out why the kanji is different though.

this is not kanji
this is kana (japanese phonetic alphabet)

コマ is katakana
こま is hiragana


the reading and meaning is exactly the same

In modern Japanese, katakana are most often used for transcription of words from foreign languages except Chinese (so called gairaigo).

the one other common use of katakana is to emphasize something
I think this is the main reason why コマ and ボタン on nagura is written by katakana.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana