Took the plunge with first J-Nat

It was only a few weeks ago when I purchased my first thuringian and was absolutely delighted. In the spirit of further experimenation, I did a bit of reading on the forum and just received my first J-nat. It is a Kanayama Asagi purchased from a well respected senior member here which was listed on the SRP classifieds.

I've had the stone less than 24 hours and experimented on a sheffield coming off of my thuringian. The first experiment was to mimic, to the best of my ability, the Japanese barber on the following video.

YouTube - Honing a razor

This first attempt used the full circles as shown in the video with light pressure. Fortuantely the seller included a small like stone, referred to as a tomonagura, for the slurry. I skipped the inspection stage in the sunlight as I would not have known the visual subtleties. I was not thrilled with the result compared to the edge directly off the thuringian as the anticipated smoothness was not evident.

Next up was to back off a bit and just do 10 or 20 light x strokes on a medium slurry made with the tomonagura. This second attempt stopped at this point without continuing to pure water. There it was! The anticipated smoothness was there and the sharpness was at least maintained if not increased from the thuringian.

Next up, at some point, will likely be a continuation of the slurry, without dilution, to a dry paste.

Nice stone; nice vid. Glad to hear it seems to be working.

Also another entry in the database for circle vs. x, and tomo-nagura.

Very nice stone! I am starting to enjoy the Jnats so much that I may just collect them and stop buying other hones all together (yeah right!).

Let us know how the slurry to thick and dry works for you. I am trying to experiment with this on my Nakayama Kiita, which is very different than an Asagi , but I have been having a tough time reaching results with it. The razors seem to like the slurry wet more on the Kiita when using Honzan slurry.

Nice stone for sure :) Interesting link there :) thanks for posting it.


I'm still torn between all my natural stones, While I am heavaly influenced by my Japanese Naturals, I find myself drawn to all natural stones that are brought up... Makes for hard times when HAD kicks in :(:boohoo:

I just did likewise. Mine's a slow cutter, but it's incapable of making an edge harsh. Most others I read from get a harshness when using water only. I jumped through my navel, trying to get a satisfying edge - it wasn't a quick process to learn for me - having only used a c12k previously. The smoothness is not to be believed.

I'll be curious to see if/how you use the thurry in combination w/ the asagi. Some go from thurry to asagi, others - the reverse.

Very nice stone! I have a Nakayama Asagi on the way as well as an Oozuku. I already have a Takashima Kiita so I'll have three J-Nats. Now I just need to figure out which works best for what? My Takashima seems to be a hard, fine stone, but the Oozuku and Nakayama also seem to fit that description. So many options!