Thread: Bester, Sigma Power, Ha No Kuromaku etc...

I was mainly interested in jumping from 1k to 8k on knives and chisels, but I'm going to try it on my razors too.

I'm hoping that going from 1k to 8k with the sigma will decrease honing time. If it turns out using a 4k intermediate stone is faster, then I'll stick with my current system. Also, there are some stainless knives that my shaptons wont touch. I end up having to switch to dmt's for those. If the sigma 8k works equally well on the types of steel the 120 grit sigma works on, I wont need to switch hones for different types of metal.

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

I haven't tried that so I can't say anything from experience. I would think you would have to spend a lot of time on the finisher to make up for skipping the intermediate stones ?

One more thought, Sham (hi_bud_gl) and I were talking once and he pointed out that if you go to an Escher or an expensive J-nat, coticule ..... whatever finisher, you are wearing the expensive stone with work that could be accomplished with a cheaper and easily replaceable synthetic. Made sense to me and I've changed my honing practices accordingly.

All excellent points here. Altho a lot of j-nat finishers can be hard stones. I would imagine wear & dishing would occur with that kind of use.
Even So fro Japan tool recommends synthetics up to 2-4k to preserve j-nats for what they do best ie mid to end stage.

Thanx for the replies so far guys. I'm really interested in experiences on particle consistency & finish of these synthetics on razors. We could probably leave the j-nats out to keep on topic, tho I'm easily distracted when it comes to j-nats