Quote Originally Posted by Lesslemming View Post
Unfortunately I can not agree. This is because there is no real consens of how hardness of a stone is defined and how it is measured.
And of course we do not know how hardness effects the performance of a stone (there only is a consens of how hardness is rated for j-nats).

But what I can say is this:
of all my stones I want the Chinese to be the last that ever needs thorough lapping
(giving the fact that neither my Nakayama, nor my Shoubudani have been really in the need for lapping,
although I have lapped my Nakayama a bit and would say it was easier than lapping my Chinese)

Where are you going with this, why the comparison of the hardness of the Chinese (mine, anyway) to that of Japanese?
Well I have the naniwa 8k stone and that one is too soft for me. My
plane blade gouges in the stone(freehand honing). That's why I asked
about the hardness of your 10k in comparison to the other stones and
especially to the asagi.

I also have an interest in buying the people's hone, since it is cheap and
many feel it is very fine, hard, good quality. So the hardness of that stone
compared to the shoubu was interesting for me as well.

Another thing I found interesting was that I read in another topic that the
people's hone(one particular) was about Lv3 which I found a bit weird since
many people say it is so hard to lap and also soaking won't help as the water
cannot penetrate it.

Maybe you can check hardness by rubbing the natural stones together and
see what colour slurry is produced. The softer stone(AFAIK) will create the
slurry more, whereas the harder stone will produce less slurry.

Just found this interesting information on hardness:
ROCK HARDNESS CLASSIFICATION - MOHS SCALE

Sharpman