Thread: Need help IDing a J-nat stone

Originally Posted by maxim207

It is label of Imanishi stones company, I think the kanji on the stone tell Narutaki region and not mine it self. It is unknown origin. But still stone is very cheap and super nice skore !!
Very clean and uniform to that price its really a good deal !!

And Mainaman I agree. These paper labels are from the wholesalers/consolidators down on the flatlands who distribute the stones to retailers. The wholesalers have drawers and drawers of paper labels and ink stamps to mark stones so they look more attractive and updated and marketable. In Japan buyers like a little flash and usually newer items. Old stock is not where its at.

The miners will sell stone to almost any one in the wholesale trade, but a leary of rocking the boat by selling retail from their small work shops. This was the traditional way, chaneled items from maker to wholesaler to user.

The stamps reading Yamashiro, Narutaki, Shobudani, Ozuku, Ozaki or even Nakayama now have got to be taken with a grain of salt because all of the old mines are closed and the copyright use of these names is really fuzzy right now, so any new stamps or labels are just marketing. There are only a few miners still guarding their copyrighted names, one is Ohira. I believe that what 330mate is doing right now is buying up the rights to use these old names by securing the mineral rights, even though theres no good stone left to be dug. Alx

Originally Posted by alx

I believe that what 330mate is doing right now is buying up the rights to use these old names by securing the mineral rights, even though theres no good stone left to be dug. Alx

Does that mean i shouldn't buy that $20,000 stone of 330mate that he has on eBay????

Damn! ill get the $15,000 one instead!

http://straightrazorpalace.com/hones...bay-cheap.html

I've bought knives off 330-mate and think they've been good value.

Although his prices for stones have exploded over the last 18 months.

What about the reliability of stamps? The identically labelled Oohira Mainaman showed us, has Oohira in the stamp. The stamp on Pauly's stone is in a similar type. I couldn't read it at first, but I now think it says 愛宕鉱山合砥 (Atago-kouzan-awasedo, Atago-mine whetstone).

I'm not quite abreast with the intricate naming system involving strata, mines, mountains, regions. Are Atago and Narutaki mutually exclusive designations?

Yes it is a stone from Atagoyama.

The label say it is "Narutaki" but "Narutaki" has 2 meanings.
I think I wrote many times that SOME TERMS IN JAPANESE HAS 2 MEANINGS.
”Narutaki" is one of them.

The narrow meaning is the Narutaki mine.
The wide meaning is all silica finishing stones mined around Kyoto including Shiga.
Here the label is the "Imanishi" label and "Narutaki" is the wide meaning.

Atagoyama stones are from the west mountains and I think there are few which are bad stones.
There are bad stones with famous stamps like "Nakayama" (some fraud) but I do not see any fraud stones with "Atagoyama" stamp.

Most of the stones are hardness about 4 in a scale of 1 to 5, if you are lucky you can have a lvl 4.5 or 5- stone from Atagoyama.

It will be a finisher for knives and prefinisher for razors.

Originally Posted by DrNaka

...
I think I wrote many times that SOME TERMS IN JAPANESE HAS 200 MEANINGS.
...

I fixed that for you.

Originally Posted by Oldengaerde

What about the reliability of stamps? The identically labelled Oohira Mainaman showed us, has Oohira in the stamp. The stamp on Pauly's stone is in a similar type. I couldn't read it at first, but I now think it says 愛宕鉱山合砥 (Atago-kouzan-awasedo, Atago-mine whetstone).

I'm not quite abreast with the intricate naming system involving strata, mines, mountains, regions. Are Atago and Narutaki mutually exclusive designations?

Oldengaerde & Pauly & Brighty, you can see that the stampings on stones can be misleading in most cases. Below are two copied sheets from a book distributed to members of the Kyoto Miners Union.





And a photos of Ishihara-san of Ohira Mine Co. stamping some stones for me, and a photo of one stone I bought from him.





The top photos shows both of the ink stamp and the paper label used by and registered by the Imanishi Co. seen on Pauly's Narutaki stone and the paper label on the Ohira stone linked by Maniaman and Brighty. The stamps on the sheets seen are actual stamped examples submitted to the Kyoto Miners Union archives and are just a small portion of the reference booklet from which these examples came from. Imanishi Co. itself has three full pages of stamps that they have used over the years. Alx