Thread: JNat for Dummies

Originally Posted by woodsmandave

I'm attracted to the "mystical" properties of a fine Japanese finisher, and nice thuringians keep evading me on ebay. I have my nortons, and my coticule, and I use them proficiently, and yes, I shave fine off of them. But its time to expand into the unknown world of JNats...

There is nothing mystical about Jnats, they work great but are not magical one just has to spend some time and learn how to get the max from the stone.
What you have from e-bay there, looking at he terms used to name the stone, means the seller has no idea what the stone is and where it comes from, so they just used the typical words used to describe stone characteristics such as color. Also I am not sure there is such thing as Kiita Uchigumori, Uchigumori stones are asagi only I believe.

Originally Posted by woodsmandave

That first link is affordable and specatacular. thank you!

I have bought both a woodworking stone and a razor stone from alex. If I had more money, I would buy a lot more of them. With the money I wasted on stones trying to buy "bargains" in my time, I could have several more of the stones from alex and be a lot happier with them. Most of them (the "Bargains" ) are actually very good stones, but they are not what I was expecting when I bought them - they are coarser or finer, softer or harder, etc, and I will lose money when I sell them.

From my experience buying natural stones (and I have probably bought 15), I'd suggest that a very good move is figuring out what your budget is, what you want to do, and emailing alex through his page to talk about what you want. His stones are not posers, but even though they're likely all good stones you want to get exactly what you're looking for (for example, he may have some stones that are faster than others, but more coarse, and maybe you're looking for the finest thing you can get).

I have not bought from maksim, he came along after I did my spending, but I'd do the same thing - decide what you want, describe and request it and seek guidance. Then you won't end up in a situation where you have a very high quality stone that isn't what you were looking for.

Thanks for the insight there. I'm going to skip on ebay and go through one of the linked sellers. I don't have the time to become a Jnat expert right now, but I do want a nice jnat finisher, so I guess I'll just have to ask advice from a respected seller.

alex is great to deal with

I am no expert, but I have purchased two stones from Maksim and was very happy with both. If you e-mail him, he will find you specifically what you are looking for.

Another +1 for Max @ JNS! He has a great selection, is always getting more stones, & was great to deal with. I wouldn't hesitate to buy another from him in the future. Alex @ the Japan Blade also has a lot of great info & stones, as does So @ Japan Tool, but he is pretty backlogged w/ orders.

Stay away from high-volume eBay vendors--w/ Jnats, it's essential to buy from someone you can trust, who will stand behind what they sell you.

As far as going directly from an 8k, you can do it, but (as I found out for myself) it's generally better to go up to 12k synthetic or so unless you have a super-fast stone (most razor finishers are not). By asking a superfine finisher to do more work (prepolish as well as finish) you are 1) wearing out an expensive, irreplaceable stone where some of the work could be shouldered by a cheap, easily replaceable synthetic, 2) introducing more variables, which will probably make your process less consistent, 3) taking a really long time!

PA23-250, I've been reading that many of these Jnats are very fast cutters on slurry. You don't think that using one with slurry coming off an 8k stone will do the trick?

Some are & some aren't. Most prepolishers are, but I'm assuming you want a true finisher. The best finishers are very, very fine and very uniform throughout. Many are quite hard. Some can also be very fast cutters--20 laps off a SHapton 16 GS can be too many. Those are the ones you'd expect to pay a lot of money for.

I've been doing lots of reading on this & some like So & Alx recommend using a well-worn Atoma plate to raise the slurry. The advantage here is it gives you a slurry made from the stone itself & refreshes the surface of your stone (removes swarf & glazing). It's supposed to be faster cutting than tomonagura slurry, but I haven't tried them back to back, so I couldn't say for sure.

Others use a tomonagura to raise slurry, which is supposed to give a smoother stone surface & more control over grit release & slurry breakdown.

My stone came w/ tomonagura, so that is what I'm using now, but I am curious to try a worn Atoma 1200 to see if there's any difference in the results. I usually have to make 2 slurries, coming off the Norton, which is 1 reason I'm investigating prepolishers. On the flip side, I've gotten razors sharper than Shavettes (confirmed through A/B testing!) on this rock, so maybe it's worth it.

OT, but anybody know a fast way to smooth out a diamond plate other than lapping hundreds of naturals?

Metal will knock the smarts right off of a diamond plate a lot faster than stones.

buy a big flat chisel at home depot or some hardware store, something like 1 1/2 inches wide and lap the flat face of that chisel on an atoma for a couple of minutes a day for a while. It'll calm down very quickly.

Use hardened steel, I wouldn't trust that mild steel or something like that wouldn't just pull some of the diamonds right out of the matrix on an atoma.

or...even cheaper would be to get the plane blade that home depot has in their tool section. It's branded buck brothers and costs $2.99 and is acceptably hard to do the job.

If you want to tone down a diamond plate try to remember to pay attention to the corners too, I have a one that the center is devoid of diamonds from grinding a axe head, and now there is a suction action from that central area when flattening wide full size stones. Alx