Thread: Japanese Nagura - Honing Thought of the Day

I used to have the same question about the usefulness of the base stone for a long time, until I bought my first good, expensive Jnat. And, of course, I tried it.
Not the nagura with other than Japanese stones as base, but the opposite, using slurry stones, coticules, Thuringians, C12ks on the Jnat. And, the results confirmed that the base stone is the most important thing.
A far too coarse coticule slurry stone gave a very fine edge, the Thuringian and C12k gave an edge almost same to the one from a good Nakayama tomonagura I have, and even the Belgian blue gave an excellent shaving edge. I'm talking about 100 passes after a 5k, finishing with medium-thin slurry.
I tried to use a Meijiro nagura on a C12k, but it was digging in the stone, and I was afraid of the presence of bigger particles in there. The same happened with the Nakayama slurry stone. But I used the Mikawa nagura on a coticule base stone, and I didn't notice a big difference, from using a coticule slurry stone.

Originally Posted by Bayamontate

No matter how hard the base stone is some will come through on the slurry especially with botan and the coarser nagura. I think the magic is in that mixture.

I'd second that, this far.
My tests yesterday did not leave me with the same silky smooth and super-sharp edges I get from my Asagi's and Kiita's.
But I'll keep trying a bit more!