Thread: "Jnat slurry progression" method on synthetic finishers???

I have recently purchased a new GS 20k, which hopefully will be in on two or three weeks , and have come up with a question or two. When purchasing the stone I noticed it comes with a 1k/3k duel grit "conditioning stone". When researching and reading about this conditioning stone, I noticed that many consider it like a "norton prep stone", where that it is only to take off the high points of the stone in order to keep from increased flattening occurrences. Then I thought then why not just use a single grit. So I thought that there may be more purpose to the stone than expected. Which drove me looking at jnats and naguras.

So then my question. Could our synthetic finishers work like the host stones of the jnat finishers (i.e. Nakayama asagi) and using naguras (or other grit progression slurries) on the synthetic finisher instead of having multiple stones in order to progress to the finisher?

Now I do already have multiple stones in multiple grits, so this is not an attempt at being "cheep", but rather a hypothesis looking for proof. it almost seems sacreligious to think using multiple different grits on a finishing synthetic stone, but I thought it would be interesting to see what might happen and if anyone has tried it. And if it would be a good experiment, is there any recommendations that should be considered first. Or if I should stop my endeavor because someone already knows that it doesn't work? Ideas???

You can do a nagura progression on anything. It will work fine. Especially on the 20k, it is fine enough not to interfere with whatever slurry you are using.

Get a botan and meijiro(or a full set) and see what you can do! There is no wrong way to hone(sort of). As long as you get a refined shaving edge the process for getting there is unimportant.

I have used nagura on many substrates, all with good results .

Try it and see, natural naguras that is, the synthetic stones supplied with synthetic hones are nearly always conditioning stones as you note.

A natural nagura on a natural stone (Jnat) is usually considered to have some ability to "energize" the host stone causing it to release some slurry. The results can be from near nothing to significant depending on the stone and nagura. I would believe that you will not get any contribution from the G20k considering its hardness, but that doesn't mean nagura slurry won't work.

I have some small pieces of Jnat if you want to try them out.

Cheers, Steve

How does the grit rated synthetic naguras fair? For example the King or masuta naguras. (For now those are the easiest to find, or at least until I learn how to search for quality nagura and jnats.)

Originally Posted by Steve56

Try it and see, natural naguras that is, the synthetic stones supplied with synthetic hones are nearly always conditioning stones as you note.

A natural nagura on a natural stone (Jnat) is usually considered to have some ability to "energize" the host stone causing it to release some slurry. The results can be from near nothing to significant depending on the stone and nagura. I would believe that you will not get any contribution from the G20k considering its hardness, but that doesn't mean nagura slurry won't work.

I have some small pieces of Jnat if you want to try them out.

Cheers, Steve

Steve,

I would love to try some out sometime. Probably after I get my 20k in. I only placed the order a week ago and as one would expect with demand, its still processing not to mention the time for the economy shipping to get here from Japan.

I don't really know about the King or Matsuta, but the Naniwa "brown biscuit' is reportedly about 600 grit. If the King etc are in the same ballpark, and I imagine they are, they would be much coarser than the most commonly used Japanese Mikawa nagura, a botan which is more likely somewhere around 4-5k just guessing.

The thing I'd worry about most using cleaning stones for slurry is that they might have some rogue grit in it that wouldn't matter for that purpose but might for razor honing as the razor's edge is very delicate. I don't know if that's a valid concern or not, but I would think about it. I wouldn't think it would be likely to hurt the edge beyond having to do a simple re-hone though.

No problem on the naguras, just let me know.

Edit: I have tried the Naniwa brown biscuit on a Chosera 600 as a slurry stone since they are said to be the same grit, I'm not sure it does much over a clean Chosera 600. But it didn't hurt anything either.

Cheers, Steve

Here at a few examples of what I am finding and talking about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00068...=AC_SX200_QL40

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00JH1...s=nagura+stone

Nagura Stone Grit 2000:Amazon:Kitchen & Dining

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00PZ6...=AC_SX200_QL40

But I'll start looking for using the names tall have given so far.

Neil,

The King is 300-500 grit according to the reviews, so it is certainly a cleaning stone.

The 12000 is listed as a natural and seems to be well thought of, but I'd also bet it isn't really 12k but I don't know and at that price point I'd probably go with the real deal for about $10 more:

NATURAL WHETSTONE (sharpening stone)

Scroll down and you'll see many kinds of naguras. I actually use and like a piece of botan to clean and condition my Jnats and also after bevel set when I do a Mikawa nagura progression. I also use a piece of Jnat given to me to clean and condition synth hones. Works quite well. I'd never considered using it that way but one day I was done honing and the "biscuit" was in the drawer and this piece of stone was out, so I tried it and it worked great.

The 2000 and 8000 I can't tell much about, no reviews for the 2000 and reviews on the 8000 are few and mixed.

My gut feeling is that using this kind of slurry stone on a hard non-slurrying ceramic waterstone is probably not doing much compared to the stone itself, and that's why the Naniwa brown biscuit didn't seem to improve the Chosera 600 - maybe just a little faster, maybe not.

Cheers, Steve

Thanks Steve. Like I said trying to find quality stones can be a bear, but at least I have you and everyone here to point me where I need to look. As I'm typing, I thought it may be a good idea for me to PM and ask Alex also like you said when we met up that one time.

Alex and Takeshi are both great. Max at JNS is good too, but shipping from Denmark is high. He sells sets of Mikawa naguras that are nice and usually has a wide selection of Jnats in all price ranges.

Cheers, Steve