Quote Originally Posted by Aaron27 View Post
I currently own a king 1000, Norton 4K/8k and Chinese 12k. I'm interested in upgrading. Would you recommend a better 1k or a better finishing stone? I'm interested in the nainiwa 12 k stone, although I'm not that impressed with the king.
I was not thrilled with the King 1k, but it works fine. Unless you are planning on doing a lot of honing, I would not bother swapping out the King. It gets the job done.

Now, the important question is, how are your shaves off of the 8k? Unless you are able to make optimal use of your lower grit hones, a different finisher will be useless for you. You must be able to get a great shave off of your 8k before you will get any benefit from a higher grit hone.

There are a few issues with the Chinese hone. First, it is NOT 12k. As a natural rock, a grit designation is useless. Also, as a natural rock, the performance of mine is no indication of the performance of yours or anyone else's. Their performance varies. That means some work well and some don't. The majority of them are quite slow. I would guess that the majority of them can improve the edge off of a Norton 8k.

In direct answer to you question, I would say that unless you are planning on honing a lot of razors (say, more than 50), you would be better off keeping you King 1k and get the Naniwa Specialty 12k. That hone will improve an 8k edge and is a great option for ongoing maintenance of your razors.