Natural Japanese hones...

So today I finally took out the natural japanese stones that I purchased at an estate sale 2 years ago for $25 each. Unfortunately the sun was very bright so the pics are washed out. Here is a link

Hones and razors 07-01-08 - a set on Flickr

Have you taken them for a walk around the block, Randy? How are they?

Chris L

Nice rocks. Apparently you can't go by appearance but need to test every single stone individually to see how fine they are.

Please let us know!

Although that white-ish one with the rust-coloured grain and layering shown on the sides looks like Suita to me - I have an Oozuku Suita that looks a lot like that, and it's around 16K from what I can tell.

They look really nice Randy. Congratulations!

James.

Hey guys! Sorry for the washed out pics. I will try and do better.
Of the 4 slip stones for gouges there are definitely 3 different grits.
One coarse, 2 medium, one fine. The fine stone is almost as fine as the big white stone and similar in appearance, both are mottled. The others are much more uniform composition, but far from perfectly uniform.

The two big stones, blue and purple, are Aoto grade. Maybe 500-1000grit. The purple stone is the coarsest of the 2. I used the blue Aoto on the Double Arrow razor. It was surprisingly effective and quicker than I thought it would be. In fact, all were cutting faster than I expected.
Note, I did not use a slurry, just water, no soaking.

The big white stone seems to be the finest followed closely by the large slip stone ( is that the right term?). They all have a very different feel from other hones, more sticky, but I use tape on the razor spines, maybe thats one reason.

I did compare, HHT & TPT, the edge off a Kitiyama 8000 to the fine white. They were close in test results. But the real test is the shave, that will come soon.

If the white stone is approx 16K then that suits me perfectly. I like to use chrome ox as the final step. It is a proven performer for me.

This has been a nice change of pace!:)