Thread: Stone set (mainly shapton) buying advice?

Originally Posted by JimmyH-AD

I am the "voice crying in the wilderness" on this topic. When I was deciding whether to go glass or pro I did a lot of reading and studying. I went pro. I got 15mm of honing stone versus 5. I got a heavy duty plastic container to store the stone in which doubles as a stable honing platform. No there is no 16K but there is a 15K. The proof of the pudding for me is that the pro series does a magnificent job. AFAIC, the pro is the way to go.

Info from shapton regarding the glass stones from their website:

Shapton® Glass Stone™ abrasives have been carefully manufactured to achieve the highest levels of performance and durability. They may appear thin at first glance but, don't let that fool you. They will out last most other stones that are three times the thickness. These abrasives are extremely uniform. Consistency is the primary goal for Shapton's engineers. The abrasive that you encounter with the first pass will be the same on the 5,000th pass. And, this will be true for every every abrasive size.


Apparently in shapton glass math, (5mm glass) =/> (15mm anything else)!

Not to mention the price: 130 for the shapton 15k vs 99 for the glass 16k,
and 635 for the pro 30k vs 280 for the glass 30k. (prices in MSRP)

If you leave out the 220, 3000, and 6000 stones, you can buy the entire shapton glass series for about the same price as the pro 30k. That's a lot of pudding.