A pair of Arkansas Washita stones. A 7” Washita and a 6” Lily White. Washita stones are a versatile hone. Depending on service preparation, they can be as course, equivalent to 300 grit or lapped and burnished to be equivalent to a 7000 grit hone. When that fine, can be used as a finisher to get a “cowboy shave” out of a straight. The Lily White can do the same but this one shows how artistically beautiful a stone label can be. Another lost art that has disappeared with time
Freshly cut and lapped KS-Nat It's a finisher with slurry, not my best finisher, but pretty good for a found stone.
My first JNAT and the naguras. It is a lv5 Okudo Asagi Tomae. It put a crazy smooth and sharp edge on my ERN extra hollow...
Won an auction for a couple. The iro colored stone is interesting, it will be fun to see what I have when it arrives.
I buy some out of Japan at auction, but there’s really no description except the images, it's pot luck.
From what I understand jnats stones shapening qualities are iffy at best, then tack on shipping you must be a gambling man. What do you do with the lemons? I see you already have a Nakayama door stop....
MetalMaster Watanabeblade Japanese Natural stones Chef knives to go Tomo Nagura The Japan stone Aframes tokyo Rock n Razors Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
i wouldn’t say that the sharpening qualities are iffy, but maybe a better statement is that there are a multitude of qualities available. Some are better for knives, some are better suited for razors, and so on. A few are duds, but not many. A more common problem are stones that are too hard to please knife people yet not fine enough for razors. A diamond plate can work with these for knives and tools, but they’re in kind of a no-mans land. You can also generate slurry from them with a diamond plate, mop up the slurry with a paper towel and use the towels to polish just about anything, gold and silver plate, fountain pens, your stove, etc. Some can make good slurry stones if you cut them up.
Hey Tom, It’s quite versatile. I usually slurry a softer kiita or uchigumori. Make sure the paper towel doesn’t have grit in it, some do. A soft cloth or paper towel with slurry on it is safe for gold wash on razors, and not much else is. I clean my razors of soap scum after shaving with one of these wipes after one spritz of distilled water. Over years it will polish the steel a little but not so much that it upsets the finish on the steel. And I haven’t had an issue with gold wash yet, but don’t I overdo it on the gold wash. It doesn’t take much slurry to work well. Probably any tenjou suita would be good too as long as it isn’t really hard. I’m going to try it on chamois at some point.
Just a quick heads up The Zulu Grey has a special going right now 50% off and some extras,, info on site I have no affiliation, I do use one and I have been happy with mine for quite some time ... https://www.zulugrey.com/
Thanks for the notification. Quite a bargain. How would a Zulu Grey fit in with your normal procedure with other stones? Thanks, as always. Bill
It is a similar finish to a Thuringen / Escher slightly harder stone take about 50% more laps to get there I use it after the 8k to 10k jump off, light slurry from a worn DMT 325 I like it for many of the Solingen and American razors If you have a Quality Thuringen you don't NEED it I do rate it as the best of the "New" stones being sold the only "New" stone I have found better is @HolyRollah 's Apache Strata I tested,,, but all Stratas are not as good as his The Zulu's seem pretty consistent..
Jnats arrived yesterday morning, big, thick beefy stones that are about 1-1/4” thick (30mm). They arrived early enough for some testing and a shave, both razor grade. The iro needs clear water strokes, the irregular koppa is a little harder and finer and makes a good edge on thin slurry. I used the iro on slurry as a pre-finisher for a Grelot and it works well, pretty fast stone on slurry, and fast is what you need to clear 4-5k striae.
Well I am going to be poorer, lol. I picked up a small (~4” long) oddly shaped koppa that’s almost surely Nakayama, with the idea of maybe cutting razor slurry stones from it. Fairly cheap as these things go. Then I see a nice barber size karasu that I like the looks of, and the bid was fairly low so I bid on it. Karasu always go fairly high, and this one did too compared to a grey stone, but really not too bad. It has some tells on it that I like. But I thought that I’d missed it, not getting a confirmation email for some time and an odd message about ‘zero yen’ auctions on the bidding page. So I bid on a third that also has some nice tells. And wouldn’t be as dear. That one wound down with me as the high bidder and too late to back out, when - drumroll, you guessed it - I get the confirmation on the karasu. So I have 3 that will get here sometime, probably between Christmas and New Years.
This is a interestingly found stone. Depending on light and angle, a vintage black or blue-black hard Arkansas from Norton. It was a gift from a old-timer Doctor at the teaching clinic. Always angling to find a CG, we were talking about antique medical equipment with hones part of the conversation. During my last visit, this was gifted to me from his medical collection with the promise I would give it a good home. He stated it was used by him “to give the final edge conditioning to his medical knifes”. Very cool and unexpected. What I received is a 5 x 2 x 1/2 stone with the oak case in a low mileage condition, a bonafide surgical-surgical black. I have a few hard arks, but this is the darkest in my collection. I lapped and it was a bear. I lapped a 8x2 trans at the same time. The trans, with 160% more surface area was finished in half the time. I little sucker is hard. When done, I gave it a few test drives and has been giving great results. I always considered my translucent’s to be my finest but this one is rewriting my understanding. It is small but mighty. It feels, if this makes sense, to be less toothy with the smoothest feedback. Like honing on greased glass. After a few hundred strokes, getting a smooth shaving edge that is as good as anything I have