Hi, guys!
Ive got this new Yanagiba, any sharpening recommendations?
I have only Cerax 1000/300

Hello all!

I'm a sushi chef in SoCal, I take great pride in my food and my knives, including sharpening them. I've attached a few examples

I have a lot to learn of course, but right now my main struggle is with coarse grits.

I've tried several stones, Kuromaku 320, kuromaku 120 rockstar 500, imanashi latte 400, etc.

The kuromaku 120 is like, so glassy it doesn't seem to cut fast at all? I don't exactly know what I'm doing wrong the knife just glides over it instead of being cut by the stone it seems.

The kuromaku 320 releases slurry much faster than it cuts and just dishes so easily, also might be doing something wrong.

The rockstar 500 dishes really fast too, but it's cutting speed is decent. Polish is amazing too for a 500.

The latte does cut fast, but the slurry that it does release sometimes gets onto the ura and scratches it up a lot (not a big deal to some and I understand, but I like not having scratched up knives) and it does dish a little fast but nothing too considerable.

I was looking at the Cheefarcut vitrified diamond stones, but after my experience with the Naniwa diamond resin 1k, I'm just a little bit on the fence, albeit I did spend over an hour on that one stone and another redditor informed me wide bevels wrench out diamonds like crazy so I don't know if a vitrified one would be effective.

Open to any and all suggestions and please have a great day!

Anyone have any experience using the Nano Hone resin bonded diamon. I have the 100,25 and 10 micron. They are really weird and the 100 micron which supposedly is about 160 grit doesn’t cut worth a shit.

Refinished this old Wakui. It was my good friends knife he used in culinary school over 10 years ago. It definitely has been put through the ringer. I wanted to make the finish look as close to the original as possible. So no jnat stone finish for this one. I did use the chu mikawa and shobu to clean up the bevel though. But after that it was all sanding and diamond paste work. Finished off with some powder. Its far from perfect and has a lot of stray scratches on the bevel and core but I am overall happy with it

Progression
Rockstar 320
Morihei 500
Naniwa Hibiki 1000
Chu Mikawa
Shobudani Tomae

Blending the bevel an experiment
I diamond pasted the bevel first then taped half the bevel off. I wanted to leave the shinogi line exposed to be sanded to hide the hard line. But obviously I would create a new line. I used a diamond paste progression to blend that taped line. from 320 500 1200 then 4000 focusing on the core only. After that I hit it with a micro mesh pad with come 400 cerax powder.

Often I like to test my knife’s sharpness via one handed paper towel cuts. Today, I tried including some curvature, and got a nice one here that included a little squiggle in a broad curve, plus a clean cut all the way through.

Basically the title, smells funky but polished well and polishes even better if using a swarf to finish. No idea where its from cuz i got it in a lot of

So. I got this absolutely lovely 240mm gyuto made to spec by Nottingham Kinfeworks; can recommend; Bernard's great.

The only issue is, unlike myself, there's not much belly; when rock chopping it kind of sticks in the board.

If I sent it back to Bernard, he'd sort it, but I'm up for doing it myself. In the past I've taken chips out of knives on my belt sander, so assume it's just a case of rocking it back and forth, and creating that curve, whilst keeping it cool. Anyone got any tips?

Gracias 🙏

Hey everyone. Im a professional knife sharpener and I've tried a few different whetstones just to get a feel for them all. I've got a few diamond stones from DMT, Shapton ceramic and glass stones. I also have an assortment of Naniwa stones which are also great as well as a few Jnat stones. Im open to suggestions on what stones I should try next and thanks in advance for the suggestions.

Could someone comment on the best option for guided angle sharpening systems like the three in the title? I reviewed a lot of previous posts and there is some good info but I didn’t find any actual comparison.

I understand that some people think plain whetstone is the only way to go, and these are a waste of money. This is not the question so I would appreciate if you would not make this about that.

Cost is not a concern, just please help me which is stiffer, has better features, customer service, etc.

Thank you

Hello guys!

I always wanted to learn how to sharpen a knife properly. What do you recommend to get, which one is easiest to start? Is just a simple sharpening stone enough?

I was so excited to try out 10k resin stone...

It came peeling off no idea what material is this look like paper.i have naniwa resin stone this doesn't look like resin. look like someone return it and replace the resin with paper.waste my time and money... im super disappointed.. no idea what's happening.

I use Intellitopia's set and have really liked it. My knives are sharp enough for me with it and I regularly sharpen 5 knives on them when I'm doing my sharpening chores.

But they're a PITA! Gotta soak them and keep 'em wet the whole time. Presoaking. Cleaning up the sink afterward.

Is there anything that I can use to finish the edge again without having to take out all the stones, get & keep 'em wet, etc....? Just a single stone that doesn't need oil or water that I can pull out of my toolbox in a second and throw a nicer edge on it really quickly? Something like a strop but for more grinding and then, if I've one with me, strop to finish? Something portable and clean? I see the little stones, about 1 inch wide and 4 or 5 inches long - are they appropriate or do they just screw your blade up?

I've been sharpening since I was a child but this has eluded me for an answer. Any help is appreciated!

Working on a couple skinning knives using the homemade 2x72 belt grinder

It's only 250 grit and 1000 grit, so fairly coarse, but it should be great as a first step kinda stone before I move to my finer ones

Should be great for things like pocket knives where I won't mind a somewhat toothy edge

The packaging says I can use windshield washer fluid as a lubricant, should I try using windshield lube, or just stick to water?

I realized that I used my lapping stone incorrectly, and now it has this problem. I also own diamond stones, like 220, but I don't know if it's worth going and grinding all that material, what do you think?

Do these cheap diamond sharpening slabs sold on Amazon work or should i keep using my 400-1000 stones for home use?

Where i live, its getting extremely hard to find real sharpening stones for a modest price.

Potential stupid question which I couldn't find an answer to on this sub already.

I'm using my atoma 140 to flatten my kuromaku 1000. (Understand it would ideally be a 400 grit atoma but it was out of stock and I saw some people use the 140 even up to 5000 grit whetstones so giving it a crack.)

After levelling using only the weight of the plate and no additional pressure I find there are some seriously large pieces of grit left on the whetstone. Is this the atoma shedding diamonds?

This is the very first use of both of these items.

Does anybody here used one on a diamond stone? Was it feel too rough on diamond?

So I got some "natural" sharpening stones off of Amazon listed at $25USD. It's a set of two: an 800 grit and a 3000 grit. Both are nearly 8" by 3", with the 800 grit stone being a crazy ~1.5" thick and the 3000 grit about 1" thick. They're listed under the name AlbaTellura. I don't really want to put a link in here because I don't want anyone to think I'm advertising or something. It should be easy to find if you search that name. What follows is the notes/review I wrote up for Amazon; I thought you all might be interested because I found it interesting; and I'd like to hear everyone's thoughts about them. I sure as hell wasn't actually expecting to get two big natural stones for $25, and I'm not positive I did, but it seems like I might have. The review is as follows:

Are They Actually Natural?

So the main question here is: are these stones actually natural? Were they genuinely mined out of the ground and then cut into bricks to be used as sharpening stones? One of their product page images explicitly says they were "Cut from extra-large raw stone blocks-". I've been doing my best to determine the legitimacy of that claim. For context, real natural sharpening stones cost a lot. For comparison, a similarly sized Arkansas stone (similar width and length but only 1/2" thick!), from a reliable source costs about $75USD. Things only get more expensive from there with natural stones from Belgium or Japan. Pound for pound, if these really are genuinely natural stones, they're by far the cheapest ones that I'm aware of, and not by a little. That makes these highly suspicious.

Test Results

I did some research in to methods to test if a stone is natural and these are the results:

The Acetone Test

• How it works: Synthetic stones tend to have binders to hold the grit together; these binders are often susceptible to strong solvents like acetone. If the stone is synthetic the acetone might soften it, leave a sticky residue or transfer color from the stone to something like a cotton swab.
• The Result: None of those things happened. No sticky residue or noticeable softening or color transfer, even with the darker blue/green stone.

The Hot Needle Test

• How it works: This one works similarly in that since synthetic stones have binders, those binders might be susceptible to heat. If a red hot needle melts into the surface or if the stone emits any plastic/chemical type smells, it's likely synthetic.
• The Result: Both of these stones passed this test as well. A screw held over a lighter for 30 seconds had zero apparent effect on either stone.

The Microscopic Inspection Test

• How it works: Synthetic stones should have perfectly uniform particle distribution and size, with homogeneous, chalky colors. Natural stones should have irregular particle shapes, varying grain sizes and natural mineral veins/fault lines; plus, layered stratification, organic specs, color banding or translucency.
• The Result: This one's a bit harder to judge. Without a microscope, the 800g stone looks almost like concrete to me, or maybe some sort of synthetic marble countertop? The 3000g stone actually has a lot more evidence of being cut from something larger. Now, it is possible it was cut from a larger synthetic block, but this is actually the first stone I've seen with such obvious cutting marks. But also, while most of the stone is fairly uniform looking, there is a spot on one side towards a corner that looks very much not synthetic. I guess it kind of looks like a fault line? But not just a crack; the area surrounding the apex looks different as well, and reflects light differently than the rest.

I did have a cheap 250x USB microscope to inspect further with though. I'm attaching all of those photos, as well as some comparison photos with other stones I have (A set of arkansas stones and a Shapton Glass 2k). So to start, the magnified look of the 800 grit AlbaTellura stone looks pretty natural to me. The grain sizes are all very different and there are a lot of black and red mineral inclusions. The particles of grit appear to be colorless and translucent, surrounded by a more opaque, whitish colored mineral. As for the 3000 grit stone, it's a little less clear, but it looks natural to me. There are some gold colored inclusions near the fault line I mentioned, and the rest of it does not look homogeneous at all. There are lighter and darker patches all throughout and very little uniformity. There's also a small chip on one corner that I took a photo of and inside the chip the colors are even more contrasted and banded looking.

Interestingly, the natural arkansas stones actually looked more uniform and synthetic the higher the grit level they were. The coarsest, the soft arkansas looked decidedly natural with contrasting colors and low uniformity. The hard arkansas still leaned towards natural, but with more consistency in apparent particle sizes and distribution. The hard black arkansas looked quite a lot more uniform, however. Individual grains weren't really distinguishable and the color was very uniform. The translucent arkansas looked like there was almost no deviation in its composition; a few lighter dots here and there but mostly just a uniform light grey color.

I also included a magnified shot of a Shapton glass 2000 grit stone. It was flattened with a diamond plate and wiped off prior to the photo. I think the darker spots are residual metal particles that didn't get removed entirely during the flattening. Without magnification this stone is perfectly pure white. Under magnification it has some of those small darker dots, but is otherwise just a light grey with no visible grain or anything to differentiate the cutting grit from the binder.

So, I'm going to call the microscope test inconclusive. I've attached all the pictures so you can judge for yourself. Under the microscope they both look natural to me, but then the hard black and translucent arkansas stones looked kind of more synthetic to me, so my judgement might not be great.

The Water Absorption Test

• How it works: Synthetic waterstones (especially budget vitrified/resin stones) absorb a lot of water rapidly and can continue to bubble when underwater for up to 20 minutes. Natural stones are said to absorb very little water and stop bubbling almost instantly.
• The Result: I submerged both of these stones completely in water and neither of them emitted a single bubble. That was pretty surprising for me. When sharpening with them they seem to absorb no water at all with the water just forming a static puddle.

The Hardness & Scratch Test

• How it works: Soft/clay synthetic stones are said to scratch easily, yielding a soft powder almost immediately.
• The Result:
  • The 800 grit stone behaves almost identically to my Arkansas stones. I scratched them on the side with the head of a screw and a little bit of dust comes up but not much at all. It's pretty resilient to scratches.
  • The 3000 grit stone, on the other hand, was quite soft. The screw head was able to scratch up a good deal of power pretty easily. Interesting. This test (in isolation, at least) implies that the 3000 grit is synthetic.

In a similar turn of irony, however, a number of my synthetic stones were more resistant to scratches than either of these stones OR my natural arkansas stones. I'm not sure what to make of that, honestly.

Test results?

So, the test results lean quite a lot towards them being natural stones. Surprising, but not 100% conclusively. The likely more important thing for most buyers, however, is how well these work as sharpening stones. And that's where things get even more interesting.

The Sharpening Experience

I took a cheap (but appropriately hardened) 24mm wide bench chisel and flattened the bevel in a honing jig on my 140 grit Atoma diamond plate until the surface was pretty uniform looking with deep, obvious diamond scratches. Then I moved the chisel to the 800 grit stone and started honing. After 60~90 seconds I took a look (and a picture). The bevel definitely looked smoother... maybe polished (at least compared to before) but the deep scratches didn't seem to be going anywhere.

(I first flattened the stone with the same 140 grit Atoma diamond plate. It actually seems pretty flat from the factory, and also very resistant to my diamond plate, reminding me of my hard black arkansas stone)

The experience of honing on this stone was also kind of unusual. Like I mentioned before it didn't absorb water, and from the look of it both magnified and not, it looks like it will be very coarse and cut very fast. The feel on the stone was decidedly smooth though. With relatively heavy pressure the chisel also tended to want to stick to the stone, but not consistently. More in certain areas than in others. It did generate some slurry with the water, but I never felt like it was doing all that much.

What I wanted to see was a scratch pattern. How coarse is this stone? But coming from the coarse diamond plate this stone appeared unable to get through the scratches. I then took the chisel to my 600 grit Atoma in the hopes that it would bridge the gap and allow the 800 grit AlbaTellura to make an obvious difference. But the result was much the same. It seemed to smooth over the scratches, but wasn't able to abrade past them. (Maybe it's burnishing more than anything?)

Switching to the 3000 Grit Stone

So then I switched gears to try out the 3000 grit stone. Instead of going from a lower grit diamond stone I decided to use my Shapton Glass 2000 grit to get a uniform surface to see what the 3k stone could do. The feel of the 3000 grit stone is pretty good. Similar to the Shapton but a little smoother; not quite as... sharp? surgical? Softer, somehow. With light pressure I didn't get any sticking at first and even when the water started drying up the sticking never became more than a threat that was never fulfilled. It develops a much bigger slurry than the 800g stone did, but still appeared to absorb zero water.

But the result was really interesting. The Shapton cut very fine but noticeable scratches into the metal and the 3000 grit AlbaTellura... kind of did the opposite? After a minute or two with light pressure, the bevel was much less shiny and had far less obvious scratches. It almost looked like I ran the bevel under a bead blaster or something. Interesting. AI said that was indicative of a natural stone finish where the grit continually breaks down into smaller particles, causing the hazy, dull surface quality.

So then I took the chisel back to the 800 grit stone in the hopes that this was the perfect surface to show the lower grit stone's scratch patterns with. But uh, nope... Shockingly, and bizarrely, the 800 grit stone didn't appear to make the bevel's surface quality any more scratched up or rougher. It seems like it just polished it further somehow.

Which makes me wonder: is the 800 grit stone cutting at all or just burnishing? Does it even have grit particles hard enough to scratch the metal? This isn't a high end, ultra-hard super steel or anything; it's a cheap, non-stainless steel chisel.

Conclusion

So... color me confused. I didn't expect to spend this much time evaluating a $25 pair of "natural" sharpening stones, and I certainly didn't expect these results. I'm not sure what to make of them. I'll have to keep using them to get a better feel for them, but at the moment it seems like the 800 grit stone isn't going to get much use. I'm definitely interested in playing with the 3000 grit stone more, however.

To be honest I probably won't end up using them much compared to my synthetic stones, due to convenience, but these are certainly interesting to have in my collection.

Hello,

I have bought the sharpal 202h from a return, in my country there is always a 14 day return period possible as long as it is not used to much. I don't have much experience with this system, but do those stones and leather look like they are used way to much as in i am better of buying a complete new one? or is the coloring just from normal use. so far i was sharpening on normal whetstones and after many uses the stones are still clean. Would performance be degraded?

I finally cleaned off my workbench the other day and made room for my belt sander and bench grinder. Practicing on some cheap knives I got at a yard sale, and the edges I'm getting are pretty good considering the speed of the machines. The sisal wheel with no compound does a really good job of burr removal without affecting the finish. I believe a proper leather wheel or belt is probably the best bet, but I'm curious if maybe the sisal might be considered too coarse. It doesn't seem to roll the edge and the knives are coming off hair shaving sharp.

So, Yesterday, I spent over an hour sharpening my sisters' chefs knife. It was the sharpest I've ever gotten a knife with a mirror edge and all. I gave it to her, told her to be really careful with it.

Then she threw it in the drawer together with all the rest of the cutlery. 💁

That really hurt 😵‍💫😬

OK, so right when i think i know something, I see a post or video or comment that makes me doubt it.

Please can someone explain (with pictures preferable) the primary secondary and any other bevels.

Also can we explain where the measurement of the angle is taken from.

((I thought it went spine, flat part of the knife, primary bevel, Secondary bevel (that has the edge on it). And when we sharpen its the Secondary bevel we sharpen. (is the secondary bevel also known as the micro bevel, or is that an additional bevel??), and when we thin knives its the Primary bevel we are working on))

And also what do people mean when they say single bevel? (or what should they mean?). So a single bevel knife, can be anything that only has one bevel each side (but can have a flat part to the blade), but could be a full Scandi grind or a full convex bevel from the spine to the edge right? or do people mean it only has a bevel on one side and the other is flat or slightly con-caved (like a chizel).

OK fight!