Japanese Natural Stones

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sharpen some very nice hand made Japanese knives (Takeda) on the stones pictured here. (The bottom of the stones is what you see, the sharpening side of all of these stones are in pristine, perfectly flat and smooth condition)

So was it everything I had hoped it would be, were the knives even sharper than before?


It takes some time to get used to using these stones, I only had an hour or so but there is definitely a different feel and different result. They do not polish like the Shapton Pro 5k for example but the "natural stone polish" is very pleasing to the eye. Over time of course as my experience would grow with these I would see different results but the finish is still a little different, not in a bad way though, in a good way.

It didn't escape me that I was using natural stones from caves in certain parts of Japan and that in itself is very cool. They smell differently, they make a different sound and are very heavy.


The edges on the Takeda knives I did were absolutely amazing,  were they sharper than I am used to?

They felt different, a different sharp but yes I think they were a little sharper but nothing very obvious, it was not a "I can't believe the difference" moment, it just felt a little different.

So now I have to pick up some of these fantastic stones and learn how to get the best from them and that will be a very exciting educational period for me.

The sharpening journey never ends.

Peter