Japanese Water Stones - What to Choose.

From left to right, Naniwa Chosera 400/1k/3k/5k and Kityama 8k.

Hi there, I thought I would share my experiences in choosing water stones and some of the mistakes I made.
I hope you appreciate the fact that I made so many mistakes and I am happy to pass them along :)

If you ever meet a sharpener who never asks a questions and gives you the impression that they have nothing left to learn, be wary. There is always more to learn and I really enjoy passing along tips and tricks and you can ignore them of course.

When I first starting getting really serious about sharpening, which I guess is the day I became obsessed with it, five or six years ago I immediately created a water stone bucket list and on the top of my wish list was the the Naniwa Chosera 10k, to me, the stone represented the pinnacle of Japanese Water Stones. Whether it is or not, that is how I felt about it, I started building my collection from the top down, i.e. Ultra High Grit down to the coarse stones.

DO NOT DO THIS.

I had already been sharpening knives for over 20 years prior to this but as I said, when I knew that sharpening knives was going to consume my life, water stones of course became the most important things in my life.

As my business grew and I had more knives to sharpen than I had anticipated, I quickly began to realize that the 15K Shapton Pro that I got was seeing very little use. It was the 220 EP, 400 Chosera, 500 Shapton Glass that became the important stones, the ones that made my knives sharp.

I guess my advice then is to ensure that you have a very nice coarse water stone in your collection and you do not need to go higher than 5k, in my opinion the Shapton Pro 5k or Naniwa Chosera 5k are just fantastic and will satisfy your thirst for those high grit (particle size I should say) water stones.

I am not saying you will never need anything higher, what I am saying is if you  are building your collection, do not neglect the coarse stone.

Naniwa Chosera 400

I came to discover after sharpening many many knives that this stone was without any doubt the most important stone I have ever used. I have gone through at least 10 coarse stones ranging in grit from 220 to 500 and I always ensure I have a new one in my quiver, ready to go.

400, 1,000 and 5, 000 stones will get you into sharp heaven so start from there and when you can afford it, of course, go for those high grit wonders and enjoy them, they will last an eternity and every now and then when that special knife comes to for for sharpening, you can unleash that Kityama 8k or whatever it is you have.

Kityama 8,000

My mistake and rush to go for the high grit stones and ignore the coarse stones left me a couple of times working on extremely dull knives with a 1k stone. Now I know Murray Carter does this, I know that he sticks to a 1k/6k combo but I am not absolutely convinced that in the case of very very dull and nicked edges that he doesn't use something before the 1k. I am probably wrong, of course it can be done, it just takes a little longer.
(I have tried very recently by the way starting with a 1k stone and it works just fine, it just takes longer and I think I am probably spoiled by the speed of coarse stones in their ability to raise a burr and repair damaged edges.)  The fact that Murray Carter does this all the time just adds to my respect for the man.

As for the Naniwa Chosera 10,000 grit dream stone, it took me five years to finally get it and oddly enough the first knife I used it on was one made by Murray Carter and I can tell you, that was one sharp knife and very beautiful.

Naniwa Chosera 10,000

To summarise,  don't neglect the coarse stone and more importantly, learn to take advantage of it and  as I mention in previous posts, experiment with pressure adjustments and see for yourself that you can make a knife sharp enough to bring a smile to your face. When you get to that point, you will also see how quickly the work moves along on the subsequent stones, whatever they may be.

Thanks for reading this.

Sharpened knives ready to be returned.