You can ask questions too :) Maybe about something that i forget in writing in Tips and Advices. Maybe some problems that you had of using your Jnat stone.
I try to find the answer for that.
Hope we get good guide over Naturals.
Final Guide i will post on my website !
This guide will be for Knives and Razors.
Tips and Advice
1. Always keep you natural stone clean.
2. Keep you natural stone flat !!
3. Flatten you stone with a diamond stone or a sandpaper, but use another natural stone for final flattening surface need to be as smooth as possible. If you dont have another natural stone to smoothen you stone with use Tomo Nagura or any Nagura you have.
4. Very important to wash you stone after flattening, as residual abrasives from your flattening source might scratch your knife if not washed away.
5. Wash you stone after every sharpening.
6. Do not use water that have been in contact with synthetic stones.
7. When sharpening or polishing a knife or razor, use as little water as possible. Just a drop of water from your finger tip is enough for harder stones and more water on softer stones. The mud should be in a form of a paste.
8. Always rinse your knife or razor before and after sharpening.
9. Use Nagura or other Natural stone (as nagura) to make mud on harder stones or it might scratch soft iron (jighane) on your knife or Kamisori razors.
10.Always use mud, when polishing or sharpening with natural stones. Using natural stones without mud, will not give you best results. On very hard naturals for razors it can be good to use with only water at last honing.
11. Lacquer your stone on the sides and the bottom to reinforce it. If a stone has a crack, you should glue it to a wooden base, to prevent the crack from getting wider. You can also stop cracks with super glue.
12. Use small soft stones, fingers stones on a soft iron (jigane) and harder stones on a hard steel (hagane). If a knife is made of mono-steel, or it is a Honyaki knife, softer stones might be better.
13. Dont expose your stone for freezing temperature ! 14. Make grooves in you Nagura it will help you to make slurry much easier and help you with sticking problem.
15. Glue thin stones to wooden base.
Maxim,
ReplyDeleteSome advice I have to add when honing western style razors.
Make sure the bevel is set on a low grit 1K stone first before honing on a Hard Jnat with nagura.
When using Nagura (botan, Mejiro, Koma) make a lot of mud and use circle strokes, this is what I do anyway. I usually make about 10 sets of small 20 circle strokes. I then refresh the mud and make it lighter than before and repeat the process with X strokes, this time I dilute to water while using the circle and x strokes before moving to the next Nagura.
The same proceedure follows for the Tomonagura.
Here is a video from a member on Straightrazorplace.com:
http://www.straightrazorplace.com/forums/advanced-honing-topics/63577-nagura-honing-video-tutorial.html
Nick, Theskyscreams@aol.com