Help me choose some synthetic waterstones...

[Joey Chavez]

I love my Naniwa Super Stones, was supposed to be a set just to help me get started but I haven't had any reason to look elsewhere. Easy maintenance, no need to soak, stays flat, and inexpensive. I use 1000, 3000, 5000, 8000 with a 320 grit diamond stone. They get my A2 blades nice and sharp.

[Richard Jones]

Bester 1200 and Suehiro Rika 5k is a tough combo to beat, especially if you can strop a bit afterwards. Great combo for knives as well.

Add an XXC for a flattener or even some 120 paper and glass/marble backer. Under $100......................

[James Taglienti]

I think I am going to start with the Spyderco stones. It looks like all three are 127 bucks on amazon right now. Sounds pretty solid! Does anyone know how fine the ultra fine really is? Would it benefit to buy a 13 or 16k waterstone for followup?

Thanks all for the suggestions. If the spydercos dont solve this "problem" that I dont really have in the first place, i will have to go to waterstones. Then maybe japanese naturals. Then maybe a lapping machine. And an electron microscope.

[David Weaver]

The UF (and maybe the fine) have particles in the neighborhood of 3 microns. Inevitably, it'll work like a finer stone than that. You don't need a 15k waterstone to follow the UF, after it settles in, it'll be as fine as that unless you abrade it with something really aggressive.

If I were in your shoes, I would buy something more traditional (diamond hone, no soak waterstone) for the coarser work. The same tendency to settle in and work finer and slower won't be so charming on a medium stone.

One other thing, I just got a spyderco 8x3 UF a couple of months ago, and while it was close to flat, it was not perfectly flat. They are a BEAR to lap, and you won't do it without diamonds. once you get the stone flat, it's not unreasonable to assume that you'll never need to do it again.

[James Taglienti]

Do you think one could refresh a medium stone with a diamond plate? I flattened a medium India with diamond and its only about 3/4 as fast as when it was new.

Why am I buying more stones? DSCF2253.jpg

[David Weaver]

Yeah, it doesn't look like you need more stones. What are those razor hones? Is that blue one a dunlap hone?


I don't know about the medium spyderco, I'm sure you could refresh it with a diamond plate. Getting just a little bit of material off of the UF was extremely hard on one of my atomas, and I'd say it's 5 times as hard as an india stone. I don't know if the medium is quite as hard, but it will probably still make a medium india feel like a soft stone.

[James Taglienti]

Theres a norton razor hone in there, next to it is a piece of green jadeite i have been messing with, it acts like a brand new hard arkansas i wanna see what happens when it glosses over a little bit

[David Weaver]

Presumably you have been watching norton razor hones on ebay? I don't know how much they all go for, maybe some go for $20, but I saw a norton combo hone a few months ago that went for almost $800. At least two people wanted it badly. What little I get out, I've been looking for a three line swaty, but I've never looked that hard.

I'd love to just find a good vintage 8x2 fine black hard arkansas. Everything I see is combination hones, india hones, or soft arks....or maybe perhaps a finer hone that was on a hardware store counter that everyone obliterated into looking like a half pipe.

[David Weaver]

I see a nice combination coti in that picture, too. What is the gray stone with the slurry stone? Is that a thuri, or is it a chinese hone? Or maybe an english slate hone?

[James Taglienti]

Believe it or not i hit a Buy It Now on that norton for fifteen bucks a couple weeks ago. Looking at the prices they usually go for, id say its not going to be in my posession for very long.
The coticule is awesome for razor but a little too soft for tools, it self slurries and wont let me get a polish out of it.
The green hone with the slurry stone im afraid it is queer creek ( cue the cartoon-style failure trumpet sound, wah-wah-wahhhhh.) it still lets me get a great shine and the grit is creepily consistent with a slurry. Theres a chinese stone there that wouldnt even cut steel with water so i put some oil on it and its awesome!

Do you prefer the black over the transluscent?

[David Weaver]

Of the modern stones, I definitely don't like the black better than translucents. The translucents are finer and more consistent hands down, but black modern stones that I've tried so far don't feel like much. I get the sense that vintage stones might be more dense because the stone buying population would've been more demanding, just as japanese vintage hones seem to be better than modern ones for general use (though for different reasons). I'm going on supposition though that some of the old craftsmen preferred a good black arkansas stone to a translucent, and if they'd have used my black arkansas, they'd have preferred it to nothing.

Jonathan McCullough sent me a coti to try (among other things), and it was sort of crunchy for lack of a better word (but it gave a comfortable shave that belied the sounds it made), but I didn't try it on tools since it wasn't my stone and I felt like that wasn't OK to do to a razor stone that you don't own. I've definitely seen where they could be too soft for anything other than razors, which make even a medium stone behave like a hard one since you never pressure them. Big cotis are really expensive, and I'd love to try one sometime, but I don't want to buy one because I think they're only expensive due to rarity. On razors, most are blown away by japanese hones and welsh slate and thuri type hones (and welsh slate stones are cheap).

Barbs are slung on here often about how wasteful we are buying sharpening stones, but going over to the razor side and looking at the prices people pay for things (like the cotis and the eschers, and the frictionites) makes us look a little swiss, if you know what I mean (that's ok for me to say as 1/4 swiss).

[george wilson]

I have used my Spydercos for about 20 years without any wear at all. There are certain steels that only a super hard ceramic stone WILL sharpen. I made a knife from D2,a high wear resistance steel made for shearing other steels. Couldn't quite get it razor sharp on any of the stones I had. When I got the ceramics,the D2 sharpened to a full razor edge.

You probably will have to smooth them initially with a diamond stone,but after that,no problems,except to scrub the gray glaze off once in a while. And,that probably depends upon what you're using for a cutting fluid. I just use water with a few drops of Dawn dish detergent on mine.

[Matt Radtke]

I have used my Spydercos for about 20 years without any wear at all. There are certain steels that only a super hard ceramic stone WILL sharpen. I made a knife from D2,a high wear resistance steel made for shearing other steels. Couldn't quite get it razor sharp on any of the stones I had. When I got the ceramics,the D2 sharpened to a full razor edge.

I picked up a set of of SpyderCo after listening to George talk about them. It was a great buy, and probably found the same set you did for ~$127 for medium, fine, and ultra fine. Having a 2k Shapton Glass stone to compare against, I tried to get a sense of what grit they are.

The "fine" is faster but finer (go figure that one out!) than the Shapton 2k.

They are all rather quick, so I tend to only use the medium off the grinder. I do still finish with a ShaptoPro 12k--I already had it and love it and love the edge I get from it, so I'm not going to give it up. And I keep a DuoSharp for flattening the Shapton and really coarse work.

[Frederick Gross]

I use 3M diamond plates that I purchased from JWW. Not a single complaint and the finest one is .06 micron which leaves a good working edge.

[Chris Griggs]

Sounds like I'm late to the game and you've made a decision, but my thoughts are pretty much in line with Archie and Davids recommendations.

My top three 1k ish range stones in no particular order are the Sigma 1200, Bester 1200, and Chosera 800 (which I definitely like better than the Cho 1k)

I have less experience with medium fine (3k-6k) stones, and in a lot of cases don't even find them neccessary, but I do quite like my Sigma 6k. Although its fine enough that I tend to use it as more of a finishing stone then a middle stone. I actually want something else a little coarser in this range. There's a really hard looking Nubatama Ume at CKTG that I've been thinking of getting if it ever comes back in stock, but I might just save my pennies for a Cho 3k as well. I've heard rumors that Stu is working with Sigma to get a new 4k on the shelves, but have no idea when that will be.

Finishing stones... flip a coin. The better I get on sharpening the more I realize there are a heck of a lot of stones 6k and above that will get you where you need 99% of the time. I'm still enjoying my Naniwa Snow White 8k, but like the Chos it has the caveat of soak, but don't soak too long. Its quite hard which is nice, but because of this also has a bit of a learning curve (it can be skippy at time, but usually more soaking fixes this). Anyway, just about any decent 8k+ stone will get you there.

Its funny, I now have some non-sigma stones that I sometimes like a little better than my sigmas, but for stone buyers who are more practical then myself I still think Stu's 1.2k, 6k, 13k w/ diamond plate is the total package on the market.

Budget package? Go to CKTG and get Bester 1.2k + a good 8k (SW8k, Kityama 8k, etc...) + diamond