Jnats

[Brian Holcombe]

Lol! I like that line Ken....hopefully it will convince my wife as well

[Phil Mueller]

Not sure about all the steps in the middle but, Brian, I beleive you have #1 and #12 down.

Step 1: We admitted we are powerless over our addiction.
Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening...we tried to carry this message to other addicts...

I believe we have just defined the Brian 2 step program.

[Brian Holcombe]

Hah! Those steps are meant to get people away from their addiction.... I end up doing the opposite I'm afraid.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

It's not an addiction, it's a passion. An addiction carries a negative result. A passion carries a positive. I see no negatives here. Things get sharper (positive), we enjoy ourselves (positive), we gain an appreciation for things (positive), and we go broke (YES- that's a positive, because the love of money is the root of all evil. Going broke helps us not love money and not be evil.).

There, I justified it for you. Now go buy whatever stones you need. Does this mean we are stoners? I believe that would be a great new term for people that use natural stones. "Don't mind that guy, he's just a stoner." The stoner term fits well- we talk about things that make no sense to anyone else, we're abnormally relaxed, and we spend hours and hours doing repetitive tasks. I propose a T-Shirt with a picture of a guy sharpening and the caption "Proud to be a stoner."

[Brian Holcombe]

Haha, this thread has taken quite a unique turn.

I am thoroughly justified in my pursuit now, LOL, thank you! We are abnormally relaxed and enjoy repetitive tasks....odd....my wife has mentioned this on occasion and now I see what she is driving at.

[Chuck Hart]

So Ken what is the first step down this slippery slope? I am tired of ceramic stones.

[ken hatch]

So Ken what is the first step down this slippery slope? I am tired of ceramic stones.

Chuck,

The safest way is to find a dealer you trust or if you are brave look on eBay. I went the dealer route. A couple of dealers to consider are So at Japan Tool (very busy and takes some time), much easier to contact Maksim Enevoldsen with JNS, or Mr. Lida at Lida tool. Brian has been playing longer than I have and knows much more about Jnats than I. I expect he could give you some good starting point advise.

ken

[Paul McGaha]

The Jnats are off to a pretty good start this year. At the moment, first place in the national league east. They're currently in New York playing the Jmets.



PHM

[Brian Holcombe]

So has acquired a few stones for me now and he's a good friend more than strictly dealer at this point. He does have periods of time which is swamped with email requests so it takes some time.

Takeshi Aoki has also gotten a wonderful stone for me (He and David Weaver concurred on which to purchase). His company is Aframes Tokyo.

Most dealers are selling to enthusiasts of razors, knives and tools. Razor stones are very hard and do not create much slurry (unless you work them first with a diamond plate) and so they are incredibly fine but hard to use for tools and not usually very fast cutting. My Nakayama Asagi is just shy of a razor stone and it requires the bevel to be extremely flat but it pulls an incredible edge. It's not really necessary for woodworking and I pursued it out of want for an extreme edge. Basically if I were having trouble getting a very fine finish on wood I use that stone to give me a leg up.

Knife stones are usually very quick to slurry because it helps make the areas of the knife that transition toward the edge easier to work. They're also typically more coarse. Knife users are always talking about the 'Kasumi finish' and to achieve this finish the knife is worked on a stone that slurries easily then followed up with 'finger stones' to work that transition between hard and soft steel by hand. When I say above that I worked my sushi knife with a Nakayama Asagi I'm talking about only the extreme edge and the hollowed back, not the majority of the bevel. The bevel was worked with a Shinden suita and followed up with Uchimugori finger stones, and because my Shinden is not a knife stone the finger stone polishing process took quite a bit of effort to make a nice even finish.

Knife users and Katana polishers share much in common, many knives and Katana have a bevel shape called the 'Hamaguri' bevel, it's a tapering convex bevel, the stones they user are geared toward making those transition areas non visible.

Tool stones, stones intended to put a sharp edge on chisels, plane blades and other flat bevel cutting edges for woodwork are something of a middle road between these two extremes. Tools are easier to transition from stone to stone if the stones are of the harder variety because they remain flat. If the stone slurries by itself a little it also makes life easier and generally cuts a bit more aggressively. Generally looking for a nice balance between fast and slow that results in a good stone that's easy to use, can restore an edge quickly, and puts a clean and sharp edge on a tool.