suehiro cerax stones?

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anyone have experience with these? i'd like to try out the 320 as it's cheap but i could only find one source and they are not accepting payments from the US at the moment.. are there other distributors of this line?
 
How about Keniichi aka Mr Blueway ? He usually pretty good at finding anything rare.
 
How about Keniichi aka Mr Blueway ? He usually pretty good at finding anything rare.

A big +1.

After a very odd and unsuccessful attempt to buy some Sigma stones from Tools From Japan I contacted Keiichi and he got me what I was looking for. It was better price too. ;)
 
I have the Suehiro 'Cerax' ceramic stone, #320 grit 'double size'. If you love dishing, you will love this stone! It just wears too fast. The particles in the slurry are pushed off the stone very quickly, while they still have a lot of life left. I can't think of a situation where it would be a good stone. It did teach me stone management, but since I got a Bester 500 I never use it.

I don't know about the other stones.
 
I was told by a couple of guys that surhiro's cerax line performance isn't that good. Not at the same quality as shapton pro or naniwa chosera
 
I have a smaller combination 1000/6000 Suehiro Cerax stone (see my review in Reviews section). The 1000 side was rather slow and dished quickly, the 6000 side was OK. I would get something else (better).
 
ok turns out i couldn't order from TFJ because they were closed for holidays. i'm going to pick up both a cerax 320 and a sigma select ii 240. my quest for a thinning stone continues. dmt works the fastest but i really really hate using it and would love nothing more than to find a fast cutting stone that isn't awful feeling. i got to try a jns 300 but it's still not fast enough for me. i'm guessing i just have to suck it up and deal with dishing and go with a soft stone that releases abrasive really fast to get the most cutting action.
 
Soft low grit stones dish fast, it's a fact of life.

all low grit stones dish fast. soft or hard, in my experience. infact, i think pretty much every low grit stone ive ever used(300 grit and lower) more or less sucks to use, but doesnt suck as bad as diamond stones. lesser of 2 evils, no?
 
still hunting for the "perfect" thinning stone but I think the diamonds have ended up being the unfortunate winner for me, although I'm fairly terrible with thinning in itself. It can be a big job on some knives and I guess I'm not completely adept at making sure my stones are flat all the time as I guess I get impatient and just want to get the results straight away. The diamonds stay flat and cut well. I hate the feel of them and the deep scratches but it works. I bought a Watanabe 270mm gyuto recently and spend hours thinning it into something it was never truly meant to be. I feel like I haven't done the knife justice (it certainly isn't pretty anymore) and I feel a little embarrassed to show it here. In the future I think I will stick to diamonds though as it seems to be more consistent for me as they stay flat. I'm very impatient and I hate spending time to flatten my stones in the middle of thinning something. In saying that, I've found it to be more efficient to flatten my stones out in my backyard on the cement than to flatten them with my xxc. I have a pink brick, sigma 400 and a bester 500 outside of my xxc and xc dmt--all of which I have tried for thinning. I've even considered getting a finer grit dmt to try as I'm hoping they will still cut fast but the scratches a lot easier to remove (I've found my xc to be far more forgiving than the xxc). Most of my coarse stones I figure will mostly get used for cleaning up the damage done with the diamonds (the pink brick wears away very quickly, but seems to cover up those scratches quite well) until I decide which one I like most and I'll try to sell the others off someday. I wish I could replicate some of the awesome finishes I've seen on some wide double bevel knives. I always end up with an uneven finish and a very wavy "shinogi" which drives me insane. It gets really noticable even at 1k. In a nutshell... The whole sharpening experience has turned out to be rather expensive for me, but I do enjoy it.
 
still hunting for the "perfect" thinning stone but I think the diamonds have ended up being the unfortunate winner for me, although I'm fairly terrible with thinning in itself. It can be a big job on some knives and I guess I'm not completely adept at making sure my stones are flat all the time as I guess I get impatient and just want to get the results straight away. The diamonds stay flat and cut well. I hate the feel of them and the deep scratches but it works. I bought a Watanabe 270mm gyuto recently and spend hours thinning it into something it was never truly meant to be. I feel like I haven't done the knife justice (it certainly isn't pretty anymore) and I feel a little embarrassed to show it here. In the future I think I will stick to diamonds though as it seems to be more consistent for me as they stay flat. I'm very impatient and I hate spending time to flatten my stones in the middle of thinning something. In saying that, I've found it to be more efficient to flatten my stones out in my backyard on the cement than to flatten them with my xxc. I have a pink brick, sigma 400 and a bester 500 outside of my xxc and xc dmt--all of which I have tried for thinning. I've even considered getting a finer grit dmt to try as I'm hoping they will still cut fast but the scratches a lot easier to remove (I've found my xc to be far more forgiving than the xxc). Most of my coarse stones I figure will mostly get used for cleaning up the damage done with the diamonds (the pink brick wears away very quickly, but seems to cover up those scratches quite well) until I decide which one I like most and I'll try to sell the others off someday. I wish I could replicate some of the awesome finishes I've seen on some wide double bevel knives. I always end up with an uneven finish and a very wavy "shinogi" which drives me insane. It gets really noticable even at 1k. In a nutshell... The whole sharpening experience has turned out to be rather expensive for me, but I do enjoy it.
what a coincidence, im busting my tail thinning a watanabe 270 myself. yeah its quite a project and its taking forever. good luck with that.
 
all low grit stones dish fast. soft or hard, in my experience

Makes complete sense when you think about it, as low grit particles are that much bigger and, so, when they dislodge during sharpening they leave more space - which means more dishing.

Let's face it, sharpening in the low and middle hundreds is never going to be a pleasure.
 
thanks VB, anybody tried the gesshin 220 stone yet?

I have it. I do no use it that often, since no need for that. Several times I had to use I found it interesting. The feel of it is not too bad, but it dishes very fast, and then its a PITA to spend as much time flattening it. The speed wise, well, it is just Okay in my experience. Also, it's quite a brick, and will last a while.
I still prefer Norton Coarse India for the punctual work (like thinning the tip), slow dishing and quite fast. For thinning behind the edge I would go to Gesshin 220 though as it's much wider stone and feels much better.

I do not have anything else to compare it too.
 
Whoops, didn't realise my post looked so huge. Ill see if I can get a half decent photo. I didn't take any before shots unfortunately. I only have my phone to take photos so probs wont get a lot of detail
 
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I spent several hours getting it to this stage. The patina covers the mess nicely though it frustrates me knowing its not perfect. I guess it takes a lot of practice though when it comes to a perfect finish. It does however cut quite well, and feels less clunky than it did when it arrived. I use it along with my 210 ginsanko tanaka which has surprisingly been something I find myself using frequently.

Ive found the tanaka to be a good service knife which I dont have to worry about. I spent several hours thinning and sanding off the finish and even wore off the kanji (it was my first knife I tried thinning, probably wouldn't have done it if I knew what the hell I was doing). Its slowly becoming a little less ugly to me over time and it certainly cuts well. Ive considered selling it a few times to try something else but I dont know if anyone would particularly want it so I might just see how a rehandle goes on it.

To be honest, I wasn't even planning to thin the watanabe down as I wanted to try a sturdy workhorse of a knife. I was sharpening a knife for a guy at work and when I got home was just in the mood to give it a crack. I probably spent like five hours or so before my hands caved in. I think the next step for this knife is changing the tip.. I find that I really quite dislike the tip on this knife as I guess I prefer something more akin to the ks.

All in all though, pretty happy with the performance. I swear its lost quite a bit of weight from all the thinning and it seems a bit more comfortable now. All in all, im pretty happy with the knife.. I would have preferred more distal taper on the spine though as it is quite thick the whole way. Im sure I will move on again to try something else that is exactly what I envision as my "ideal" knife. Either that or I pursue knife making so that maybe someday I can just make for myself what I consider ideal

sorry for taking over the thread. I dont think I mentioned anything about cerax stones at all ahaha
 
thats impressive. my watanabe isnt that thin but its getting there. im considering selling mine too. its just such a large knife. sorry for the thread jack people. panda let us know how you like your cerax stones.
 
has anyone ordered from tools from japan before? it's been almost a week since i put in the order and not a single confirmation or shipping notification email. i've inquired about a status update through the web site with no response yet as well... does this stu guy just suck at communicating or something?
 
Ive ordered my sigma stones through him before. Pretty sure I got confirmation within a few days? It took about two weeks for me to get my stuff although I'm in Australia
 
has anyone ordered from tools from japan before? it's been almost a week since i put in the order and not a single confirmation or shipping notification email. i've inquired about a status update through the web site with no response yet as well... does this stu guy just suck at communicating or something?

I've ordered through him before. There was a problem caused by the local post office (EMS) he uses, which was 90% not his fault, but he still sorted it out at extra expense even if it took some patience on my part. I wouldn't worry about anything, though my impression of course is that he has a full-time job and his 'tools' sales are a part-time thing which wouldn't demand the response time of full-time sellers. You do, however, get decent prices without the mark ups of other especially non-Japan-based sellers. Just try him again. Good luck with it.
 
got a response with a confirmation of shipment. he was very informative in his email as well even included some tips on the stones that i had ordered, nice touch. even more astonishing is that he refunded the difference in shipping cost because the actual cost was a couple bucks cheaper than what i had paid.
will report on how the stones are when they arrive.

cerax 320 and sigma select ii 240.
 
Sweet, looking forward to this.. been itching for some more coarse stones myself. Just ordered some atoma plates from the same place to replace my dmt. What tips did he mention in the email?
 
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