Japanese Knives Introducing the Gesshin 8000 Grit Stone

Gesshin 8000 Grit Stone @ JKI

From the website:
The Gesshin™ 8000 Grit Sharpening Stone is an awesome shiage toishi (finishing stone). Like this rest of the Gesshin™ stones, I have been testing this one for quite some time now. This is one of my favorite stone in the 8000+ grit range. It has amazing feedback, it extremely fast cutting, works up mud easily, is not too hard for kitchen knives, leaves a very nice finish, and resists dishing well. Like the Gesshin™ 400, 2000, and 4000, this stone works well on all kinds of steel, from simple carbon to high tech powdered stainless. This stone makes a great finishing stone for your kitchen knives. It is best to use this stone after using a stone in the 4000-6000 grit range. The edge this stone leaves is refined with just enough tooth for ktichen purposes. The finish is whiteish hazy and the stone gives decent contrast between softer cladding and core steels on wide bevel clad knives. This stone should be soaked for about 5 minutes before use. I do not store mine in water, but I have tested storing the stone in water and saw no problems. If you do leave your stone in water, please change the water regularly. When drying out this stone or any others, do so out of the sunlight in a well-ventilated area.

I really like the speed of this stone, too. What's wrong with using this stone after the Gesshin 2k, for example?

I tried it and it just took too long to remove the scratches... that being said, if you want a killer toothy edge, the 2k 8k combo can work really nice. I just didnt want people to think that they could go directly from the 2k to the 8k and get a true 8k edge.

Jon, what grit do you need to get to where you are actually polishing to the point where you get a pretty much scratch free mirror finish on the parts of the blade that will take such a finish?

there are some 8k stones that will do that (not this one, though it does create a mirror with light white whisps on most hardened steels)... generally the naniwa super stone 10k gives the nicest smoothest mirror (the 12k works too). The shaptons do this also in this grit range, but tend to leave streaks on larger bevels. My personal preference is the super stones when i am looking for bright mirror finishes... however, i rarely am now days.