PART 2
Part 1 see HERE
My main point of interest in this comparison is sharpenability – and a good occasion to discuss a few fine stones. Perhaps even to revive the old “what steel is HD2” debate… I’d sure wanna know, because it’s great. MUCH greater knife to sharpen than just any Stainless I’ve seen so far but AEB-L – and there, no inferior. Best surprise so far I’ve ever had with a steel – but then again might not come as a surprise if we knew what it was.
The Yoshikane OOTB edge was pretty poor, and my approach pretty straightforward: I knew from experience that it would take a fine edge, and it did. To make sure the poor factory edge was good riddance without going overly aggressive, I went through a progression NP800 – stropping on SP2K – SP5K, some shallow 20* inclusive and it instantly started to sing in the next prep. Mostly SKD-12 behaves like a simple carbon steel on the stones – which is pretty in line with it being a quite basic low alloy composition. I couldn’t even say there’s added difficulty deburring – no excess clinging there. Very well treated steel.
For the Konosuke, being unknown steel, I worked in steps – still to about 20* inclusive. A good session on SP1K as to get rid of an edge touched up a bit too often, to a SP2K finish was my first test, then dulling the edge and a reciprocating session using SP1500-SP2K; all this previously published in my thread about the SP1500:
Shapton Pro 1500: First impressions/comparison with pics
It doesn’t feel like very hard steel – I’d say below 60HRC – but it sharpened like a dream. Edge was clean and enjoyable, however obvious this steel had more to give.
So I went with it to test my fine stones (at the time): basically I would dull the edge before each stone, sharpen from clean, refine and deburr with raising mud. To add to the paper test, since I was searching for a specifically fine edge that wouldn’t skid on stuff, I had a couple of onions that I kept the outer layer of skin on, and went to slice right through at each step. I have some pictures of that, but decided against presenting them here, rather focusing on stone/edge pictures.
First finer stone test was Suehiro Ouka: a real grabby, lively edge, but uninteresting to me. I used that stone from clean first:
… tested the edge and went to add some more refinements raising some slurry first. My remarks here are casual, I didn’t use the Ouka extensively, but I think it works quite well using it from clean: fast to start with, will get to a nice deburring/refining mud of itself, won’t necessitate a whole deal of water, no straightforward Shapton sharpening there, must add a bit of fantasy strokes to get the story going, but only just so. Using it forcing some mud, even for more of a stropping session, had it dry out quite faster:
I could perhaps get a bit more out of it by playing with different conditions, but I’m not interested to develop it this way, especially where in my tests the resulting edge was just about the same, and not my kind of fine. To me the Ouka is a nice polishing stone, but if you like real bite to a fine edge, it’s one good, fast sharpening stone too. I’m guessing you can bring those fine teeth to twice the grit in a real fine stone, and still feel the bite of it in the end. I literally came to the same conclusion about mud when polishing: just give it a good deal of water, and rub away, it will form a nice polishing mud fast that won’t require dire water management, mostly add-ons to keep drying/clogging at bay. Forcing mud with the Ouka seems a waste of time to me – it lets itself be used pretty easily after a 10-15 minutes soak.
Next test was Suehiro Rika dulling the edge again first – I wanted to have a real idea of what my two #5000 stones could do with this steel, and compare speed from a reproducible state. For sake of comparativeness, I also used the Rika from clean, then raising mud: that being said I often did this with that stone, especially coming from a coarser stone, where I use the stone clean to deburr the edge some, splash to get the bits out, raise mud, and go the full refining and deburring process.
Clean:
With mud:
IDK, to me the Rika needs that forced mud for ultimate refinement – and is much creamier and fun to use there too. Not that you can’t refine the Ouka this way, but since it’s so keen to a healthy amount of mud, it seems to subsume of itself into a finer range, whereas the Rika needs that little lift to get there. If no S&G for sure, and softer, I never found the Rika to be especially muddy nor soft. It needs its soak but feels quite hard and has an easy but rather shy mud; forcing some to refine is what allows maximum refinement in my use – and contrarily to Ouka, I feel a much greater difference in resulting edges from both uses.
Last test was SP5K - a stone I hated for a long time but now know is the only one of my collection of fines that can bring the edge of any simple enough steel to that ballpark I like the most. This one sure feels like the hardest stone I have ever experienced: glassy feeling unforgiving surface. With it I always raise mud first nowadays: I find it gives more consistent grip to start with, sheds any remnant of a burr faster, and since the stone doesn’t hold to that mud well and will need water, I end up with the stone almost clean, to its full refinement/deburring powers, but with a somewhat higher amount of a nice slick slurry. I think the whole process helps that stone get a bit more bite with the edge than using splash clean – and I came to love THAT edge.
Edge was dulled once more, and despite my “knowing better” out of it, still used the stone clean first in this test for sakes of comparativeness:
Then with mud:
And at that level, again, the Konosuke was really obedient, and took the edge about just as easily as any carbon would or so.
For how fast those stones work, I’d say Ouka is quite coarse in feeling, and fast for sharpening (basically speed feels like 1500-2000 to me, and if I was asked what stone I have that acts/feels the closest to it, I’d say basically a mix of King Deluxe 1200 and SP1500 with a much greater range of refinement); Rika is relatively fast for its nominal grit – as often said, it starts more like 3000 grit – but surely twice as slow as the Ouka; then the SP5K once again is about twice as slow as Rika.
Part 1 see HERE
My main point of interest in this comparison is sharpenability – and a good occasion to discuss a few fine stones. Perhaps even to revive the old “what steel is HD2” debate… I’d sure wanna know, because it’s great. MUCH greater knife to sharpen than just any Stainless I’ve seen so far but AEB-L – and there, no inferior. Best surprise so far I’ve ever had with a steel – but then again might not come as a surprise if we knew what it was.
The Yoshikane OOTB edge was pretty poor, and my approach pretty straightforward: I knew from experience that it would take a fine edge, and it did. To make sure the poor factory edge was good riddance without going overly aggressive, I went through a progression NP800 – stropping on SP2K – SP5K, some shallow 20* inclusive and it instantly started to sing in the next prep. Mostly SKD-12 behaves like a simple carbon steel on the stones – which is pretty in line with it being a quite basic low alloy composition. I couldn’t even say there’s added difficulty deburring – no excess clinging there. Very well treated steel.
For the Konosuke, being unknown steel, I worked in steps – still to about 20* inclusive. A good session on SP1K as to get rid of an edge touched up a bit too often, to a SP2K finish was my first test, then dulling the edge and a reciprocating session using SP1500-SP2K; all this previously published in my thread about the SP1500:
Shapton Pro 1500: First impressions/comparison with pics
It doesn’t feel like very hard steel – I’d say below 60HRC – but it sharpened like a dream. Edge was clean and enjoyable, however obvious this steel had more to give.
So I went with it to test my fine stones (at the time): basically I would dull the edge before each stone, sharpen from clean, refine and deburr with raising mud. To add to the paper test, since I was searching for a specifically fine edge that wouldn’t skid on stuff, I had a couple of onions that I kept the outer layer of skin on, and went to slice right through at each step. I have some pictures of that, but decided against presenting them here, rather focusing on stone/edge pictures.
First finer stone test was Suehiro Ouka: a real grabby, lively edge, but uninteresting to me. I used that stone from clean first:
… tested the edge and went to add some more refinements raising some slurry first. My remarks here are casual, I didn’t use the Ouka extensively, but I think it works quite well using it from clean: fast to start with, will get to a nice deburring/refining mud of itself, won’t necessitate a whole deal of water, no straightforward Shapton sharpening there, must add a bit of fantasy strokes to get the story going, but only just so. Using it forcing some mud, even for more of a stropping session, had it dry out quite faster:
I could perhaps get a bit more out of it by playing with different conditions, but I’m not interested to develop it this way, especially where in my tests the resulting edge was just about the same, and not my kind of fine. To me the Ouka is a nice polishing stone, but if you like real bite to a fine edge, it’s one good, fast sharpening stone too. I’m guessing you can bring those fine teeth to twice the grit in a real fine stone, and still feel the bite of it in the end. I literally came to the same conclusion about mud when polishing: just give it a good deal of water, and rub away, it will form a nice polishing mud fast that won’t require dire water management, mostly add-ons to keep drying/clogging at bay. Forcing mud with the Ouka seems a waste of time to me – it lets itself be used pretty easily after a 10-15 minutes soak.
Next test was Suehiro Rika dulling the edge again first – I wanted to have a real idea of what my two #5000 stones could do with this steel, and compare speed from a reproducible state. For sake of comparativeness, I also used the Rika from clean, then raising mud: that being said I often did this with that stone, especially coming from a coarser stone, where I use the stone clean to deburr the edge some, splash to get the bits out, raise mud, and go the full refining and deburring process.
Clean:
With mud:
IDK, to me the Rika needs that forced mud for ultimate refinement – and is much creamier and fun to use there too. Not that you can’t refine the Ouka this way, but since it’s so keen to a healthy amount of mud, it seems to subsume of itself into a finer range, whereas the Rika needs that little lift to get there. If no S&G for sure, and softer, I never found the Rika to be especially muddy nor soft. It needs its soak but feels quite hard and has an easy but rather shy mud; forcing some to refine is what allows maximum refinement in my use – and contrarily to Ouka, I feel a much greater difference in resulting edges from both uses.
Last test was SP5K - a stone I hated for a long time but now know is the only one of my collection of fines that can bring the edge of any simple enough steel to that ballpark I like the most. This one sure feels like the hardest stone I have ever experienced: glassy feeling unforgiving surface. With it I always raise mud first nowadays: I find it gives more consistent grip to start with, sheds any remnant of a burr faster, and since the stone doesn’t hold to that mud well and will need water, I end up with the stone almost clean, to its full refinement/deburring powers, but with a somewhat higher amount of a nice slick slurry. I think the whole process helps that stone get a bit more bite with the edge than using splash clean – and I came to love THAT edge.
Edge was dulled once more, and despite my “knowing better” out of it, still used the stone clean first in this test for sakes of comparativeness:
Then with mud:
And at that level, again, the Konosuke was really obedient, and took the edge about just as easily as any carbon would or so.
For how fast those stones work, I’d say Ouka is quite coarse in feeling, and fast for sharpening (basically speed feels like 1500-2000 to me, and if I was asked what stone I have that acts/feels the closest to it, I’d say basically a mix of King Deluxe 1200 and SP1500 with a much greater range of refinement); Rika is relatively fast for its nominal grit – as often said, it starts more like 3000 grit – but surely twice as slow as the Ouka; then the SP5K once again is about twice as slow as Rika.
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Other progressions from my med stones work. As it is however I'm trying to determine which stones do I absolutely want to keep. Those tests helped me determine best progressions I could have for an edge. For polishing, well I have a few recourses that work. With Rika sold, I need another final polisher, but likely that will be used with Cerax #700 - SP1500 - Ouka beforehand. Those three just work well together, but Ouka needs a finisher for the nicer Kasumi. I shouldn't have sold Rika without finding its replacement first, but it helped with selling the other ones. May just buy another Rika down the road, but I'd really like to find a stone that does even better. Think that might possibly be Morihei Hi 6000, from other reports.
