First test of a cheap, Chinese sourced natural stone- guardedly optimistic...

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I have one of these stones coming. I'm excited.
dwalker said:
Bert was kind enough to send this stone to me to try out. As soon as it arrived, I used it to touch up a Munetoshi petty right before a meal prep. Without spending much time, it put a pretty nice working edge on it. This stone is very easy to use.

In the following week, I spent some more time working with the stone on a variety of kitchen knives. I touched up white 2, blue 1, 2, and W2. I spent some time working the mud down and was able to achieve a relatively refined edge with a bit of bite on all of them that was shaving sharp off the stone. I consider it to produce a terrific working edge for kitchen knives.

I can best describe the stone as a very soft, less fine, Tsushima Nagura that produces mud like a red aoto. It is very consistent and easy to use - a good investment for someone wanting to try a natural without breaking the bank. A perfect beginner stone.

I did put a white steel yanigiba on it to see what kind of polish it gives. Again, it was very easy to use in this task. It left an attractive kasumi with what I would call a medium contrast. I'm sure I could get a more consistent finish if I spent a little more time. I spent probably less than 3 minutes just to see what it would do.

All said, this stone is a steal for the price. I liked it enough that I offered to buy it from Bert if he is pleased with the larger size he ordered and is willing to let it go.

Pardon the poor light I had for pictures.

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Thanks for the review!

Bert, thanks for the recommendation.

I have one en route. My first natural. I ordered it two weeks ago so it should be here soon. I'll post my thoughts.
 
If they are generally anything like described I'll have to see if there's still any left after the hype train stops. Sounds perfect for my usage.
 
My Etsy stone arrived. I used it twice, I can confirm it works as advertised.

I also picked up this stone on impulse... •Natural Stone Knife Sharpening Sharpener Stone Whetstone Waterstone Single Fine 10000 Grit, Silicon Non-slip Base for Kitchen knives, Tactical knives, Scissors, Razors, Swords, and More… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1D8CK2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SIzVCb1EX9TF0


I am sure, but they could be the same stone.
 
Bensbites said:
My Etsy stone arrived. I used it twice, I can confirm it works as advertised.

I also picked up this stone on impulse... •Natural Stone Knife Sharpening Sharpener Stone Whetstone Waterstone Single Fine 10000 Grit, Silicon Non-slip Base for Kitchen knives, Tactical knives, Scissors, Razors, Swords, and More… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1D8CK2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SIzVCb1EX9TF0


I am sure, but they could be the same stone.
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That Amazon fine natural 8"x2" stone is $7.99? And eligible for Prime?? AND fulfilled by Amazon, which means shipped from inside USA- delivered TOMMOROW???

If this is comparable/same product, OUTSTANDING find there.

Quote from Amazon listing:

"The DeBell Sharpening Stone Device is made of natural stone from Chongqing mountain."

The other (coarse) natural stone offered by this seller also says it's made out of a mountain in Chongquing, the picture of it looks much grainier, like a sandstone.

At $8 delivered, I am going to roll the dice on one of each of these naturals.

His other (man made?) stones all have pretty much the same product description, not too sure about this sintered "natural carborundum"...

Quote:

"The DeBell Sharpening Stone Device is made of natural carborundum being fried with special formula by temperature of 1000+ Celsius inside industrial oven, and then cooled down by air dry."

https://www.amazon.com/s?srs=15060901011
 
If i am reading correct Amazon has two $7.99 stones were reading about one is a 200/500 Grit the other is a 10,000 Grit.
So just what stone has been ordered?
 
Ivan Hersh said:
If i am reading correct Amazon has two $7.99 stones were reading about one is a 200/500 Grit the other is a 10,000 Grit.
So just what stone has been ordered?
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I have the 10k grit stone from the amazon link and the stone from the Etsy seller linked in this article. I am not saying it’s the same, but it is at least very similar, could be the same source.
 
Bensbites said:
My Etsy stone arrived. I used it twice, I can confirm it works as advertised.

I also picked up this stone on impulse... •Natural Stone Knife Sharpening Sharpener Stone Whetstone Waterstone Single Fine 10000 Grit, Silicon Non-slip Base for Kitchen knives, Tactical knives, Scissors, Razors, Swords, and More… https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1D8CK2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_SIzVCb1EX9TF0


I am sure, but they could be the same stone.
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How would you say this stone cuts like? Is it 3-4k like advertised?
 
Bensbites said:
I have the 10k grit stone from the amazon link and the stone from the Etsy seller linked in this article. I am not saying it’s the same, but it is at least very similar, could be the same source.
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What is the size LxWxH of your 10K stone you bought from Amazon?
 
slickmamba said:
How would you say this stone cuts like? Is it 3-4k like advertised?
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It is definitely finer and slower than my Shapton 2 K. 3-6 k sounds about right from the little time I have spent with the stone. I have not spent much time with the stone and consider myself a beginner to intermediate skill as a sharpener.
 
This showed up in the mailbox today, forgot that I had bid on this stone.

20190422_202018.jpg

I did order one each of the fine and coarse Amazon stones referred to above. They are probably arriving TOMORROW, but I won't be here to receive them.

The madness, it is contagious, I will soon have more stones than knives to test sharpen them on- Guess that means I need to start MAKING knives? Yeah, honey, uh huh, it's an economy thing, I can't afford to BUY enough knives to test all these stones so I've gotta start forging!

I can already hear herself saying "Riiiiiiiight."
 
Bert2368 said:
Yeah, honey, uh huh, it's an economy thing, I can't afford to BUY enough knives to test all these stones so I've gotta start forging!

I can already hear herself saying "Riiiiiiiight."
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Why? Makes perfect sense to me :)
 
muhahaha, Bert, I'll screenshot that one and blackmail you with it to obtain all your shiny knives...
 
The Amazon stones arrived.

The finer natural stone seems to be a bit finer and slower cutting than the my stone from Etsy, the mud from new stone was more whitish-greyish and less yellowish looking than the first stone when I flattened it on a diamond plate (which it really didn't need, quite flat out of the box).

20190423_140903.jpg

I would say it is slightly HARDER than the stone I started this thread about as well. The makers took more care to make it flat on both top and bottom, even the saw marks on the sides were less noticable. Plus, they stenciled their brand name on the side...

I took a break from my long term project of flattening and removing grind marks from the damned bannana shaped, bacon rippled 150mm #2 blue steel kamagata usuba and SHARPENED IT.

After about 5 minutes on the new stone, I stropped the usuba on some denim loaded with cheap auto trim polish and then shaved away part of my arm hair very cleanly. A tomato was cut by the weight of the knife and a drawing motion. Haven't tried to do the fancy vegetable shaving trick yet, but I am satisfied this stone works well on #2 blue steel.
 
Bert2368 said:
The Amazon stones arrived.

The finer natural stone seems to be a bit finer and slower cutting than the my stone from Etsy, the mud from new stone was more whitish-greyish and less yellowish looking than the first stone when I flattened it on a diamond plate (which it really didn't need, quite flat out of the box).

View attachment 52189

I would say it is slightly HARDER than the stone I started this thread about as well. The makers took more care to make it flat on both top and bottom, even the saw marks on the sides were less noticable. Plus, they stenciled their brand name on the side...

I took a break from my long term project of flattening and removing grind marks from the damned bannana shaped, bacon rippled 150mm #2 blue steel kamagata usuba and SHARPENED IT.

After about 5 minutes on the new stone, I stropped the usuba on some denim loaded with cheap auto trim polish and then shaved away part of my arm hair very cleanly. A tomato was cut by the weight of the knife and a drawing motion. Haven't tried to do the fancy vegetable shaving trick yet, but I am satisfied this stone works well on #2 blue steel.
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Thanks for your thoughts.
 
The new XXL size stone from Etsy seller "Realskuller" has arrived.

Measured dimensions: 235 x 68 x 27mm, weight 1,792g.

Density of about 4.15 g/cc.

20190429_214445.jpg

After sharpening 7 knives of various types plus a couple of forged wood working hatchets, encompassing several different alloys?

I believe the new stone produces similar results as the first, smaller stone this thread was started about.

Mud looks the same, smells the same. Perhaps this stone is just a touch harder, it took longer to flatten the working faces with 80-220-400 grit sandpaper than first stone.

Most notably, the sedimentary strata of this stone are at 90 degrees to the working faces, rather than parallel- See included pictures. This does not seem to affect performance.

20190430_232250.jpg

I sharpened my two oldest German knives (1980s Henckels 4 star chef and parer), a tojiro white steel core nakiri, Tojiro/Fujitora VG-10 core petty, a cheap "Haiku" "Chroma damascus" parer and two pocket knives, one with D2 steel and the other 440C.

None of them were really bad to start, all got positively razor like. Some did prefered to finish honing edge trailing, the cheap chroma parer only liked to be stroked edge forward.

Experiments with diluting the mud and using less pressure near the end of honing paid off with a better edge on several knives, especially the carbon steel nakiri.

After the stone, all were deburred one or two passes on a natural wine cork then stropped VERY briefly (2 to 4 passes per side) on denim coated with a bit of Turtle Wax brand metal polish & scratch remover. Not surprisingly, the white steel and VG-10 blades had the very best outcomes but none were in any way unacceptably sharp.

20190429_214512.jpg

20190429_214632.jpg

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20190430_210448.jpg

My back is currently all $%#@ed up, I can prep stones and sharpen sitting down without hurting (much), I hope to get back at the handle building project soon.

Probably going to cut the $%#& out of myself on the blades I'm trying to re handle now...
 
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Bert2368 said:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/693408749/9-nature-17kg-razor-hone-sharpening

The seller has added some larger pieces, the biggest is 23 x 7 x.4.3cm, 1,700 g weight. Cost is $34 shipped.

I have ordered one, I am interested to see if these behave consistently.
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I ordered one of these on April 3. It arrived on May 4th. The cardboard box it was shipped in just about didn't make it. But, like Bert's, the stone was wrapped in enough bubble wrap to choke a flock of seagulls.

Dimensions: 234x68x43
1780 g

The stone is very flat on all sides. There are saw marks, but only traces. They have been mostly ground or sanded down. No brand markings. Gray in color. It's plenty flat for my tastes. Water sits on top of it like it's glass. So far, I sharpened vg-10 gyuto, a Chinese carbon cleaver, a Forgecraft paring knife and a stainless Sabatier chef knife.

VG-10 - The wife's daily driver at home. Haven't done anything to it in months besides hit the ceramic hone every couple weeks. As a result, it has a fatigued edge that has a lot of pretty much invisible microchips and isn't getting great retention, but is super thin behind the edge and generally excellently maintained.

The stone cleaned the edge quickly. Normally, for touching up this blade I just go to the shapton glass 2k. Compared to that the Chinese stone cuts slower, but not unacceptably slower. It polishes somewhere in the 6000-8000 range on the shapton glass scale.
I did one minute of scrubbing on each side. Then I deburred on soft wood and then did 50 alternating edge leading strokes to re-establish the apex. A couple of strops on leather with green stuff. And it was back to shaving sharp.

The surface is pretty hard but it does release some abrasive. More than a shapton in a similar range but less than my naniwa superstones. Sorry I don't have experience with other naturals. I don't have anything iron clad at home to see how it polishes that kind of stuff. I will update.

Carbon veg cleaver - this cleaver had been sitting in a drawer awhile but was put away in decent shape. The stone touched it up quite well.

Forgecraft paring knife - in horrible shape. 1mm at the edge. I just wanted to see how it would do. It did horrible. Way too slow.

Sabatier stainless - project knife. And
a gift for a friend, not a work knife, so I actually need to make it pretty.
I'm almost finished with reprofiling and regrinding the primary bevels. It needed reverse belly work and then tons of thinning. That's all done and now it just needs cleaned up. I'll finish with sand paper. The stone erased thinning scratches surprisingly quickly. So even though it's slow on edge work, pretty quick on polishing. Not as quick as Glass 8k, but very similar scratch pattern. Nice, bright finish, would be a nice setup for a mirror finisher.

I can see a lot of uses for this stone. It will also last many decades. I'm anxious to see how it does with my work kit. A great value.
 
What's with their PayPal demands? Looking forward to seeing how fast mine gets here
 
Bensbites said:
Pm me. I am willing to help if I can.
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I just do not trust PayPal I know many have not had problems, when you hand over your bank information with no guarantee that they or anyone working for them will protect you.
If I can use a major credit card I will buy from an unknown seller.
 
Hey, Ivan Hersh-

I do understand why some would have reluctance to put money down on an order with delivery a month or more down the line. It's entirely possible a scammer could put such a delivery schedule on their offer and trust that by the time PayPal or ebay/Etsy/Amazon or whatever got interested, they were cashed out and moving on to the next scam.

Last order from "realskuller" I placed was sent in 4/3, delivered 5/1.

I have several times placed orders with ebay and/or amazon with 30 day + delivery dates. Have been burned TWICE in 22 years by con artists placing offers on ebay- It is not really that common.

All I can say?

1: Never, EVER! put more money "in the wind" than you can afford to lose.

2: Check out feedback on any new to you seller.

3: Don't believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or sellers offering new goods under 1/2 price of anyone else.
 
I ordered my stone on 4/22 and received it today (5/6). Pretty quick! Looks as described and discussed. Feels kinda like soapstone. It will be a while before I get a chance to try it.
 
ACHiPo said:
Feels kinda like soapstone.
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THANK YOU!

I put that observation together with my personal experience- and DAMN, I feel it is pertinent to the selection of mineral samples for assessment as sharpening stones.

More later, as I organize my experiences of sharpening stone performance vs. standard mineralogical descriptions/accepted nomenclature.
 
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