Help, I'm sliding down a rabbit hole!

[psfred]

Bought my second Japanese natural stone today from 330mate. The first one arrived today as well, an iyoto with "woodgrain" I didn't pay much for. Pics in a day or two, I've been putting the Master Gardener's membership directory together for the last week.

The iyoto seems quite nice, although a bit small -- maybe 2.5 x 5 inches, but almost square so there is plenty of stone. I'd rather have gotten the same amount of stone in a thinner and longer rectangle, but for the price I'll not fuss.

Very interesting stone, seems to cut fairly fast without slurry but gives more polish than I would expect for the texture. Doesn't slurry much with a plane blade, I'll have to use a diamond plate to raise some when I have a chance to play with it. Feels rather hard in use, but my diamond plate (I forget the grit) cuts it very quickly so it's nothing like the Chinese middle grit or finisher I've also gotten lately. Those are VERY hard, the iyoto is probably more like a level 3.5 maybe.

This should be fun.

Peter

 

[panda]

what kind of edge does it leave?

 

[psfred]

Haven't done more than play around with it a bit, the plane blade I was using on it needs quite a bit of heavy grinding yet to restore the terrible bevel (it was a used one from eBay, severely convexed, polished, and crooked) so I don't have an actual edge to test yet. People do terrible things to plane blades.....

I may play around with some of my cheap carbons and see what sort of edge I get from it, it's probably somewhere in the 1200 grit range. Leaves a bright bevel on the plane blade, but since I was using a 300 grit diamond plate, it's sorta hard to tell.

Peter

 

[psfred]

Sharpened my cheap Korean "cow knife" tonight on the new stone. Leaves a hazy bevel, similar to a bevel off my synthetic aoto. Fairly slow, but a very flat bevel. Knife wasn't in great shape, really needed a trip to the Bester 1200 first, I think.

Looks like something in the 2000 grit range with mud, which I raised with my 300 grit stone. The Iyo isn't quite flat yet. Lots of gray/black swarf, not much mud, it's pretty hard.

Knife now cuts thin slices of carrot that are shiny, with very little effort. Not cutting anything up for dinner tonight, will do so tomorrow and see how it handles protein, and will then strop on green chromium oxide and see what happens. As it, it's VERY sharp and push cuts veggies with ease.

This could get expensive......

I'm roping my brother the geologist into searching for similar structure rocks locally -- I think there are some softer cherts around that may work on our property in Tennessee. Lots of chert there, in fact, it's almost impossible to dig holes from all the weathered chert! Gotta be something somewhere with similar porosity and density.

Peter

 

[Mrmnms]

Wouldn't that very rip if you could cut fine stoves from your own quarry!

 

[jacko9]

Wouldn't that very rip if you could cut fine stoves from your own quarry!

Can you imagine sending sharpening stones to Japan from Tennessee or some other state in the USA.

Jack

 

[Dardeau]

TNAT. That is something I'd like to see. I have a tiny Hakka if he needs to destroy something to study it.

 

[brooksie967]

It's a deep hole........ I've got about 30 laying around :S

 

[daveb]

Hope your not looking for anyone here to throw you a rope. Smiley.

Just one more and a couple last ones, a good deal (or two) and a rare stone. And then you'll be done.

 

[Asteger]

Iyo - One of my fav med stones, on the 1k to finer side of medium. Very hard but not unworkably hard like you imagine hard fine razor-oriented layered gotogi to be. Here's a link to one, the only one that I think JNS has carried and which I bought maybe 3 years ago. One of my first eye-opener mediums. (The description is okay, but I disagree about it being 'softer' than Aizu; I don't think Maxim checked it well enough): http://www.japanesenaturalstones.com/vintage-iyoto/

Basically, a nice-feeling stone. Usually I'll use nagura on it, but it's okay with out it too. Iyo were the 'binsui' of centuries past from what I know, and their mining is said to be as ancient as it gets, at least by repute, and pre-dates any of the stuff in Kyoto. The mine was in Shikoku and began at least 1000 years ago I think.

I can't tell you much more, but the one you see in the Jns pic (not good pic; the stone is white with black pepper and chili-flack flecks) seems to be sought-after type of Iyo, so this buy from JNS was a good move on my part.

330mate seems to have a weird connection to Iyo. He sells under various guises and stocks loads of Iyo, but they seem to be of a different kind and aren't as expensive and I guess as well-regarded. No sure. They might well be good, but he also has a bad rep among some so be careful. I think at one point a disgruntled ex-customer even set up a hate-page to divert new buyers as a kind of revenge.

It's a deep hole........ I've got about 30 laying around :S

30? I can only dream of this. I'll have to downsize a lot, probably still around 50.

 

[panda]

i find the magic number to be 3. 1 coarse and 2 medium

i believe asteger is secretly building a jnat wikipedia, maybe he will release a book with lots of photos.

 

[Asteger]

the stone is white with black pepper and chili-flake flecks

Got this wrong as I hadn't re-checked when writing. The flecks/spots are more on the blue-grey side, with lots of little silver shiny bits and gold patches, so not exactly what I said. Reminds me that I I've seen them called 'silver star'. It comes out a bit in this dim photo:

 

[Asteger]

i find the magic number to be 3. 1 coarse and 2 medium

i believe asteger is secretly building a jnat wikipedia, maybe he will release a book with lots of photos.

Haha, and just as you wrote that there he is uploading a photo too... There isn't a story about every stone out there (well, there probably is, but we just don't know) but with the Iyo I can recall a bit.

There are some jnat books in Japanese. However, I image the market for one in English would be about that (pinches fingers together) small.

 

[glestain]

i believe asteger is secretly building a jnat wikipedia, maybe he will release a book with lots of photos.

I am hoping Asteger publish one too, at least a blog?

 

[Asteger]

Here are some blogs with good info on nats off the top of my head. All discontinued a few years ago:

http://easternsmooth.com/ (razor nut)
http://hides-export.blogspot.com (the guy that got Maxim started)
http://*********************** (former member here, got banned)

... EDIT: Regarding the 3rd one, haha, and so I see his blog is also banned. Google 'Darkhook' but switch the 2nd 'o' for an 'e'. No need to ban the blog now, as the guy hasn't messed with stones and stuff for a few years and sold his stones 1 or 2 years ago too. Retired.

 

[psfred]

The stuff 330mate sells looks to me like remnants and "tailings" from past mining activity, really the stuff left when "nice" stones were sawn out of large pieces, and his prices are in line for what you get. As he explicitly says, many of his stones are a gamble and on the lower end I'm not gonna die if my $46 stone tuns out to have serious toxic lines that are impossible to remove. So far what I've gotten is great -- not the size or shape I'd prefer but quite nice. If you want a proven stone in a double sided perfect rectangle more than 8" long, be prepared to mortgage the house.

And naturals are a gamble anyway, there isn't really a good way to tell what's inside without grinding into them. On top of that, they are all different and vary in composition and grit across and through the stones.

I'm sure there is plenty of stone left, but with the advent of modern abrasives and synthetic stones it's simply un-economic to mine it, you'd never recover your costs, let alone make a profit.

Mine is a "wood grain" in brown and white, a very pretty stone. At the rate it wears in use I will by passing it on to my heirs.

And I will be looking for interesting stones locally too -- silicate stone isn't exactly a scarce item on this planet. The key is to find something fine enough grained and friable enough to refresh -- Arkansas stones are too hard and go slick unless you use a diamond plate on them all the time and don't seem to respond well to use with water and a nagura to raise variable grit, although that's something to try someday. I think I may have one around from my grandpa, would be worth investigating.

Peter