---I will move this post into the comment section inside the first post, but it may take a days or so to complete.---
I am sorry for causing any inconvenient...
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Part 2: Stone For Sale (iv)
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4: Nakayama Kiita Tomae (190x70x23) 770g $400
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WCUsTXC0Bu_juJTM417hM2bVJXw0Cm0r?usp=sharing
By looking at these recognizable stamps (even though they are no longer there now), you may instantly realize it is a stone by Tushihashi san. And yes, you are right, I bought this stone from him last year.
It is a very hard stone, which is 5/5 in hardness. And of course, this stone will give you the sharpest edge among the other stones that I have listed. When cutting through paper, you don't even need to apply any pressure and the paper will split into half right after the edge touch the paper.
Unfortunately, it seems like this stone is not very suitable for this "stress test", because after all it is a hard stone, and so the scratch removal power is very slow. What this stone shine is in the final stage of polishing, where it pushes the sharpness of the edge to its extreme and making both cladding and steel into total mirror polish. In terms of the capacity of cosmetic finish, as you can see in the following pictures (it is a little bit hard to capture that feeling using camera though), after the little kanna is finished sharpen by the ohira suita, the contrast between cladding and steel is strong, where a thin foggy layer is covering on top. However, after having a tender polish on the nakayama, the foggy layer disappears, just like you wipe off the condensation on window. And I think this is where the nakayama really shines on. This nakayama can unleash its full potential after you can completed all groundwork nice and clean, and what it can do is further elevating this fundamental cosmetic finish into another level of elegance. And bear in mind, you need to always control and maintain your pressure in a very low and gentle rate to prevent this hard stone from making any minor scratch onto your blade surface (well you can again spot it on this photo).
For this reason, unlike the Ohira renge suita, in which you can do whatever you want to the stone, the nakayama tomae requires more technique and skills on water management, hand pressure, stroke distance, and slurry management in order to unleash its full power, or else what it can give you is scratches. Of course, patient and concentration is also the key, and I think it is also the hardest to attain, in my own experience.
In terms of slurry management, if you sharpen it without raising slurry, then it can elevate the sharpness and smoothness of the edge to its extreme, but at the same time putting your cosmetic finish at risk, if you mistakenly apply too much pressure. For this reason, you may only need a few drops of water, just to keep the surface moist, but not wet. What you want to do is to maintain the grip power of the stone as much as possible, and use the thin slurry to create a cushion between the stone and your knife. On the other side, if you are sharpening it with slurry, what you have to stay cautious in is how to maintain the concentration of the particle (slurry thickness), and trying to maintain the stone particle from further breaking down into finer ones without being washed out by water.
Even though nakayama seems to have many restriction and rules to follow, there is also some spaces where we can play around and experiment with: which is testing out different types of slurry. Since nakayama is a hard stone, it provides is a hard, steady, and flat surface to work on. In other words, it is hard to generate self-slurry without the aids of using atoma or tomo-nagura. For this reason, the freedom and creativity that I would say when using nakayama is to explore how different nagura behave on the stone. In a contrary, when you are using a soft finishing stone, the problem you may encounter is that the speed for new particle to scrape off from the stone surface may equal to or even faster than the speed for the original particle to break down into smaller pieces. As a result, it may be a little hard for you to achieve a very fine finish on the edge because the particle size is not really uniform in terms of size (it is a mixture between big and small particles). For this reason, what nakayama or other hard stone can do is to provide a platform for you to break down the particle of a soft stone without needing to concern about the issue of scraping off new particle from the stone. That way, you may able to unleash the full capability of the soft stones’ particles under the aids of nakayama.
In short, nakayama is a stone with very strong personal character, it has its own way for completing the task, but at the same time subtly provides a platform for you to enhance your sharpening experience (but you need to discover by yourselves). The joy for using hard stone is lying under the process of extracting useful information and possibilities from a seemingly restrictive environment. And what you have to do is not about how to adjust the stone to behave in the way you like, but instead adjust yourselves, especially your attitude and emotion when dealing with the stone.
For me, the process of sharpening is not only about fulfilling a functional purpose, where you manipulate a tool to attain certain results for your own sake. Instead, you are the one who should always be kneeling under the power of nature, admiring and aweing the power that nature can give to the knife (artificial product), and by adjusting our attitude and understanding about nature, we are trying to understand the nature in as many aspects as we can. In short, the act of sharpening at this point have already departed from its materialistic purpose, but elevates into a spiritual level, where it becomes a way, a platform for you to SHARPEN YOUR MIND. And the result of this spiritual process eventually reveals itself on a materialistic way again, which is the cosmetic finish/edge of the blade.
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5: Numata torato (190-210x90x43) 1700g $120 (ON HOLD)
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IBVHkLQBnbofebf-Bgv89LHt6TWQ_LYT?usp=sharing
Unlike the hyotan numata, this torato numata is very hard, I would say 4-4.5/5, which is suitable for elevating the sharpness of the edge during the final stage of nakato polishing. That being said, since it is a hard stone, don’t expect that it can erase the scratches as effective as saeki do. I would say, understanding the performance and role of your stone is very important, some stones are capable to accomplish one task, and some are capable to accomplish multiple. And I think the price have somewhat reflected this characteristic. So just to let you know.
Anyway, I would highly recommend to raise a slurry first using atoma to accelerate the cutting and gripping power, or else you will have a feeling as if you are sharpening on the nakayama, but the nakato version.
In terms of cosmetic finishing, the numata can do a great job polishing the steel into almost full mirror-like finish, with dark-grey color tone. And of course, you need to erase most of the scratches in the previous stage (such as using aoto, nagura, or kaisei) in order to achieve a scratches-free mirror-like finish. But if you are not very care about scratch pattern, then I think the cosmetic result (JNS300 > numata) is still acceptable, just a mirror polish with uniform subtle scratches on top.
What I think this stone really do in the nakato polishing stage is really a pre-finisher on edge. After all kinds of cosmetic polishing, you may use numata to do some touch up on edge, just like what I do between akapin and nakayama. For this reason, if you want to stop at the nakato stage, you may use numata (torato) as the finishing stone on the edge, and maybe going back to aoto to do some touch up on cosmetic finish. And of course, if you want to finish it using finishing stone, then I think this numata will help you set up a pre-finishing edge before having a more refine touch up on finishing stone.
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Last but not least, to spice up this post a little bit, and to cheer up us in this tough year, I have decided to make a tiny lucky draw for those who are buying stones from me (I will add more details in the next post)! Other than that, if you are purchasing multiple stones (≥ 2 stones) from me, I can offer you a discount either on shipping, or on the overall purchase, or even I will allow you to select which stone you want from the gift list.
See you soon!
Mitchell.
I am sorry for causing any inconvenient...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Part 2: Stone For Sale (iv)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4: Nakayama Kiita Tomae (190x70x23) 770g $400
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WCUsTXC0Bu_juJTM417hM2bVJXw0Cm0r?usp=sharing
By looking at these recognizable stamps (even though they are no longer there now), you may instantly realize it is a stone by Tushihashi san. And yes, you are right, I bought this stone from him last year.
It is a very hard stone, which is 5/5 in hardness. And of course, this stone will give you the sharpest edge among the other stones that I have listed. When cutting through paper, you don't even need to apply any pressure and the paper will split into half right after the edge touch the paper.
Unfortunately, it seems like this stone is not very suitable for this "stress test", because after all it is a hard stone, and so the scratch removal power is very slow. What this stone shine is in the final stage of polishing, where it pushes the sharpness of the edge to its extreme and making both cladding and steel into total mirror polish. In terms of the capacity of cosmetic finish, as you can see in the following pictures (it is a little bit hard to capture that feeling using camera though), after the little kanna is finished sharpen by the ohira suita, the contrast between cladding and steel is strong, where a thin foggy layer is covering on top. However, after having a tender polish on the nakayama, the foggy layer disappears, just like you wipe off the condensation on window. And I think this is where the nakayama really shines on. This nakayama can unleash its full potential after you can completed all groundwork nice and clean, and what it can do is further elevating this fundamental cosmetic finish into another level of elegance. And bear in mind, you need to always control and maintain your pressure in a very low and gentle rate to prevent this hard stone from making any minor scratch onto your blade surface (well you can again spot it on this photo).
For this reason, unlike the Ohira renge suita, in which you can do whatever you want to the stone, the nakayama tomae requires more technique and skills on water management, hand pressure, stroke distance, and slurry management in order to unleash its full power, or else what it can give you is scratches. Of course, patient and concentration is also the key, and I think it is also the hardest to attain, in my own experience.
In terms of slurry management, if you sharpen it without raising slurry, then it can elevate the sharpness and smoothness of the edge to its extreme, but at the same time putting your cosmetic finish at risk, if you mistakenly apply too much pressure. For this reason, you may only need a few drops of water, just to keep the surface moist, but not wet. What you want to do is to maintain the grip power of the stone as much as possible, and use the thin slurry to create a cushion between the stone and your knife. On the other side, if you are sharpening it with slurry, what you have to stay cautious in is how to maintain the concentration of the particle (slurry thickness), and trying to maintain the stone particle from further breaking down into finer ones without being washed out by water.
Even though nakayama seems to have many restriction and rules to follow, there is also some spaces where we can play around and experiment with: which is testing out different types of slurry. Since nakayama is a hard stone, it provides is a hard, steady, and flat surface to work on. In other words, it is hard to generate self-slurry without the aids of using atoma or tomo-nagura. For this reason, the freedom and creativity that I would say when using nakayama is to explore how different nagura behave on the stone. In a contrary, when you are using a soft finishing stone, the problem you may encounter is that the speed for new particle to scrape off from the stone surface may equal to or even faster than the speed for the original particle to break down into smaller pieces. As a result, it may be a little hard for you to achieve a very fine finish on the edge because the particle size is not really uniform in terms of size (it is a mixture between big and small particles). For this reason, what nakayama or other hard stone can do is to provide a platform for you to break down the particle of a soft stone without needing to concern about the issue of scraping off new particle from the stone. That way, you may able to unleash the full capability of the soft stones’ particles under the aids of nakayama.
In short, nakayama is a stone with very strong personal character, it has its own way for completing the task, but at the same time subtly provides a platform for you to enhance your sharpening experience (but you need to discover by yourselves). The joy for using hard stone is lying under the process of extracting useful information and possibilities from a seemingly restrictive environment. And what you have to do is not about how to adjust the stone to behave in the way you like, but instead adjust yourselves, especially your attitude and emotion when dealing with the stone.
For me, the process of sharpening is not only about fulfilling a functional purpose, where you manipulate a tool to attain certain results for your own sake. Instead, you are the one who should always be kneeling under the power of nature, admiring and aweing the power that nature can give to the knife (artificial product), and by adjusting our attitude and understanding about nature, we are trying to understand the nature in as many aspects as we can. In short, the act of sharpening at this point have already departed from its materialistic purpose, but elevates into a spiritual level, where it becomes a way, a platform for you to SHARPEN YOUR MIND. And the result of this spiritual process eventually reveals itself on a materialistic way again, which is the cosmetic finish/edge of the blade.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IBVHkLQBnbofebf-Bgv89LHt6TWQ_LYT?usp=sharing
Unlike the hyotan numata, this torato numata is very hard, I would say 4-4.5/5, which is suitable for elevating the sharpness of the edge during the final stage of nakato polishing. That being said, since it is a hard stone, don’t expect that it can erase the scratches as effective as saeki do. I would say, understanding the performance and role of your stone is very important, some stones are capable to accomplish one task, and some are capable to accomplish multiple. And I think the price have somewhat reflected this characteristic. So just to let you know.
Anyway, I would highly recommend to raise a slurry first using atoma to accelerate the cutting and gripping power, or else you will have a feeling as if you are sharpening on the nakayama, but the nakato version.
In terms of cosmetic finishing, the numata can do a great job polishing the steel into almost full mirror-like finish, with dark-grey color tone. And of course, you need to erase most of the scratches in the previous stage (such as using aoto, nagura, or kaisei) in order to achieve a scratches-free mirror-like finish. But if you are not very care about scratch pattern, then I think the cosmetic result (JNS300 > numata) is still acceptable, just a mirror polish with uniform subtle scratches on top.
What I think this stone really do in the nakato polishing stage is really a pre-finisher on edge. After all kinds of cosmetic polishing, you may use numata to do some touch up on edge, just like what I do between akapin and nakayama. For this reason, if you want to stop at the nakato stage, you may use numata (torato) as the finishing stone on the edge, and maybe going back to aoto to do some touch up on cosmetic finish. And of course, if you want to finish it using finishing stone, then I think this numata will help you set up a pre-finishing edge before having a more refine touch up on finishing stone.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last but not least, to spice up this post a little bit, and to cheer up us in this tough year, I have decided to make a tiny lucky draw for those who are buying stones from me (I will add more details in the next post)! Other than that, if you are purchasing multiple stones (≥ 2 stones) from me, I can offer you a discount either on shipping, or on the overall purchase, or even I will allow you to select which stone you want from the gift list.
See you soon!
Mitchell.
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