Kuromaku Kuestion?

[2bApical?]

I have my first medium grit decision down to the Shapton Kuromaku 1000,1500 or 2000. My VG-10 is sharp enough for basic cutting with a dollar store stone but I want it considerably better, on the order of push cutting copier paper. I got it to that once when it was new and slightly used with a fine ceramic. So for the upkeep basics what should I get? 1000,2000,1500 and the down the road decision of something like the Kuromaku 5000, or could I just go to the 5000 now?? I have experience getting knives unusable after two electric sharpeners couldn't after seeing one needs a very coarse stone. So I got 56ish knives in very poor condition back to usable with inexpensive coarse stones from a supposed 60 grit to a supposed 240 grit and some work on the dollar store stone and fine ceramic rod. I want the edge to be a bit better than what one gets on a fine ceramic rod. I lost the rod I had and tried a new one and didn't quite get to push cut. Guess I might "need" a strop? I just do pedestrian everyday basic cooking for myself. It is very nice to see these videos with a European knife slicing through half an onion super quick with very little effort although I could do with performance not quite that good. The gushing review of the #1000 by Shinichi Watanabe is hard to ignore. He rates it the very best after stating he has spent 1,000,000 yen on stones, about $89,000 in the current yen value so I'm leaning in that direction unless it's fairly clearly too coarse for me at this time. Thanks, 2bApical?

 

[HRC_64]

I would consider to get both 1k and 2k (for all those old stainless knives),
both stones should be around $75 from amazon.

For the finisher, i'd check out Seuhiro Rika 5k
or Chosera 3000 and probably omit shapton 5k,
but YMMV based on a variety of factors.

 

[2bApical?]

Thanks for the reply. I'd like to keep it to two stones, both splash and go, especially the higher grit that I'll likely use almost every day?? Burrfection in his comparison of the Chosera 3000 and the SP 5000 couldn't stop complaining about the SP 5000's feel but when he showed the knife edge it was at a higher polish on the 5K, surprise surprise and IMO the 5k edge was a bit smother going through paper. He stopped slicing the paper in a much shorter time than when he tested the SP 5K, possibly because of his bias based of feel. I mainly just want a sharp knife, easy to get sharp with little effort and feel is tertiary as long as it isn't as nerve wracking as diamonds.

 

[Ivang]

Glass stone 500 and pro 2k. That should cover you for pretty much anything.

 

[Seqmt]

I have the Shapton Pro 1500 and it's a great stone. It's a great finishing point for most kitchen knives.

 

[inferno]

for vg10 you would be looking at a maximum usable grit of like 2-3k. its not gonna hold on to higher grit edges for long.
i have the following low grit shaptons:
glass 220, 500 double thick, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000
pro 1000 and 2000.

for coarse stones i would suggest the 500 double thick or the pro 1000. the 500 is faster, but its more stone on the pro 1k. Cant really go wrong with any of them.
finishing stones would be the pro 2k or the glass 2k, or glass 3k. both 2k stones are real bests in terms of speed and imo feel, these feel super duper good both of them.
I think the 2k stones are the best of the glass and the pro lineup. Very hard and slow wearing yet effective. this is the lowest acceptable edge i would expect on a quality knife imo.

the 3k glass is also good but much slower than the 2ks. the edge is much better though. now its starting to get really sharp! i recently gave my cousin a glass 500 and a 3k as his only stones. we sharpened 5-6 knives the first day on them. all cheap SS. and they worked fast and felt good. and he learned to sharpen by himself in a few hours.

so glass 500/3k is good, so is the 500/2k (any of them), and so is the 1k pro with any 2k/3k combo.
Personally I would go 500 double thick and the 3k glass. since its the most versatile and will be the fastest on dull stuff and on top of that produce the best edge.
if glass is not available i would go 1k pro and 2k pro. easy as that.
if i could only have 1 single stone to do everything it would be the pro 2k.

you will also need a diamond flattening plate no matter what stones you get.

 

[2bApical?]

for vg10 you would be looking at a maximum usable grit of like 2-3k. its not gonna hold on to higher grit edges for long.
i have the following low grit shaptons:
glass 220, 500 double thick, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000
pro 1000 and 2000.

for coarse stones i would suggest the 500 double thick or the pro 1000. the 500 is faster, but its more stone on the pro 1k. Cant really go wrong with any of them.
finishing stones would be the pro 2k or the glass 2k, or glass 3k. both 2k stones are real bests in terms of speed and imo feel, these feel super duper good both of them.
I think the 2k stones are the best of the glass and the pro lineup. Very hard and slow wearing yet effective. this is the lowest acceptable edge i would expect on a quality knife imo.

the 3k glass is also good but much slower than the 2ks. the edge is much better though. now its starting to get really sharp! i recently gave my cousin a glass 500 and a 3k as his only stones. we sharpened 5-6 knives the first day on them. all cheap SS. and they worked fast and felt good. and he learned to sharpen by himself in a few hours.

so glass 500/3k is good, so is the 500/2k (any of them), and so is the 1k pro with any 2k/3k combo.
Personally I would go 500 double thick and the 3k glass. since its the most versatile and will be the fastest on dull stuff and on top of that produce the best edge.
if glass is not available i would go 1k pro and 2k pro. easy as that.
if i could only have 1 single stone to do everything it would be the pro 2k.

you will also need a diamond flattening plate no matter what stones you get.

for vg10 you would be looking at a maximum usable grit of like 2-3k. its not gonna hold on to higher grit edges for long.
i have the following low grit shaptons:
glass 220, 500 double thick, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 6000
pro 1000 and 2000.

for coarse stones i would suggest the 500 double thick or the pro 1000. the 500 is faster, but its more stone on the pro 1k. Cant really go wrong with any of them.
finishing stones would be the pro 2k or the glass 2k, or glass 3k. both 2k stones are real bests in terms of speed and imo feel, these feel super duper good both of them.
I think the 2k stones are the best of the glass and the pro lineup. Very hard and slow wearing yet effective. this is the lowest acceptable edge i would expect on a quality knife imo.

the 3k glass is also good but much slower than the 2ks. the edge is much better though. now its starting to get really sharp! i recently gave my cousin a glass 500 and a 3k as his only stones. we sharpened 5-6 knives the first day on them. all cheap SS. and they worked fast and felt good. and he learned to sharpen by himself in a few hours.

so glass 500/3k is good, so is the 500/2k (any of them), and so is the 1k pro with any 2k/3k combo.
Personally I would go 500 double thick and the 3k glass. since its the most versatile and will be the fastest on dull stuff and on top of that produce the best edge.
if glass is not available i would go 1k pro and 2k pro. easy as that.
if i could only have 1 single stone to do everything it would be the pro 2k.

you will also need a diamond flattening plate no matter what stones you get.

inferno, thanks for the info. Can you please explain why you think the VG-10 edge won't last long on anything above 3k and what is long? A well known sharpening supply store said that I wouldn't have to do any sawing motion on a tomato with a 6k as opposed to a 3k?? I'm a bit surprised to here this as VG-10 is so common in Japanese knives. I don't remember if I told him I was using VG-10 but I suspect I did.

 

[inferno]

vg10 is the most common SS from japan. Basically its not that fine grained. Very low alloyed carbon steels like white and blue are fine grained. Those steels can benefit from very polished edges.

Almost no stainless can hold on to very acute fine polished edges for long, usually the steel is not hard enough (hardness=strength), not fine grained enough. And those that can (the lowest alloyed SS types like aeb-l) have comparatively low wear resistance.

if the SS is hard enough to support fine edges they usually chip out (microscopically) pretty fast, since most SS have lower toughness than carbon steels. You see the more chromium you put into a steel over lets say maybe 5% or so the more brittle the steels tends to get. No rules without exceptions though.

most vg10 also seems to form quite stubborn burrs that are hard to remove.
Its the very least favorite steel on this forum pretty much.

my own take on it is this: you can polish common SS to 15k if you want to but from 3 to like 12k the actual increase in sharpness is minor, whereas with blue 2 for instance its gets truly scary sharp at this level. so the amount of extra work put into it simply isn't worth the hassle. it will get shinier though.

basically after a very short time SS will revert to a much lower sharpness and tend to stay there for a long time. and if you gonna revert this lower level very quickly why even bother with high grit stones??

 

[2bApical?]

Thanks for the info. Well I don't feel too bad since I got this knife for free. While it is a pretty hard knife, at least 61 so I'm told, it is nothing to write home about as to edge retention from my limited experience and what I see in edge retention videos. I just quickly went over Bernal Cutlery's beginner steel primer about these issues. If my ship were to come in it looks like Ginsanko would fit the bill but my ship is going out. I'll never be a non stainless type of guy. I'll see what happens to the VG-10 knife after I get a new stone or two. I must say I have my eye on the $60 Nexus BD1N 8 inch after seeing it cut 600 pieces of rope in a burrfection video. Unreal edge retention. My guess is that I'll be happy with a 3k edge. Just do simple cooking at home. Any thoughts on BD1N in terms of it holding a sharper edge, being more similar to a carbon steel? Odd that the VG-10 is so popular with manufacturers since it is so disliked. Thanks for bringing these issues into focus. Shouldhelp me in the future when I buy other knives. A nice SS 4.5 inch or so petty moderately easy to sharpen to a razor sharp edge that would hold the edge for more than one orange would be a good thing?? It's been my experience that with what I have edges do not last long at all, an inexpensive Chinese cleaver, Victorinox and the VG-10. The text kitchen video on Victorinox got edge retention seemingly way better than I have experienced. Is it me or are those knives overrated?

 

[HRC_64]

Ginsanko is good stuff if you need stainless.
Alot of people on KKF like sharpenability
and prioritize it over edge retention.

The reality of many knives is they all lose
off the stones sharp in short order,
even long-retention alloys.

So many prioritize ease of
maintenance and down-rate
"edge retention".

 

[Panamapeet]

Thanks for the reply. I'd like to keep it to two stones, both splash and go, especially the higher grit that I'll likely use almost every day?? Burrfection in his comparison of the Chosera 3000 and the SP 5000 couldn't stop complaining about the SP 5000's feel but when he showed the knife edge it was at a higher polish on the 5K, surprise surprise and IMO the 5k edge was a bit smother going through paper. He stopped slicing the paper in a much shorter time than when he tested the SP 5K, possibly because of his bias based of feel. I mainly just want a sharp knife, easy to get sharp with little effort and feel is tertiary as long as it isn't as nerve wracking as diamonds.

Don't be listening to that knob head

 

[Grunt173]

Now that we have your stones out of the way,this might be your next new knife.
https://www.japaneseknifeimports.com/collections/en/products/en-210mm-ginsanko-wa-gyuto;)