We all know the debate about how long a soaking stone needs before one can use it (and this of course depends on the stone itself) and often people prefer splash&go stones just to be able to use them whenever the need comes without planning to soak then 10 - 30 minutes before actual use.
Strangely - nobody ever talks or cares about how long it takes to DRY a stone. I wanted to test that several times already, but my last sharpening session gave me the best opportunity, because all 3 stone (Gesshin 400, 2000 and 6000) were soaked for 2 days (yes, days - I had hard time to find the time to get to sharpening, so the stones kept waiting in water). But this was a great starting point since one could assume that the stones are completely saturated with water.
Just to remind you - the 400 and 2000 are soakers, the 6000 is splash&go.
So - once the sharpening was finished I have decided to wight the stones every couple of hours to see
a)how much water they actually absorbed
b) how long it will take to dry them completely.
I have used our digital kitchen scales with measurement precision of 1g to get the job done. Drying took place on the kitchen counter (the stones were put across plastic stone holder base - so there was minimal contact and very most of the stone surface was exposed to air), no direct sunlight, normal temperature and humidity.
The results:
a) Absorption ability:
Gesshin 400:
- soaked: 1006g
- dried: 848g
- relative: 18.5%
Gesshin 2000:
- soaked: 984g
- dried: 805g
- relative: 22.2%
Gesshin 6000:
- soaked: 821g
- dried: 808g
- relative: 1.6%
b) Drying time:
- Gesshin 400: 5 days
- Gesshin 2000: 5 days
- Gesshin 6000: 15 - 20 hours
I still want to make graphs of the drying process (I have 25 measurements for each stone) - I am just lazy
So - the advantage of splash&go stones is not only that they are ready within few minutes, but they also dry much faster.
One caveat though - I did not have comparable grit stones in the "test" - I would not be surprised if 1000 grit splash& go stone would need a little longer to dry than 6000 splash&go, but that is just a speculation.
Strangely - nobody ever talks or cares about how long it takes to DRY a stone. I wanted to test that several times already, but my last sharpening session gave me the best opportunity, because all 3 stone (Gesshin 400, 2000 and 6000) were soaked for 2 days (yes, days - I had hard time to find the time to get to sharpening, so the stones kept waiting in water). But this was a great starting point since one could assume that the stones are completely saturated with water.
Just to remind you - the 400 and 2000 are soakers, the 6000 is splash&go.
So - once the sharpening was finished I have decided to wight the stones every couple of hours to see
a)how much water they actually absorbed
b) how long it will take to dry them completely.
I have used our digital kitchen scales with measurement precision of 1g to get the job done. Drying took place on the kitchen counter (the stones were put across plastic stone holder base - so there was minimal contact and very most of the stone surface was exposed to air), no direct sunlight, normal temperature and humidity.
The results:
a) Absorption ability:
Gesshin 400:
- soaked: 1006g
- dried: 848g
- relative: 18.5%
Gesshin 2000:
- soaked: 984g
- dried: 805g
- relative: 22.2%
Gesshin 6000:
- soaked: 821g
- dried: 808g
- relative: 1.6%
b) Drying time:
- Gesshin 400: 5 days
- Gesshin 2000: 5 days
- Gesshin 6000: 15 - 20 hours
I still want to make graphs of the drying process (I have 25 measurements for each stone) - I am just lazy
So - the advantage of splash&go stones is not only that they are ready within few minutes, but they also dry much faster.
One caveat though - I did not have comparable grit stones in the "test" - I would not be surprised if 1000 grit splash& go stone would need a little longer to dry than 6000 splash&go, but that is just a speculation.