SOLD Okudo, Ohira Uchi, Shoubu, Maruo, Hideri

[Censere]

Update: Major price decrease

Selling some repeats. All performers, mostly hand picked in Japan. Some rarer stuff, but all affordable. Mostly in the condition that I bought them in, except a few demo runs & uses on the back side of the Maruo

Mostly priced at a good discount or at my purchase price straight from Japan. On aggregate, I lose money. Feel free to make offers, though I might have to wait a bit for other offers to come in.

Did some quick demos with my B#1 tester knife I use for travel testing purposes. Unfortunately did not have a lot of time or knives around, so not able to demo other steel / iron combinations. Knife was polished up to Koma and then tested on many finishers. Stone are lapped with a dead #600 Atoma

Ships from Beijing and arrives at most places in a week. I'll cover the first $35 of int'l shipping (unlikely to exceed $50)



Shoubudani Kuro Renge Suita
A rare bird with great looks. A very big, easy-to-use finer stone with high contrast.
Kuro renge tend to be very hard and more acidic stones. This one is somewhat atypical of Kuro renge. It’s harder in a useful way (my ideal level of hardness) but also friable, so gives good hand feel and ease-of-use. Acidity is reasonable. A bit higher than normal renge, but not bad (see polish vid). Spraying with baking soda will help avoid uneven darkening of the iron. Golden lines are only aesthetic and not toxic.

• Price: $1285 $1395, cost at $1750 from @lacasadetoishi.
• Weight: 1900g
• Size: 252x85x40 (very big)
• Hardness: slightly above 4, but friable, feels more like 3.8
• Speed: pretty decently fast
• Effect: high-contrast finish w/ semi-mirror core at 9k+ grit and dark kasumi clad. Decent detail on my Kiri

Okudo Shiro Suita
A rare knife-friendly and high-purity Okudo suita hand picked in Japan. Hand feel is a smoother one a lot like a high-quality harder Ohira I have. Gives a typical high-quality softer Eastern suita finish, with a clearer core than the said Ohira and a lighter colored but strong kasumi clad. Price factors in the missing corners.

• Price: $655 $765
• Weight: 910
• Size: 207 x 78 x 26
• Hardness: 4-
• Speed: Very fast
• Effect: 8-9k fineness with a brighter semi-mirror core and lighter-color but dense kasumi clad.

Ohira Uchigumori Hato
An atypical fast and fine Uchigumori hato at a useful hardness for kitchen knives. Uchi are typically slower stones used as effect stones to bring out visuals after other stones are done cutting. This one kind of does both, so you have an option of using it as both a suita and an effect stone.
I haven't tried it on wrought iron. The box describes its effect on swords.

• Price: $665 $835, bought for JPY154k ($1130 at exchange rate then) from Morihei
• Weight: 930g
• Size: 209 x 76 x 27
• Hardness: 3.5
• Speed: quite fast, especially compared to most Uchigumori
• Effect: Typical higher-contrast Uchi hato finish but at finer ~7k grit

SOLD - Hideriyama Aisa, Nashiji Iromono
Super easy kasumi stone. Hideri's Aisa is Soft and muddy, atypical of the layer. The stone is pretty decently fast and gives potent frosty kasumi (that is silky smooth to the finger touch). Has some nashiji on the surface and red colors in the middle.
Hand picked at Tanaka toishi, a very reputable vendor/mine owner in Kyoto. Tanaka told me that this stone used to be a standard finisher for sushi chefs throughout Japan for years, before the Hideri query was closed down around late 2000s after a serious flooding event.

• Price: $675 $730, JNS sells the same for $800-1000 (see here and here)
• Weight: 1455g
• Size: 205 x 77 x 42
• Hardness: 3-
• Speed: pretty decently fast, but covered up by the muddiness of the stone
• Effect: strong kasumi with frosty ~6k grit core

SOLD - Maruoyama Shiro Suita:
Huge and amazing performer. Absolute workhorse of a stone, an attribute that earned Maruo its reputation. Picked in person at Totoriya's. On the hand feels like a race car version of a great Shoubu. Creamy smooth and very fast. It's was such a standout that I chose it over many other perfect square bricks, despite my strong preference towards the latter. After purchasing, I asked Totoriya to let me know of similar but purer specimen in the future, he said that it will be quite unlikely to find something like it again.
Both sides work. Lines on the surfaces are just color. Would suggest avoiding su layers down in the middle as they are problematic. But you still have a ton of usable stone as the lines run parallel enough and the stone is so thick. (You can probably even cut through the middle to get 2 very usable bench size stones, though not necessary)

• Price: $765
• Weight: 2250g
• Size: 210 x 82 x 57 (huge)
• Hardness: 3.7
• Speed: very fast
• Effect: high-contrast finish typical of Maruo Shiro, with hazy mirror core 7-8k grit and dark kasumi clad

 

[ethompson]

Some great stones here!

 

[Metallicats44]

Maru video says it’s set to private

 

[DanielC]

Very good pile of stones here.

 

[Censere]

Thank you Edward and Daniel for the kind works. Indeed, really I’d be happy to work with any of these stones on ongoing basis and took a long time to think about offering them up.

 

[Censere]

Maru video says it’s set to private

Thank you for the heads up! Didn’t realize. I’ve changed the settings to make it available.

 

[Hassanbensober]

Gorgeous stones!
Out of curiosity do you know the significance of the 5 digit number as seen on the okudo stone above? Also have a numbered stone and always wondered.

Best of luck with the sales

 

[Censere]

Gorgeous stones!
Out of curiosity do you know the significance of the 5 digit number as seen on the okudo stone above? Also have a numbered stone and always wondered.

Best of luck with the sales

Do you mind posting a photo of your stone with the number stamp?

Some Japanese mine owners and vendors use these ID numbers to keep a track of each non-trivial-sized stone they sell. Okudo stones often have this 5 digit ID number possibly stamped by the mine owner or a major distributor. Some of these number stamps really seem similar, although they sometimes belong to different sources.

 

[Censere]

Gorgeous stones!
Out of curiosity do you know the significance of the 5 digit number as seen on the okudo stone above? Also have a numbered stone and always wondered.

Best of luck with the sales

I haven’t confirmed this with the vendors verbally, and other knowledgeable members feel free to chime in, but I believe this is partially necessitated as a trust mechanism.

Many whetstone queries in Kyoto for example are basically different probes into the same veins of the whetstone mine. They can be at times difficult to tell apart without ID but are often priced differently, giving rise to many fakes.

For example, Ohira Uchi and Mizukihara Uchi are two sides of the same mine (though they tend to have some slight differences in things like shapes of renge), and the latter is sometimes marketed as the former at a premium. Stamps are a part of a lot of stones’ premiums for this particular reason.

 

[Hassanbensober]

Do you mind posting a photo of your stone with the number stamp?

Some Japanese mine owners and stone vendors use these ID numbers to keep a track of each non-trivial-sized stone they sell. Mine is stamped by the mine owner of Okudo I believe. some of these number stamps really seem similar, although they actually belong to different sources.

Thanks for the reply. Here’s the number

 

[Censere]

Thanks for the reply. Here’s the number

Do you know if this is an Okudo? Usually Okudos distributed to various stores in Japan have this stamp.

Some of the characteristics:
1. five digit number
2. in the 2xxxx range
3. numbers not lined up perfectly, I'm guessing stamped individually
4. this particular font.

 

[Censere]

Do you know if this is an Okudo? Usually Okudos distributed to various stores in Japan have this stamp.

Some of the characteristics:
1. five digit number
2. in the 2xxxx range
3. numbers not lined up perfectly, I'm guessing stamped individually
4. this particular font.

I received a 2 PMs asking about this. @Hassanbensober and I talked more in private and his stone were sold as Okudo.

No expert here, just happened to have seen some. Here's the summary of what I've seem and learnt:
1. No all Okudos out there have this stamp. Only from certain channels. So I'm guessing it's a wholesaler's stamp?
2. The "mine owner" of Okudo would have hand written kanji on the side, or number stamp from xxxx to 1xxxx range with a "No" in front.
3. Then again, not every Okudo is stamped, and not everything marketed as Okudo is Okudo.
4. One major background explaining the above is that the "mine owners" are not the only original source of authentic stones. Most of them bought mining rights for a certain period of mountains that belong to other people. They rotate mountains and sometimes pay one-time fees to mine other queries for a period. They also buy and sell previously mined stone stock.

So for us buyers, we just need to cross reference multiple points of info. The true source /layer of a stone is often more of a confidence interval thing.

Also, Maruo Shiro sold. Thank you.

 

[Censere]

Price decreased and bump

 

[KasumiJLA]

Oh wow.. that Shoubudani polish is really awesome! You make me want to play with my natural stones. GLWS

 

[Censere]

Oh wow.. that Shoubudani polish is really awesome! You make me want to play with my natural stones. GLWS

Thank you sir!

Yes, it does fit quite well with what I tend to like - a balanced, darker palette with a darker clad and a clearer core that's neither too shiny (as in like the stereotypical harder Eastern stones) nor too white-ish (as in like the stereotypical Western stones).

In person the clad is even darker, which is to my liking. I didn't do it justice with the camera and lighting setup in the video..

 

[KasumiJLA]

Yes I feel you, it can be really hard to photograph what our own eyes can really see

 

[Censere]

Hideri sold

 

[Censere]

Uchi sold

 

[ared715]

Do you know if this is an Okudo? Usually Okudos distributed to various stores in Japan have this stamp.

Some of the characteristics:
1. five digit number
2. in the 2xxxx range
3. numbers not lined up perfectly, I'm guessing stamped individually
4. this particular font.

View attachment 303033View attachment 303041

Those are distributed/graded/numbered by tsunesaboro in Miki. He tends to release mostly Okudo but I've seen a few Nakayama, ozaki and "Shohonyama" as well.

Large tome on top is definitely okudo from him. I would have to see the stamp on the face of stone 2 to confirm.....