Shapton glass 3000 grit. Wow. Just wow.

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PalmRoyale

PalmRoyale

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Today I went to another shipyard to help out with a boat. One of the shipwrights there was sharpening on a Shapton 3000 grit glass stone and I asked him if I could try it out. He asked if I know how to use a stone like that and after telling him what I use he said okay. I've read some reviews about Shapton glass stones so I was expecting a very hard stone with little feedback. The 3000 grit glass stone however has amazing feedback. It feels very smooth and creamy with a very nice softness to it, but it isn't soft at all. I was also amazed how fast it is. The stone turns black with metal shavings very fast but it doesn't load up at all, not even when sharpening the back of a chisel. You just rinse it under a tap and rub it down with the palm of your hand and it's clean again. I don't really need another stone but this Shapton #3000 glass is so nice is just might but it.
 
SK4 carbon steel @ 61HRC and cryo hardened A2 steel @ 62HRC. I don't know how the other grit glass stone behave but the 3000 grit is freaking amazing. It's also very wear resistant according to the shipwright I tried it from. He said he's been using it for 8 months and it's still flat.
 
My sister lives close to Arnhem where a store called Baptist is located and they're the only store in The Netherlands that sells the Shapton #3000 glass stone seperately. She's picking one up for me today which gives me a good reason to visit her this weekend
 
I have always liked my Shapton glass stones. Even the 500 feels nice and smooth to me and they do work pretty fast.
 
Hiho!

I got a full Glasstone set and i have a 220,500,2000,8000 and 16000 and the 2k is the best of them.
They are very good hightech synthetics but i am done with synthetics ;)..
 
I have the 220 and 500. The 500 is one of my best synthetic's, it has great feedback, stays flat, can kick up a slurry with 400 atoma. Leaves a really nice consistent scratch pattern. Very fast and works across all steels.

The 220 feels terribly coarse and scratchy. Its not that fast either, I always grab my Deluxe King 300 over the 220.
 
Krassi said:
Hiho!

I got a full Glasstone set and i have a 220,500,2000,8000 and 16000 and the 2k is the best of them.
They are very good hightech synthetics but i am done with synthetics ;)..
Click to expand...
With me it's the other way around. I've always used coticules and only recently really got into synthetic stones at work. I've now got a very good and fast set up with the King Deluxe 1200, the Sigma Select II 6000 and from this weekend on the Shapton glass 3000. At home I still use coticules though for my knives and straight razor.
 
King fan, but recently couldn't resist a ZDP, and might try D2, HAP40 and/or CPM 3V (not much on the market except customs at the moment :( ) in the future... There seems to be a consensus of "Chosera/Professional or Shapton Glass" about such steels... wonder what Shapton (500, 1000, 2000, 3000) would make the best main sharpening stone for the tough stuff?
 
I have a line of shapton glass stones but not the 3k. I would say that the 500 has fair feedback and the 2k and 4k have usable feedback but that the 8k has almost none. It does improve if I rough it up with my atoma plate, though, for a little while anyway. I have had similar experience with the Pro stones, the low grit stones below 5k are okay and the 5k and above, not so much.
 
The shipwright I tried the 3000 grit from said never to clean it with a nagura. He told me he did that once and afterwards the surface felt different. He said he could also see small black dots forming on the surface and that once these disappeared the stone sharpened much faster and finer again and the feedback also returned to normal.

On a side note... today was the last day of helping out at the other shipyard so I took my Sigma Select II 6000 with me (received the new one yesterday). He likes it so much that he's ordering one himself.
 
PalmRoyale said:
The shipwright I tried the 3000 grit from said never to clean it with a nagura. He told me he did that once and afterwards the surface felt different. He said he could also see small black dots forming on the surface and that once these disappeared the stone sharpened much faster and finer again and the feedback also returned to normal.

On a side note... today was the last day of helping out at the other shipyard so I took my Sigma Select II 6000 with me (received the new one yesterday). He likes it so much that he's ordering one himself.
Click to expand...

I find that my glass stones load up fairly easily if I don't keep them lapped, particularly at higher grits.
 
I have the glass in 2k and it is indeed a nice stone. MUCH more feedback than my shapton pro 5k, which just feels very slippery.
 
I did notice it loaded up a little bit when I sharpened the bevel. But then when I polished the back of the blade I could see it unload. Of course sharpening a chisel or plane blade is different from sharpening a knife. I suspect the large surface area of the back of these tools act somewhat like a lapping plate or it somehow pulls out the metal shavings. After I was done all that was needed was rubbing it with the palm of my hand under running water to clean it. There were some faint grey spots left on the stone but nothing serious. Another possibility is that the 3000 grit is completely different from the rest of the line up in that it doesn't load up to a serious degree.
 
I ordered the 1k & 4k set a few days ago as there is a sale of 20%. Could not resist and to give these a try.

Its only later that I noticed that the lapping plate is over $300! For some ridiculous reason I thought these did not need lapping.
 
The shipwright I tried it from said he's been using his 3000 grit for 8 months and it's still completely flat. Keep in mind thought it's very easy to keep a stone flat with the back of a chisel.
 
LifeByA1000Cuts said:
King fan, but recently couldn't resist a ZDP, and might try D2, HAP40 and/or CPM 3V (not much on the market except customs at the moment :( ) in the future... There seems to be a consensus of "Chosera/Professional or Shapton Glass" about such steels... wonder what Shapton (500, 1000, 2000, 3000) would make the best main sharpening stone for the tough stuff?
Click to expand...

I did read somewhere that Gihei recommend Shapton glass for their zdp189 and hap40 lines.
 
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