Shapton Pro / Kuromaku 5K. Is it that bad?

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branwell

branwell

Straffanforge
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Guys,

I've had the Shapton 220 for a while now and liked it enough that I got the 1K, 1.5K and 2K.

Out of the box the 1K, 1.5K and 2K where pretty horrible ( the 1K being least offensive and the 1.5k being the worse ). The 1K felt more like a skaty grainy 600 and the others where just skaty and numb on hard carbon. Disappointed, I had at them for a few minutes with a 140 diamond plate which made them slightly better. Encouraged I took them to the 2x72 where I ground about a millimeter or 2 of each. Resurfaced them with the 140 plate and tried sharpening again. This time I was met with really nice stones, all of them. Not the fastest things in the world but a good feel and feedback and fun to sharpen on.

So this brings me to the 5k. Its hard to find people who like this stone. Most say its skaty and numb which is exactly how I felt about the others and it got me wondering. What if the 5K like other others has a thick hard outer layer and under it is a nice stone?

Have any of you guys experience with this? Have any of you taken a couple MM off a 5K? Did it improve?
 
branwell said:
Guys,

I've had the Shapton 220 for a while now and liked it enough that I got the 1K, 1.5K and 2K.

Out of the box the 1K, 1.5K and 2K where pretty horrible ( the 1K being least offensive and the 1.5k being the worse ). The 1K felt more like a skaty grainy 600 and the others where just skaty and numb on hard carbon. Disappointed, I had at them for a few minutes with a 140 diamond plate which made them slightly better. Encouraged I took them to the 2x72 where I ground about a millimeter or 2 of each. Resurfaced them with the 140 plate and tried sharpening again. This time I was met with really nice stones, all of them. Not the fastest things in the world but good feel and feedback and fun to sharpen on.

So this brings me to the 5k. Its hard to find people who like this stone. Most say its skaty and numb which is exactly how I felt about the others and it got me wondering. What if the 5K like other others has a thick hard outer layer and under it is a nice stone?

Have any of you guys experience with this? Have any of you taken a couple MM off a 5K? Did it improve?
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I've resurfaced mine with some loose grit, and it does seem to improve the feedback slightly. Overall I'm just not a huge fan of it. For that level of refinement, I find myself reaching instead for Jnats.
 
i have it and its decently good. gives you a good 5k edge. very smooth and splash and go is super simple. Mines been good for the last 20 sharpenings. I've since stopped using it and only go from shapton 1k to shapton 2k. I like the 2k edge over the 5k edge for its toothiness for kitchen tasks.
 
I used to to raise a slurry first for sharpening with the Atoma. Seemed to speed it up a tad bit and gave somewhat more aggressiveness on hard/waxy skins. Or perhaps that was me getting to better results. But the gist of it was that it felt less glassier, more tactile, by an appreciated measure. Doesn't last long though, but enough to get started more smoothly and feel the stone shift to more of its usual self, where I would simply clean it and finish/strop.

We were good pals for a while, but where it can work for a kitchen edge, I've since then experienced more interesting very fine edge with well defined aggressiveness with other stones. And half of my knives don't need to even hit that refinement anyhow.
 
Kawa said:
He seems to be very fond of the pro 5000 and 8000 and uses it on almost every knife, cheap or expensive
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Yosuke's vids are great. I often watch them with coffee in the morning.
I saw that 5K 8K thing with the cheaper soft knives. I think if you are cutting raw fish, not hitting anything hard, and like to sharpen a lot you can get away with it, but I find those edges super prone to rolling. Not a fan. But I do love his vids :)
 
ModRQC said:
We were good pals for a while, but where it can work for a kitchen edge, I've since then experienced more interesting very fine edge with well defined aggressiveness with other stones. And half of my knives don't need to even hit that refinement anyhow.
Click to expand...
Any chance you have a though hidden away in your head that you just cant wait to get over to the sink and grind a bunch of that stone to see if there is a gem inside? I know you want to secretly. Go for it. Do it :)
 
If you'd like to try a Shapton 5k for yourself, shoot me a PM. I'd be willing to sell mine since it doesnt see a whole lot of use.
 
branwell said:
Any chance you have a though hidden away in your head that you just cant wait to get over to the sink and grind a bunch of that stone to see if there is a gem inside? I know you want to secretly. Go for it. Do it :)
Click to expand...

Really I'm not entirely sure of the seriousness of the question. Sorry not being dismissive just saying excuse what comes next if it was just humour.

First and foremost its now sold, so that's saying something I guess.

I don't think there a gem hidden inside. It mostly behaves finer than 5K, in all aspects you would think of. Can mirror polish to a pretty nice extent, of course yields shiny mirror edge beveling that tends to pop out, but it's no fun to use in my sense that way. Although there is a lot to be said about technique and geometry I was doing, and other applications.

There's no denying that it's a true stone. Unforgiving. Will work well if things are about perfect. At the same time very good and very frustrating to learn sharpening fine on it. Which I did.

I used it quite a lot, and sold it about a year after acquiring it. Outside of a few months where I spouted on it towards Rika, in the end it came back in the rotation when I started getting more control and thinking Rika was NOT the stone I wanted to test myself upon. That's the few months when I really, really started to use the hell out of SP5K trying to find a comfort zone. Which I did. And I bet there are things now I would be able to get out of it I didn't really before.

But all things down, it's never the edge I really want for my knives. If I'd have to dedicate a knife to purely horizontal/vertical slicing and then dicing of onions, or silently killing carrots, it would be A#2 with a SP5K edge. But I just don't do that - knives do full preps of different stuff and it has to be well-rounded.
 
I'm in the meh camp. I've not spent a whole lot of time with it admittedly, when I want a 5K I can go with G4K, G6K, Gesshin Diamond 6K, SG4000, Rika 5000, or a couple nats. All of which I enjoy using.

Life is too short to spend time making a stone (or knife) "work" for me.
 
I don’t think it’s that bad. Not nearly as nice feeling as Rika or Shapton Pro 2k. Feels like sharpening on a ceramic tile and doesn’t seem to leave many teeth. It’s pretty cheap though. Not sure I would buy it again because I prefer soakers. But I still use it occasionally.
20CDA738-713D-4393-9887-351532FB9C58.jpeg
 
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