story of a stone

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Recently picked up my tenth Aizu with the firm intention to finally keep one. I was really excited about it as it seemed to be a really nice and big example:
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To my very displeasure the thing arrived like this:
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While the issue is discussed with the senders postal company I thought why not try to fix it.

The plan is to glue it up with cyanacrylate, wrap a portion of it with some twine, glue it to a wooden base and seal the stone with many layers of cashew lacquer.
 
I had a similar experience with a nice AIZU from Watanabe. I epoxied it to a large ceramic tile and it seems to be working well enough. The crack is still there though and I can feel it when I sharpen. Interested to see how this works out for you
 
I‘m actually quite confident. The cyanacrylate seems to have filled the crack decently and the epoxy together with the cashew should give it the necessary stability. Never used cashew before so I‘m very interested in how it is to work with. My usual sealing mixture would be too thin for this purpose.
 
You haven't kept your other aizu? I just sold mine, curious about why you've picked them up and put them down again
That is a tricky question but I will try to answer it.

I tried many Aizu to find one that was a little softer than usual but gives the edge that these stones are so liked for. As you can imagine I did't quite succeed so I started to try lots of other things like Numata, Tajima, Ueno and many many others that are lesser known or even unknown. Unfortunately none of the other stones I tried did incorporate all the features I was looking for and were either a bit too coarse or a lot harder than Aizu. Hence I decided to quit my odyssey and stick with what I know will work and started to look for another Aizu that I can keep, knowing what kind of tradeoffs there will be. Sometimes it's just comfortable to know what to expect.

Hope that makes at least some sense.
 
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I get that. I tried an Aizu that wasn't quite as coarse as I hoped. I was hoping for a 2k ish edge and I think this one was finer around 4-5k. I really want to keep experimenting, but man this is a spendy rabbit hole
 
Sorry to see that happen to such a nice stone. Hope your fix works out well.

Quick question on the CA glue on the sections of stone you'd use, wouldn't that cause a line running through the stone akin to an inclusion that messes up edges / polishes as the abrasives won't break down due to the CA holding them together?
 
Quick question on the CA glue on the sections of stone you'd use, wouldn't that cause a line running through the stone akin to an inclusion that messes up edges / polishes as the abrasives won't break down due to the CA holding them together?
That is a great question. I will have to see what happens but I have read from other people that had good results with CA glue used for this.
It should lap as normal and as the stone is quite hard it shouldn’t start to stick out in normal use. I also used a CA gel that shouldn’t penetrate too deep into the stone so release of particles should be as normal.
I will of course post an update how it works once everything is done. Worst case I will have to pick the line every now and then like I would with a normal inclusion.
 
Thanks for the reply. Looking forward to your update, ideally it works out well and this is a usable stone whilst you hunt your "one" true Aizu. 🤞
 
Hope it works out well in this case. It's always heartbreaking to see a good stone get destroyed.
 
Also interesting to hear about the result and how the CA react with use ! Nice job fixing the stone, this give her some personality 😉

Just experienced a similar issue with some Aizus, didn’t thought that they were so fragile... I fixed mines in gluing them with transparent epoxy on dark transparent polycarbonate plates and they now look like AizuGlass 😅

First one started to develop crack, so glue her to be safe
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Other one completely cracked wide open after travel, so glued her on a thin portion of the bottom first tiers to never encounter the glue, then epoxy her on the plate
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@DHunter86 and everyone else interested...
I couldn’t wait until it’s finished so I gave the stone a quick test run:
Lapping it felt like it should and I didn’t notice anything odd about the glue line.
I tried some bevel work on a test knife and couldn’t feel anything odd underneath the blade, likewise when only touching the edge of the blade.
So at first glance this is a normally working stone. I am pretty sure it will need frequent lapping to keep it in this state but in my experience medium grit stones do so anyway so it shouldn’t be a lot more fuzz than usual.

Of course I forgot to take pictures of this test drive but I will update with some action pics as soon as I finished the whole thing.
 
Thanks for the update @childermass! If it really works out as you continue to use the stone, that definitely increases our repertoire for reinforcing mid grits with cracks. :)
 
That was pretty insane. Great job on the woodworking. That base is legit! I'm curious, did you receive an compensation for the damage to the stone? Would that be a Kasumi finish? I'm new to these finishes, just heard about them on this forum quite recently. Are Kasumi finishes all about looks or does a Kasumi finish offer some practical benefits?
 
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