(Updated) Quick Report: Shapton Glass 500 DT

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ModRQC

ModRQC

Just shutup n' grabbit!
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Finally got hold of this "legendary" stone - it DOES get a lot of love for sure. This is the double thick version.

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Being thicker this one comes in a clear Shapton Pro plastic case. There's some laminated paper flap like a Shapton Pro would have around the case too, but in this instance all B&W, with sparser instructions and diagrams - in Japanese of course. Not pictured.

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The glass coating is somewhat frosted and textured. I was afraid the stone would tend to slip a bit on a wet rag, but it didn't. Same backing as the regular version but the model code: regular is 50102.

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No extra generosity there like you'd tend to find on any Shapton Pro: if you count the adhesive layer (or whatever that white line is) between glass and abrasives out, you get 2 x 5mm - double thick and that's it. Don't know if it's just this one here, or a matter of how they produce the double thick, but you can clearly see a dark line on the sides, going all around the stone, that precisely demarks the additional 5mm.

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After a full rinse and quick soak, the stone as new still refuses water... "Refuses" an euphemism in this case: the water pockets together in big drops that look like - well I won't say what really comes to mind - gel.

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After a bit of resurfacing with Atoma 140...

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And only after some more Atoma work did water finally pool normally. You don't remove much of anything to the thickness of the stone with the Atoma on the short run, or even with quite the effort, but the stone releases abrasives in more Cerax-than-SP akin quantities, although not as copiously and slickly muddy since there's no bonding matrix adding to the mix. Yet its generous slurry isn't prone to drying too fast or otherwise make water management or stone behavior a PITA in polishing. And I mean, not at all - it's quite the opposite.

After that first deglazing you're golden. The stone is S&G alright, and certainly not what I'd call dishy, but it still is a coarser stone that readily releases abrasives. Superbly behaved all the same.

In guise of test and first use for SG500, I had my Mabs out of Sigma 220 using a good deal of pressure just to make sure the SS clad would be scratchy as hell - which it was.

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In terms of tactile feedback, I can only think of but one other stone that’s as good as SG500 in such application: Imanishi 1200. It’s like you can feel each bit of released abrasives under your fingers through the blade, and they act like a thousand tiny gripping ball bearings carrying the knife across with enhanced precision and control. I mean, it’s sort of the state you want to bring any stone in as you polish, but many genuinely aren’t capable of even decent feedback, many more never as precise, and very little so easy going about getting both right and leaving a nice polish with little efforts required. Imanishi is somewhat dishier, thirstier and messier, but to no extent a demanding stone to polish with nevertheless.

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SG500 is pretty faultless in that regard: for how good it works, it barely needs water and you don’t really have to control the amount but give a small splash as its mud is ready and clingy. A bear to flatten, but after what seems like a hundred strokes of Atoma on it to first deglaze, later flatten again, it’s still 10mm tall and I can’t see a hair missing out of it on the ruler.

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You’ll see a few irregularities, and I hadn’t done the flatter upper blade, but it basically took a minute per side getting to the results above, and some dash of water somewhere halfway. It was only a test in the end: I had bought the stone for sharpening mainly, and didn’t expect such results out of polishing with it.

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In sharpening, probably because I was all ready for some more magic, I would only declare myself satisfied. There’s lots to like about it for sure, for many of the same reasons it’s a good polishing stone: efficient, not thirsty, not so dishy, develops a nice slurry. Furthermore, easy deburring to a clean edge, and easy to pick up with a much finer stone. But if only sharpening is concerned, then Naniwa Pro 400 is superior: faster, nicer feedback, will readily refine and deburr into a surprisingly clean edge for grits, and is no more dishier nor messier than SP500. It is certainly thirstier when used in a pure S&G fashion, but that can be levied to great effect with a couple minutes soak before use. It’s admittedly a bit less tidy than SG500, especially when used pure S&G, but has excellent behavior still.

It is however a crappy polisher, compared to SG500 being still a quite good sharpening stone. In fact, there’s very little that other stones of similar grits do better than SG500, many things that they don’t do as good, and often more compromises to their inherent qualities than SG500 has to accommodate for its wide range of efficiency.

SG500 DT Bullet Points:

- (only) 10mm thick;

- Real S&G;

- Speed in line with rated grit, feels perhaps somewhat finer, still great for maintenance thinning;

- Not dishy in comparison with others of its class, but it dishes still like any coarser stone must.

- Excellent polishing abilities: easy going mud, not much water management, tidy;

- Best in class polishing feedback; highly consistent in use, highly tactile, excellent aural feedback.

- Very good sharpening abilities: efficient, consistent, tidy, little water needed, deburrs well, solid edge;

- Nice sharpening feedback; nothing magical as with polishing though, but more than good enough;

- If only for sharpening, NP400 is superior, and adding various maintenance operations it is still a very serious contender with quite better longevity being twice as thick and none so dishy, but can be fiddly with maintenance thinning and a quite poor polisher however;

- In my own experience comparing NP400, SG500 and Cerax 700 as relatively close in coarseness and speed: NP400 is the sharpening stone per excellence and good for maintenance; Cerax 700 the polishing stone per excellence but a pretty good sharpener too; SG500 nestles right in between in speed, has very little to sacrifice in replacing both, and for any use is tidier and simpler than both, and only real S&G;

- As a polyvalent “med-coarse” stone, SG500 is hard to beat and an excellent value – if you can stomach how very little there is of it as part of the trade for a stone with such great technical abilities all around.


Edit: Follow-up

Okay so a bit of an update to this review, looking for some “long-term” appreciation of the stone. Indeed, I got to use quite a lot of it in various projects since my initial report:
  • Full Kasumi + relief beveling + initial sharpening Victorinox Chef (200mm)
  • Half Kasumi + relief beveling + initial sharpening Victorinox Santoku
  • Full Kasumi + edge convexing + initial sharpening Konosuke HD2 210mm
Through all of this, I did not pay the particular focus I usually do for stone preservation. I did loosely use the entire surface, but did not rotate 180* as often as I’d usually do: in the case of the Santoku half Kasumi, not at all IIRC; perhaps just one time when going full Kasumi on both others.

I also used the Atoma to flatten the stone EVERY time it was used for each job it was used - so three times per knives = 9 flattenings. That’s not counting some slurry raising too.

In sharpening I began to “verify” (I didn’t doubt it from stuff KKFers have been saying) the allowance of the stone to jump grits.

The knives: Victorinox Chef finished Imanishi 1.2K for the Kasumi, SP2K for the final edge; Victorinox Santoku finished SP2K – Ouka for the half Kasumi, SP2K for the final edge; Konosuke HD2 finished Morihei 4K for the Kasumi (I’m starting to hate that stone), and Ouka for the edge.

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BTW: My Victos are sort of a compound of a very low angle relief bevel, and a barely higher convexing to edge (the latter what looks like the edge bevel from a distance, on the chef getting wider near the tip from a start with some extra low relief there), but the actual edge is kept soft western ballpark 20 dps ballpark. Also a closer look to how good SG500 - Imanishi 1.2K make of a polishing combo even with a first start Kasumi on soft SS.

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  • The jump SG500 – SP2K is just highly natural as expected. A real good combination for softer SS of decent quality.
  • The jump SG500 – Ouka is however much more interesting. Edge is crazy good out of that for the Kono semi-SS, and sharpening on the Ouka is always a pleasure. There’s somewhat of a strong feeling correlation there too that makes it all the more rewarding: SG500 is certainly harder and coarser, yet Ouka manages to “imitate” that coarseness pretty well with its grit-rich mud, while my usual drop of pressure when going on the finer stone compensates for its softness. Continuity is surprisingly satisfying. That combo is really great.
Next in line to try will be jumping to Morihei 4K. I’m intrigued by that jump. I’m not convinced it will be such a natural one. For one thing, Morihei 4K starts to seriously load when polishing anything below 2K or about. For another, it’s rather slow.

As for the toll all of that took on the SG500:

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1mm. That including also working on the Mabs with some maintenance thinning and kasumi and initial sharpening, with flattening at each step. It’s been thus about 15 times Atoma was brought to it for some rather serious amount of strokes, 3 knives thinned/polished in full, 1 in part, two of these soft SS with rather flat surface that incurred the most dishing/clogging, 5 sharpenings total. Used a bit more wisely, and on lesser areas to polish, and on more behaved steels, I can maintain that it is not a dishy stone, and that there’s a better lifespan to it that I would have expected.

As for my conclusions, working with the soft SS sure brought a different perspective to SG500 polishing behavior, but then again it would many a stone, and it still performed admirably well. However, Imanishi 1200 may not be as tidy as SG500, but it doesn’t differentiate so much between steels or size of contact area where behavior is concerned – one of the reasons why it works so well. Nor do Cerax 700 or Ouka, two stones that work tremendously well in polishing, close to that level of perfect feedback SG500 and Imanishi 1200 manage to bring to the pond. I’ll soon have a go with Shi.Han mono 52100 on the SG500 for a bit deeper comparative study.

For sharpening however, the more I use it the more I like it – and that is an understatement. I’m starting to consider it may be a bit faster than I primarily thought it was, but that is to a personal level of minute considerations, and does not affect the outcome of my bullet points. I guess sharpening would have got a bit of an uplift there with my actual state of mind, but then again, I still stand by the bullet points, and still consider NP400 to be the superior stone where sharpening is concerned. And more than ever, SG500 to be an unbeatable all-around one.
 
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Thank you for this very interesting rundown. If this is a quick report, I wonder what a slow one would look like. You have captured a great deal of accurate information about the SG500 on short acquaintance. I've used one for years, and would not have described it half as well.

I do not have the Naniwa 400, so I can't compare. But the appeal of the Shapton Glass line for me, at least down to 500 and maybe 320, is that they are hard, dense stones, but feel creamy to sharpen on. I like that feel. I know almost everyone says that the feedback is less good than some other, more gritty-feeling stones, and I understand what they mean. But the kind of feedback the SGs give is just what I want to hear.

For calibration, I strongly prefer hard stones that feel kind of soft in use. The SGs are exactly that, as are some of my JNats, the favorite ones. I have Naniwa 800 and 3000, and they are really nice stones, but do not capture my affection, despite their undeniable effectiveness and high-quality feedback. On the other hand, a Naniwa Hibiki 1000 I tried out recently has rung all my bells, compelled me to order the entire line, and made me wish they made lower-grit versions. I may sell all of my (softer, grittier-feeling) Nanohones to help finance the purchase.
 
Thank you for the write-up.
Question, how do you compare NP400 and Cerax 700 for light thinning?
 
Rangen said:
Thank you for this very interesting rundown. If this is a quick report, I wonder what a slow one would look like. You have captured a great deal of accurate information about the SG500 on short acquaintance. I've used one for years, and would not have described it half as well.

I do not have the Naniwa 400, so I can't compare. But the appeal of the Shapton Glass line for me, at least down to 500 and maybe 320, is that they are hard, dense stones, but feel creamy to sharpen on. I like that feel. I know almost everyone says that the feedback is less good than some other, more gritty-feeling stones, and I understand what they mean. But the kind of feedback the SGs give is just what I want to hear.

For calibration, I strongly prefer hard stones that feel kind of soft in use. The SGs are exactly that, as are some of my JNats, the favorite ones. I have Naniwa 800 and 3000, and they are really nice stones, but do not capture my affection, despite their undeniable effectiveness and high-quality feedback. On the other hand, a Naniwa Hibiki 1000 I tried out recently has rung all my bells, compelled me to order the entire line, and made me wish they made lower-grit versions. I may sell all of my (softer, grittier-feeling) Nanohones to help finance the purchase.
Click to expand...

I really feel for all of what you said. Thanks for the compliments btw but notwithstanding, I think we share a lot of views in common about this,

So I should add what I decided against adding to the original thoughts, because I didn’t want this to be heavy.

Most of my deception in sharpening is that I wanted coarser - you know, that stone that’s not of the ultra dishy and not so edge-focused lot, but that will burr any steel within a very few strokes. For that I celebrate NP400. But really SG500 is what it is, hence why I decided against critizing speed directly. It’s a fine 500-600 grit stone and it does have a better feedback than many in sharpening.
 
It’s a full kasumi Mabs since my second thinning or so. I’ve been showing in between Mabs a lot, but right now and for most its life, it’s either an Imanishi 1200 Kasumi sanded with #3000, or a Ouka Kasumi, or a Morihei 4K Kasumi.

Must admit: Imanishi 1200 and Ouka are devilish polishers with #3000 sandpad finish and some final focus out of them. Little time, tremendous working finish.
 
This is Imanishi + very little #3000 sandpad smoothing. Getting used to its few quirks, it’s an oustanding polisher.
 
Ruso said:
Thank you for the write-up.
Question, how do you compare NP400 and Cerax 700 for light thinning?
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Cerax 700 for any "wilder" convex grind. Or for pure painting before a better polisher scratch wise.

But NP400 would be quite faster, would set up any new edge bevel, or relief bevel, in a timely and easy fashion, and can do quite the pre-mirror polish out of that fast enough too, and if you manage some of the refined slurry out, it's fast as hell for a med-coarse, leaves a clear, very scratchy but rather faint and clear pattern that's easy to take up from any good polisher subsequently. Or keep the slurry on to transfer from single bevel polishing to refining a primary edge on it (zero grind) before going higher. NP400 is much harder, much less muddy, hard to dish, so is amazingly well behaved with anything that needs to follow a flat surface. Unbeatable in such aspect really just before going coarse enough that a lot of dishing becomes part of the game.

Won't reveal the clad line so clearly doing so, both SG500 and Cerax 700 are of another league entirely where polishing goes, but NP400 focused on sharpening and maintenance thinning and fine reprofiling or clearing very coarse scratches out of something flat, is a a much more tremendous stone. Cerax 700 is best used purely in polishing, or in sharpening if you really like a softer stone doing so. I prefer harder and coarser where sharpening primary on fatigued or poor steel is concerned, and NP400 gets the palm before going real coarse and thinning-oriented stones or somewhat poorly behaved stones that are very fast and good sharpeners still (say, SP320).
 
Or, suffice it to say how I look at things, right now if I could buy a few stones, it'd be SP120 - SP220 - JNS 320 - SG320 - Gesshin 400 - Arashiyama 1K - SG1K - SG2K - SG4K - Gesshin 4K - JNS 4K. If not that then JNS synth Red Aoto.

It shows how curious SG500 has made me about the whole Glass lineup where kitchen knives are concerned. Arashiyama is a nod to Imanishi 1200, I would buy it only to test polish - Imanishi 1200 is a quite good semi-hard sharpener alright of itself that I'm not curious otherwise this way, but a tremendous polisher that makes me curious this way.... except for SG1K SG2K SG4K where pure sharpening or reviving is concerned, or trying to keep with SG500 fantastic polishing behavior through a whole neatly knit progression. SP120 and 220 are from the various reports out there that they are tremendously fast and relatively well behaved where anything pure steel removal is concerned. Anything JNS or JKI Gesshin just for tries.
 
Really nice write up! I also just got a SG500 double thick. I have only sharpened a couple of times with it so far, and I have not done any wide-bevel sharpening yet, but I agree with your description. I have only used soaking stones before, and I was shocked with how hydrophobic the SG500 was out of the box. I was also pleasantly surprised with the good feedback from the SG500 because I was initially under the impressions that the Shapton Glass stones generally lack feedback.
 
overall. but also in the glass line.

some of my other truly good ones: pro 1/2k, glass 3/4k, naniwa pro 800/2k, i kinda like the imanishi 10k too but its mostly personal preference up there anyway.
 
yeah almost identical in performance and behaviour. maybe a tiny bit finer than the pro. maybe slightly slower wearing. but allinall very similar stones.
the glass one is more compact though so its easier to travel with it.

the 220 glass is very good. if you already have the 500 i would go with the 2 or 3k instead of the 1k.
 
I have SP2K too. I'd like to compare both 1K and 2K but budget is not unlimited. Probably should skip them instead.

IDK I'd think I'd rather go with SP for 220. 5mm of as coarse a stone is mildly unnerving. I've went through 3-4 coarse stones in six months, whereas any other one barely lost a few mm and will still be good to use with some spare years when I'll die probably.
 
i think my 220 glass was like 8-8,5mm. but yeah the 220 pro makes sense. its a bit slower and wears a bit faster.
thik you will be happy with either the 3 or 4k glass.
 
its 1k difference :)

ok the 3k is much faster than the 4k.
the 3k clogs much less than the 4k.
3k is a good stopping point for ingot ss. i think this is the best compromise for them.
3k delivers a very sharp edge. the 4k scary sharp.
i also think the 3k feels the best of them in use.

the 4k would be good as stopping point for powder ss and carbons.

6k good for carbons as finisher. i have the gray one and that one polishes more than the white stones. almost 10k polish. but much faster than any 10k.
 
they generally try to pull everything towards mirror in my experience.
i guess you could pull off some haze if you tried though.
 
Can’t do it.... can’t... do... it...

Can’t order a 5mm coarse stone. Even if SG220 is 2$ less than SP220 where I’m looking.

It would basically take a few persons saying: I’ve tested them side by side with all sorts of repair and thinning madman job and they ended up lasting about as long.

Then proof... 🤔
 
ModRQC said:
Can’t do it.... can’t... do... it...

Can’t order a 5mm coarse stone. Even if SG220 is 2$ less than SP220 where I’m looking.

It would basically take a few persons saying: I’ve tested them side by side with all sorts of repair and thinning madman job and they ended up lasting about as long.

Then proof... 🤔
Click to expand...
Buy the one you think will wear the fastest, that way the rest of us get two excellent reviews of coarse stones, not just one!

seriously, this was a good thoughtful review. Thanks
 
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