What finishing stone to add for a Toothy-refined edge

[Emieloss]

Hey all,

I'm currently experimenting with my stones and I'm finding it hard to find an edge that is refined enough for most vegetables and fish, but has enough bite for tomato skins and fatty meats. I don't always feel like using 3 different knives when prepping a meal, depending on the products. So I'd like to hear if there's a stone I should add to my collection that would get the job done. (A hybrid edge would probably also work, but it's much more fun to buy something new )

The knives I have are mostly Aogami #2, Aogami super and SG2.

My stones:
Shapton Glass 220
Atoma Diamond Plate 400
Naniwa Pro 400
Naniwa Pro 1000
Naniwa Pro 3000
Belgian Blue Whetstone (believed to be around 4k)
Suehiro Rika 5k
Mcusta Zanmai 8k (Which I'm pretty sure is a rebranded Kitayama 8k)
Shapton Glass 16k (Only really used for polishing)

For slurry:
Natural Iyo Nagura (believed to be between 4k and 6k)
Natural Iyo Nagura (believed to be between 6k and 10k)

Currently doubting between the following stones, but I'm open to suggestions:
Aiiwatani Koppa lvl3
JNS Matukusuyama 6000
JNS Aoto Matukusuyama
Shapton Glass 4000

Looking forward to hearing your opinions

-Emieloss

 

[M1k3]

SG 4k. Then sharpen NP 400 -> SG 4k.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Belgian Blue.



Paging @cotedupy

 

[refcast]

Natural medium soft aoto is pretty spot on for this

 

[ethompson]

Aizu would be my choice. I like harder stones for edges generally and I feel like Aizu are a great balance of tooth and refinement for all purpose kitchen use.

 

[Rangen]

For mediocre to merely OK knives, I've taken to just using my do-everything Shapton Glass 1000, or a 1K vitrified diamond stone. Definitely diamonds if it's stainless. I used to go higher in grit, but I'm not sure it does anything useful.

For good carbon steel knives, or good stainless like SG-2 or Hattori VG-10, I have formed the impression that there's a benefit to the tooth provided by finishing on natural stones. I agree with @ethompson that an Aizu is about perfect, but for really good knives I do use some other things, like a suita, because I can. Your Belgian stone might also produce interesting results.

 

[hendrix]

Personally I feel you have a nice selection of stones already. I would use np 400 -> np 1000 -> np 3000 -> belgium blue but create a slurry with your atoma (rather than a natural nagura) on the bb.

 

[ethompson]

Just saw that you have a Belgian blue already. Yeah, that should be able to get you the edge you want

 

[MarcelNL]

paging @ian

 

[Nemo]

TBH, I'm pretty happy with the edge that I get from Chosera 3k or Belgian Blue as an all purpose kitchen edge.

 

[MowgFace]

Maybe sounds like a burr removal issue or improper apexing rather than a stone issue.

Though I support gear acquisition fully.

I have the JNS Aotos and assume you’re talking about the Blue. I find this stone perfect for your purposes and it’s a fantastic stone. I have since “graduated” to an Aizu (I like it better, not that it is inherently better) as my final edge for most knives.

Another option is to do a bigger jump as folks have suggested, to leave some lower grit scratches to give you the “bite” you are looking for.

Maybe chat about your sharpening technique a bit? Are you a scrubber? Heel to tip in one motion? What’s your deburring technique?

Or elaborate on what “refined enough for veggies and fish” means. Are you talking about cut face finish?

 

[cotedupy]

I'd get a yellow Coticule.

No Japanese stone (that I know) would get near a coti edge for a combination of being very fine, while still retaining a huge amount of bite and teeth if you want it to. You can play around with the desired result quite significantly, and have it finish anywhere from very aggressive to razor levels of refinement, depending on how you work the slurry.

 

[tostadas]

My finishing stone of choice is the jns synth red aoto for all around use. I believe maxim uses a mix of 2-4k grit which feels about accurate for the finish it leaves.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

I'd get a yellow Coticule.

No Japanese stone (that I know) would get near a coti edge for a combination of being very fine, while still retaining a huge amount of bite and teeth if you want it to. You can play around with the desired result quite significantly, and have it finish anywhere from very aggressive to razor levels of refinement, depending on how you work the slurry.

Dude, are you serious?! I invited you into the thread to lavish positivity over my Belgian Blue recommendation not toss out a stone I don't have!

Great. Now I need a new stone. Sheesh.

 

[cotedupy]

Dude, are you serious?! I invited you into the thread to lavish positivity over my Belgian Blue recommendation not toss out a stone I don't have!

Great. Now I need a new stone. Sheesh.

Haha! Don't get me wrong - I would back your recommendation to the hilt obviously. But re-read the original post and he (cleverly) has already got one.

So now a nice bit of yellow coticule to compliment I think...

 

[hendrix]

If any of the above great suggestions don’t work, I would look at sharpening technique but that’s tough to troubleshoot by text.
If you aching for a new stone, I would also suggest a Coticule. Most are finer than Belgium blues (and are often paired with bb) but still leave a nice edge which works for me for soft tomatoes as well as firmer stuff. Since I picked one up here on BST I don’t often use a Japanese natural. They are relatively inexpensive, at least compared to Japanese naturals. (I realize I’m going off on a tangent but I love my Coticule!)

 

[cotedupy]

If any of the above great suggestions don’t work, I would look at sharpening technique but that’s tough to troubleshoot by text.
If you aching for a new stone, I would also suggest a Coticule. Most are finer than Belgium blues (and are often paired with bb) but still leave a nice edge which works for me for soft tomatoes as well as firmer stuff. Since I picked one up here on BST I don’t often use a Japanese natural. They are relatively inexpensive, at least compared to Japanese naturals. (I realize I’m going off on a tangent but I love my Coticule!)

Hurrah!

Good summary I think. They're certainly different enough from each other that having both is nice; I find BBW a bit more all-round versatile in that it can do nice polishing too. Coticule more versatile in terms of sharpening alone as it can we used to finish around the level of BBW, but also finer while still having teeth, because it's faster than BBW.

And indeed... trying a cotixbbw combi I think would be likely to move a lot of people away from jnats for kitchen knife sharpening purposes. For me - good Japanese stones will always be king for really exceptional bevel polishing, but there's a lot of other natural stones out there that do edge work better (imo).

 

[Emieloss]

Wow! So many replies. Thanks all! It's great to see such an active and helpful community.

In terms of technique, I do passes with constant pressure instead of just pressure when moving one side. I form a burr, do the other side. I alternate hands instead of doing both sides righthanded. Form a burr again before switching again. I reduce pressure and do another 2 passes or so on both sides. Now I strop edge trailing on both sides. Throwing in some edge leading as well to deburr. I then go to a higher grit stone but don't try to form a new burr, lighter pressure less passes, same amount of stropping edge trailing and edge leading. Gradually less pressure. I finish on leather with some very light edge trailing motions.

I see quite a lot of BBW recommendations. To be honest, I've only used mine twice cause I didn't really jive with it. It just feels really really slow. The first knife I tried was touching up my Tadafusa White #2 Santoku. Only after about 20 minutes I noticed a bit of a difference but I wasn't impressed. (Maybe I needed to drop down to a lower grit first)

After that I tried a freshly sharpened Moritaka AS Petty. Progression was NP400, Mcusta 8k, BBW and that felt a lot better.

How should I use the BBW? Light pressure, medium pressure? Just water, slurry from nagura or slurry from diamond plate? How many passes usually as a finisher? Stropping on the stone and/or on leather afterwards?

For the NP3000 I don't really get this stone, or it just doesn't produce a refined enough edge for me. Any tips for this stone in terms of just water or slurry?

The Coticule is a nice suggestion. I can't seem to find a wider one in stock atm though. I'll keep my eyes peeled
I'll have to look into Soft aoto and Aizu. I don't really know all the terminology so will have to do some reading.

 

[cotedupy]

Wow! So many replies. Thanks all! It's great to see such an active and helpful community.

In terms of technique, I do passes with constant pressure instead of just pressure when moving one side. I form a burr, do the other side. I alternate hands instead of doing both sides righthanded. Form a burr again before switching again. I reduce pressure and do another 2 passes or so on both sides. Now I strop edge trailing on both sides. Throwing in some edge leading as well to deburr. I then go to a higher grit stone but don't try to form a new burr, lighter pressure less passes, same amount of stropping edge trailing and edge leading. Gradually less pressure. I finish on leather with some very light edge trailing motions.

I see quite a lot of BBW recommendations. To be honest, I've only used mine twice cause I didn't really jive with it. It just feels really really slow. The first knife I tried was touching up my Tadafusa White #2 Santoku. Only after about 20 minutes I noticed a bit of a difference but I wasn't impressed. (Maybe I needed to drop down to a lower grit first)

After that I tried a freshly sharpened Moritaka AS Petty. Progression was NP400, Mcusta 8k, BBW and that felt a lot better.

How should I use the BBW? Light pressure, medium pressure? Just water, slurry from nagura or slurry from diamond plate? How many passes usually as a finisher? Stropping on the stone and/or on leather afterwards?

For the NP3000 I don't really get this stone, or it just doesn't produce a refined enough edge for me. Any tips for this stone in terms of just water or slurry?

The Coticule is a nice suggestion. I can't seem to find a wider one in stock atm though. I'll keep my eyes peeled
I'll have to look into Soft aoto and Aizu. I don't really know all the terminology so will have to do some reading.

I like an atoma slurry on BBW. It’ll cut quite slowly without that, but quite quickly once you get the garnets slightly broken up and rolling around. Like all natural stones it’ll probably take a little experimenting to find what works best for you.

Coticules by comparison can often be blindingly quick (as well as being finer), and don't necessarily need the slurry raising beforehand. They're usually slightly softer than BBW, and have more and sharper abrasive in them.

 

[Emieloss]

So what about using coticule slurry stones on BBW's? Anyone has experience with that?

 

[stringer]

So what about using coticule slurry stones on BBW's? Anyone has experience with that?

Coticules and bbws are like half sisters. They are made of basically the same abrasive material (spessartine garnets) in different concentrations. And they are found together in the same seams of rock. Traditionally they would cut the stones so that you get a natural combo of both. The coticules have more garnets. Bbws have more other stuff. For me I find it more useful to raise a coticule slurry on a coticule with another coticule. The Japanese tradition would call that a tomo nagura. Which means a slurry stone made of the same material as the base stone. Same thing with a bbw. It works best with bbw slurry. @cotedupy mentioned raising a slurry with an atoma diamond plate. Ends up having the same effect. Except you don't have to have two of all your stones. So it just depends on your wants and budget.

 

[Emieloss]

So I just sharpened my Shigeki Tanaka Aogami #2 Nakiri based on the tips above.
NP400 NP1000 NP3000 (I liked the NP3000 a lot more with an atoma created slurry!) and finished on the BBW, also with an atoma created slurry.

After that I did some light strokes on leather loaded with 0.5 micron diamond paste.

Sheesh that edge is brutal! My sharpening technique isn't perfect and I still have room to improve, but this is impressive. I found a bellpepper in the fridge that was a bit old and had a wrinkly tough skin. I cleaned it, stacked a double layer of it with skin side up and chopped through it with ease. Never had that before!

Thanks for the tips guys!

 

[deltaplex]

So I just sharpened my Shigeki Tanaka Aogami #2 Nakiri based on the tips above.
NP400 NP1000 NP3000 (I liked the NP3000 a lot more with an atoma created slurry!) and finished on the BBW, also with an atoma created slurry.

After that I did some light strokes on leather loaded with 0.5 micron diamond paste.

Sheesh that edge is brutal! My sharpening technique isn't perfect and I still have room to improve, but this is impressive. I found a bellpepper in the fridge that was a bit old and had a wrinkly tough skin. I cleaned it, stacked a double layer of it with skin side up and chopped through it with ease. Never had that before!

Thanks for the tips guys!

I've found that raising a burr on my SG500 or SG1000 and then going to the bbw will help quite a bit with the before slurrying slowness if you wanted to try something to speed it up; for you it'd likely be NP1000 to BBW.

 

[Desert Rat]

So I just sharpened my Shigeki Tanaka Aogami #2 Nakiri based on the tips above.
NP400 NP1000 NP3000 (I liked the NP3000 a lot more with an atoma created slurry!) and finished on the BBW, also with an atoma created slurry.

After that I did some light strokes on leather loaded with 0.5 micron diamond paste.

Sheesh that edge is brutal! My sharpening technique isn't perfect and I still have room to improve, but this is impressive. I found a bellpepper in the fridge that was a bit old and had a wrinkly tough skin. I cleaned it, stacked a double layer of it with skin side up and chopped through it with ease. Never had that before!

Thanks for the tips guys!

I think stropping on newspaper will leave the edge with more tooth.
It probably won't cost you anything to try it.

 

[MowgFace]

...

After that I did some light strokes on leather loaded with 0.5 micron diamond paste.

.. My sharpening technique isn't perfect and I still have room to improve, but this is impressive. ...

I think I would recommend not finishing on the diamond paste. Could be covering up the sharpening issues that are coming off the stones. Could be why you are not feeling the bite you would expect with any of your stone edges.

 

[Cliff]

I'd finish one of the R2 knives on SG500 or maybe 1K and at least one of the carbon knives on the 8K. Then I'd finish another knife with the Belgian Blue for all around use. I realize you're looking for a one-and-done solution, but this would cover all the bases.

 

[hendrix]

So what about using coticule slurry stones on BBW's? Anyone has experience with that?

One theory is that diamond stones such as Atomas fracture the garnets in BBW’s and coticules that result in a knife edge with more bite than if you use a BBW or coticule nagura (or “bout” in this context) as opposed to razor sharpening in which the use of bouts is more appropriate for finer edges. Again, for me, this is theoretical as it sounds plausible so I always used atomas for slurrying BBW/coticules rather than a BBW/coticule bout. Others will probably have thoughts about this hopefully.

 

[Lezza]

For me, Suitas like Okudo and Ohira delivers the toothiest edge. For final finishing with toothy edge, Nakayama would be best. Coticules deliver toothy edges also, but they wear down much faster than JNats.

 

[cotedupy]

So I just sharpened my Shigeki Tanaka Aogami #2 Nakiri based on the tips above.
NP400 NP1000 NP3000 (I liked the NP3000 a lot more with an atoma created slurry!) and finished on the BBW, also with an atoma created slurry.

After that I did some light strokes on leather loaded with 0.5 micron diamond paste.

Sheesh that edge is brutal! My sharpening technique isn't perfect and I still have room to improve, but this is impressive. I found a bellpepper in the fridge that was a bit old and had a wrinkly tough skin. I cleaned it, stacked a double layer of it with skin side up and chopped through it with ease. Never had that before!

Thanks for the tips guys!

Nice work! It would've certainly surprised me if you hadn't been able to get BBW working well after a bit of a play around.

What DR said here is also a very good point - I find paper / cardboard the best stropping medium for retaining teeth on edges. Though it's less forgiving if you haven't deburred completely cleanly n stuff.

I think stropping on newspaper will leave the edge with more tooth.
It probably won't cost you anything to try it.

 

[Lezza]

I forgot, stropping on diamond spray or pastes makes toothy edges too.