Jnats vs Arks, any preference?

[Dave Sl8r]

Title says most of it, but of course I am looking for some thoughts, and discussion, or just a straight out answer to the title. For me the steel composition of the blade has a lot to do with my choice, but I still have my preference.
Time to freshen up your favorite daily driver.
Hypothetically (for some of us, but not all) you have at your disposal.
A nice set of Soft, hard, translucent and surgical black Arks on the left, a set of medium, to super hard Jnats on the right, and a full set of Gokumyos 10, 15, and 20k in the drawer (just to be fait to the synthetic guys).
In other words, you’ve dropped a few hypothetical dollars on some stones.
Which way do you go, or prefer, and why?

 

[Steve56]

Arkansas (finishing):

Hard to lap/flatten, but once you do it’s a long time before you need to lap again (razor use only)
Need oil according to most.
Need a lot of finishing laps/more time
Good edges that many swear by
Good ones are getting expensive!
Fairly easy to identify a good razor finisher (specific gravity)

Jnat (finishing)

Easy to lap/flatten
Much faster than Ark, some are fast enough to do 1-stone honing (at least after bevel set).
Can finish with 50-80 strokes from midgrit vs 200 or more, some jnats less than that
Good ones have always been expensive
Coarse jnats are less versatile than coarser Arks (Washita, etc) - JMO
Can easily be as fine, but finding one is sometimes trial and error which is expensive.
A suitable one can be used with Mikawa nagura for a full progression

 

[stone and strop]

Title says most of it, but of course I am looking for some thoughts, and discussion, or just a straight out answer to the title. For me the steel composition of the blade has a lot to do with my choice, but I still have my preference.
Time to freshen up your favorite daily driver.
Hypothetically (for some of us, but not all) you have at your disposal.
A nice set of Soft, hard, translucent and surgical black Arks on the left, a set of medium, to super hard Jnats on the right, and a full set of Gokumyos 10, 15, and 20k in the drawer (just to be fait to the synthetic guys).
In other words, you’ve dropped a few hypothetical dollars on some stones.
Which way do you go, or prefer, and why?

Given the options, Jnats hands down.
I've never been a fan of Arks. I can get a damn fine edge on a hard black but they are painfully slow and I don't like using oil or oil substitutes.
If I can use water, that is a plus.
By no means is oil a deal breaker. If I had a fantastic stone, better than my other stones that just worked with oil, I would certainly use oil.
I can get the same and better edges from a Jnat in much less time.
I can get fantastic edges from other naturals as well but they are not in your list.
The razor gets to decide which one to use. It will take a better edge on certain stones.

Its funny, I met with a member from here today who has been using a straight for 50 years. He tells me he has a couple razors that he just can't get a really good edge on. He can get a good edge on them but not as good as many of his other razors. He says " I can get a pretty good edge on a razor too" - Ill bet he can after 50 years!
I told him that they probably don't like the medium you are honing on. He said he had never heard of that so now he is going to try a different medium to see.
I offered to hone any one of them he wished that he was having difficulty with so we will see how he makes out.

 

[Slash McCoy]

I have used both arkies and Jnat and for several reasons I give the nod to a good set of arkies. I have shaved with a couple of very very nice Jnat edges but my own were just pretty good, at best. Nothing to blow your skirt up. With enough time, an arkie edge can be sharper than 1u lapping film or 12k Naniwa. And as for synthetics I do have a set of Naniwas and they are great when freshly lapped, but film is IMHO better. YMMV on all that. For bevel setting, red resin wet/dry sandpaper glued to a 3/4" thick acrylic lapping plate is good good good but not a thing wrong with a coarse Chosera, either. Beware cheap sandpaper in very coarse grits. If the bevel angle is very acute you will often get some chipping. Finer than 1k grit usually not a problem. I have set the bevel on film but even 30u cuts kinda slow.

 

[RenoRichard]

You received a nod for both JNATs and for Arks; with some practice either can give a great edge. I think a good hard and fine JNAT may be a bit easier to master, but they have become pricey. Not sure how easy it is to find a really good one lately. I have an old JNAT, a nice little jet black arkansas, and some Thuringians, which were the easiest of the three for me to master. I normally use synthetics for bevel setting and refinement, with a natural to finish. I touch up with a hand-held Escher (Turingian) with lather every few shaves.

If you go Arks I would skip the translucent, if you can get a good surgical black.

 

[Alum of Potash]

It's sort of like comparing apples and oranges, to follow the old saying. Jnats to water and Arkansas stones to oil for starters. I have never fallen down the Jnat rabbit-hole, apart from the use of a few stones, so I will restrict my remarks to the Arkansas line. I view Arkansas stones as being aggressive used in a dedicated Arkansas progression. If used after a heightened water-stone progression with straight razors, they act along the lines of a steel as used with regularly maintained kitchen knives in my opinion.

Used in a dedicated Arkansas progression, with oil, Arkansas stones can be quite versatile. For example, one side of a translucent Arkansas lapped rough and the other side lapped smooth can cover an awful lot of territory, more than a similarly-lapped black hard "surgical" from my experience. Knowledgeable use of a lily white or no. 1 Wahita is analogous, with the Washitas being more aggressive than the translucent; used together, Washita to translucent they could present an awesome duo.

 

[SliceOfLife]

I use both.

I'm confident no stone can get anything sharper than an arkansas can, but the arkansas is much more skill based at the extremes of its finishing capabilities. Getting a good edge isn't hard. Getting an amazing edge takes some practice.

Jnats are a different worry. They're like random slates. The variance is effectively infinite, and there are countless ones with fine enough grit TO finish... but telling a random slate (or a random jnat) that can get an edge sharp enough to shave and not much else from an exceptional example that is a top tier stone requires practice, use, and experience that generally isn't able to be brought to bear prior to the purchase. So you're stuck trusting seller descriptions, which you usually shouldn't, or utilizing return policies, which no one wants to have to hassle with. In the end, as much as no one wants to do it, overpaying for a stone from a seller that tests extensively and offers a No questions asked return policy is probably the way to go for jnats.... but to truly benefit from that you need to be experienced with a lot of alternatives to actually KNOW if the stone you bought is as exceptional as it ought to be for the price you're paying.

But if you get a good one, it'll be as easy to use as a Thuri and maybe get things a touch sharper... but that's a good one. If you're buying from some eBay hack selling stuff picked out of mine's scrap heap you may buy 500 hones and never see a "good one".


Put it this way, with a few rare exceptions, when you buy a Translucent/Surgical Black/Vintage Hard arkansas... you know what you're getting. When you buy a labeled Escher, you know what you're getting. When you buy a Naniwa 12k, you know what you're getting.

The same is not true of Jnats. There's a mystery and gambling element to them, and the only way to improve your odds in that gamble is to buy from the more reputable, and more expensive sellers.

 

[David]

I'm confident no stone can get anything sharper than an arkansas can,

I agree. I sent Steve a pic a while back of a black Norton with the caption "finest stone on the planet" and I believe it probably is. They are hard to lap, but if you buy from someone like Dans they come plenty flat from what I've seen. They are expensive up front, but you have to take into account that it's going to outlast you and your children and their children. Also the resell value on Arks is higher than almost any other stone. If you buy a translucent or black from Dans and sell it 4 months later you'll get back most of your money. If you buy a Jnat from a reputable dealer and sell it 4 months later you're taking a big hit. Yes they are slower than a jnat, but they aren't painfully slow like some people suggest. I'd wager doing 300 laps on a 10" ark, even for a beginner would only take around 5 minutes. As far as oil goes, for honing razors it's not a must. Water and dish soap, or a number of other non-oil concoctions will work just fine. And finally, like Ian said, it's easier to find a great Ark than it is to find a great Jnat.

With all of that being said, I use them both on a daily basis and don't really have a preference for one over the other. Each has it's place here and I use them as needed or depending on what mood I'm in. When I'm honing a Japanese knife I'll almost always finish on a Jnat, if it's a western blade I'll most likely reach for an Ark depending on what kind of edge I'm after.

 

[Biglo13]

Almond joy or mounds? Sometimes I feel like nut sometimes I dont.....
i love them both.
i got lucky and my first 2 jnats are stellar performers.but depending on source jnat can be a gamble.
i like arks also different kind of edge. Can be very slow.
arks can take and sometimes need high lap counts, Good for therapeutic, recreational honing
both Require different touch
each imparts different personality
life is short get both!

 

[RenoRichard]

Alum of Potash's post on the possibility of stretching one Arkansas effectively into two stones was really clever and informative. I haven't tried this, but now will. Thanks!

...Jnats There's a mystery and gambling element to them, and the only way to improve your odds in that gamble is to buy from the more reputable, and more expensive sellers.

Agreed, much more of a gamble with JNATs. Plus, once you've worn the stamps off the stone, there is no real way to prove it's origin. My one JNAT, a Nakayama Asagi finisher, has long ago lost it's stamping. Of course, a smarter person than me might have taken photos to help ID it.

 

[Steve56]

You guys just don’t have the right jnats, lol. They're like cotis, you have to try a number of them and keep the ones that suit you and your razors. Finding fine jnats and cotis is not cheap, especially these days with natural whetstone prices at stratospheric levels. I would not recommend either to beginners that just want to hone their razor, only if the whetstones are going to be part of the hobby. So in this respect, a good ark is more of a sure thing, IOW, cheaper.

 

[stone and strop]

Yes they are slower than a jnat, but they aren't painfully slow like some people suggest. I'd wager doing 300 laps on a 10" ark, even for a beginner would only take around 5 minutes.

Firstly, not looking for an argument.

With a typical finish of 3-400 strokes for finishing I would call that VERY slow.
I do not have any hones that come close to that as a necessity.

Doing 300 strokes in 5 minutes is a full up and back in 1 second on a 10 in. hone. That's pretty quick - certainly not a new honer quick and especially not on an ark. One slip will end the session and send you packin'.
Its not an amount of time but the number of strokes to get to the same conclusion with other stones.
I have an extremely hard stone from a rock hound that made a few hones and its just like an Ark but WAY faster.
I like the finish from an Ark and I like honing but that many laps seems to take the fun out of it and for me, the edge is not any better.
The fact that the Ark can only be used at the very last stage and nothing else and the Jnat can much more diverse puts it much further ahead.
Yes, they are more varied than Arks but buying from a trusted source narrows that considerably.
Price is a wash IMO.

 

[David]

Firstly, not looking for an argument.

I only argue with my wife.
Agree to disagree. Ian posted the video where he went from a bevel setter to finish on an ark pretty quickly. And on a 10” ark you wouldn’t need 300 laps so the finish would be much much faster. 3-4 minutes maybe. I spend that much time finishing on my cotis and jnats. I use arks all the time on knives and the amount of metal they remove is impressive for how fine they are. Of course a lot of that depends on how they are dressed. If you dress one side coarse and one side fine that gives you more range.

 

[SliceOfLife]

I'll be honest, even if I'm deliberately being slow, I doubt I go much less than 1 lap a second. I think people underestimate the length of a second when dealing with rapid repetitive tasks.


Just timed myself a few times going slow, controlled two handed on a bench... ~2 sec per lap.

 

[Biglo13]

Firstly, not looking for an argument.


......the fact that the Ark can only be used at the very last stage.....

i use arks for multiple stages, again how its finished, how it is used, slurry or not, quality of specific stone....... i just shaved with razor bevel set to mid range on vintage washita, prefinished with white trans with slurry, then finished on same white white trans.

 

[stone and strop]

i use arks for multiple stages, again how its finished, how it is used, slurry or not, quality of specific stone....... i just shaved with razor bevel set to mid range on vintage washita, prefinished with white trans with slurry, then finished on same white white trans.

You slurry your Ark?
I believe we are just talking finishing - Ark vs Jnats
As Davis says agree to disagree.
Using a hard Black to finish a razor from a high grit is slow enough, finishing one from the mid range - no thanks.
Davis also mentioned Ian finishing from bevel set on a hard Ark. A lot of pressure would be required to move things along and the end result I'm certain would not be as good as a normal progression. It rarely is when using one stone.
Almost anything like that can be accomplished but why would you given the alternatives?

 

[David]

Just curious, if you hone a razor up to say, 8k and then move to a jnat, how long does it take you to finish on the jnat?

 

[SliceOfLife]

A fast hollow finish on a Jnat off 8k takes me about 2 minutes, including wetting the stone and slurrying.
(~10s wetting, ~30s slurrying, ~1min 20 honing)
A fast hollow finish on an Ark off 8k takes me about 2 minutes, including adding oil and wiping the stone.
(~5sec adding oil, ~1min 40sec honing, ~3 sec wiping)

(there is no shrug emoji)


You want fast? My Thuri's, PDSO's, Apache, and several coti's I've got can finish off 8k in a minute or less. Maybe I'm buying the wrong jnat's but I've never owned a Jnat that wow'ed me with speed... except stones that were prefinishers at best.

In general no stone that I felt compelled to slurry for finishing would be described as fast by me. Then again... some people slurry Thuri's... I call those people silly.

 

[stone and strop]

Just curious, if you hone a razor up to say, 8k and then move to a jnat, how long does it take you to finish on the jnat?

Stone depending 50-60 Avg. water only.
My Coti is some what slow for me. 80-100 water only from 8k. Its one of my slowest.
I only use slurry on my hardest Jnat - gives a smoother edge with a little slurry.

A fast hollow finish on a Jnat off 8k takes me about 2 minutes, including wetting the stone and slurrying.
(~10s wetting, ~30s slurrying, ~1min 20 honing)
A fast hollow finish on an Ark off 8k takes me about 2 minutes, including adding oil and wiping the stone.
(~5sec adding oil, ~1min 40sec honing, ~3 sec wiping)

(there is no shrug emoji)


You want fast? My Thuri's, PDSO's, Apache, and several coti's I've got can finish off 8k in a minute or less. Maybe I'm buying the wrong jnat's but I've never owned a Jnat that wow'ed me with speed... except stones that were prefinishers at best.

In general no stone that I felt compelled to slurry for finishing would be described as fast by me. Then again... some people slurry Thuri's... I call those people silly.

I use Thuri's with water only as well but I think we are in the minority.
I don't think Jnats are especially fast either, for me they are about normal.

 

[Toro Blanco]

Wow! This is very eye opening. Let me start off by saying I love Akies especially washitas and the real hard arks. I still have a butterscotch translucent exclusively for straight razors but the rest I use them mainly for knives.
When I decided to try out a jnat, you read alot about how varied they are so I went the tested route. I remembered when lapping washitas that they varied to so much. I did not want to do it with expensive jnats.
Tested a couple out until I found a very fine and slow but she was smooth and creamy lovely feeling stone. It was a Hatatoshi too that was a plus but I wanted a bench stone not a barbers sized one. I kept it and glad I did, to date my smoothest stone but it is on the slow side. For my next jnat I wanted a fast Nakayama capable of going from bevel set to midrange. I was trying to match it up to my first very fine keeper Hatatoshi. By that time I liked the feel of Nakayamas, I had tried a couple of Ozuko's and Shobu's and settled on Nakayamas so it took some time but got a fast one. The thing was it not what I call a true finisher but she was fast. I have a couple of japanese knives so I kept it.

In my search of Nakayama's I heard a lot about those Maruksa's and was after one. I remembered that Alex G. Had posted a bunch of old Nakayama kanji and found one of those rare stamped one's. It was not clear in the pictures but he accepted returns and his Ebay store specialized in fountain pens. I later found out he purchased it in the early 60's when he went to college and studied coligrafy in Kyoto, Japan. The stone was too soft for his needs, saving it for me.
I took it to Alex Gilmore to get tomo matched by a master and he tested it for me.
She came in as a Gem! From a bevel set of a 1000 king! 28 laps! He did it right in front of me. Showing me every seven laps the progress on his microscope. I wrote about this in a other thread but seeing others post 60-80 from 8k and I can go from bevel set to hh3 in 28 blows my mind. Just like Steve said " you guys just dont have the right jnats".
I was in the same place until a little over a year ago. So I definately know what it is like. I purchased a lot of stones too.