Months ago a Tsushima Black Jnat came up on the BST. I resisted buying it because the last 6 months have been a period of (slowly) thinning down my collection and besides, my time for honing is less than it used to be. After about 3 months, I still couldn't stop thinking of that stone and so I checked with Gamma to see if it was available and bought it.
It arrived packaged as if it were going into a war zone along with a matching Nagura, both well protected with laquer on the sides and bottoms. I tested out the feel that night, unlike anything else I own, with a test razor, but then had to put it away.
To keep this short, my first efforts went spectacularly awry. I used it as the base stone for a normal nagura progression, but couldn't get a decent edge. Frankly, it felt like I was stumbling along. The feel of the TSB is so different, that I lacked a frame reference for what it was telling me. I went back to Gamma a couple of times for some advice and he had me eliminate a bunch of variables.
This stone is "supposed" to come after the Botan, but that was just a suggestion from Gamma. My first attempt to use the stone only as an intermediate step after Botan didn't go well. It seemed to take the edge back. I put it away for the second night in a row and let things rest.
Today, however, I decided to try something different. I reset the bevel on my Heljestrand with the chosera and then went directly to the TSB. After that, the botan on a Nakayama Iromono followed with the expected progression on the same Iromono.
I took some pics to record what I saw.
Here's the bevel after the chosera 1k
And here's the TSB with slurry. This is less than I used the previous times. Honestly, I don't know at this point if I'm heading in the wrong or the right direction. I can already see it's going to take a while to figure out.
The next shot is of the edge after the TSB. Still visible scratches, but finer and not as uniform or as uniformly spaced as with the chosera. It looked like an improvement, but I wasn't really sure. One of the things I noticed about the TSB is that the feel is "stickier". When I tried to hone at normal speed, I'd get a feel like it was skipping. Once I slowed down, the skipping stopped and it felt better. This might be a generally advisable change in my honing technique, but with the TSB, I really had to do it. I let the loupe tell me when I was done.
This pic is after Botan. It's pretty much what I expect to find after that point in the progression. I haven't shaved with the razor yet so I don't have final results, but it looks good. I did note that instead of having to refresh the Botan slurry 4 or 5 times as I've been having to do recently, I did only one minimal refresh of the botan.
There's a lot to learn about this stone that I don't know. It was odd. Normally when I hit the hones, I know about where I am with the stone I'm on. This one is going to take a while to learn I can't imagine using just a TSB for a finished edge, but I'm dying to figure it out. As much of a mystery as this rock is, I think I'm in love with it.
How do the rest of you use the TSB for a finished edge or is it only a mid grit stone for you?
It arrived packaged as if it were going into a war zone along with a matching Nagura, both well protected with laquer on the sides and bottoms. I tested out the feel that night, unlike anything else I own, with a test razor, but then had to put it away.
To keep this short, my first efforts went spectacularly awry. I used it as the base stone for a normal nagura progression, but couldn't get a decent edge. Frankly, it felt like I was stumbling along. The feel of the TSB is so different, that I lacked a frame reference for what it was telling me. I went back to Gamma a couple of times for some advice and he had me eliminate a bunch of variables.
This stone is "supposed" to come after the Botan, but that was just a suggestion from Gamma. My first attempt to use the stone only as an intermediate step after Botan didn't go well. It seemed to take the edge back. I put it away for the second night in a row and let things rest.
Today, however, I decided to try something different. I reset the bevel on my Heljestrand with the chosera and then went directly to the TSB. After that, the botan on a Nakayama Iromono followed with the expected progression on the same Iromono.
I took some pics to record what I saw.
Here's the bevel after the chosera 1k
And here's the TSB with slurry. This is less than I used the previous times. Honestly, I don't know at this point if I'm heading in the wrong or the right direction. I can already see it's going to take a while to figure out.
The next shot is of the edge after the TSB. Still visible scratches, but finer and not as uniform or as uniformly spaced as with the chosera. It looked like an improvement, but I wasn't really sure. One of the things I noticed about the TSB is that the feel is "stickier". When I tried to hone at normal speed, I'd get a feel like it was skipping. Once I slowed down, the skipping stopped and it felt better. This might be a generally advisable change in my honing technique, but with the TSB, I really had to do it. I let the loupe tell me when I was done.
This pic is after Botan. It's pretty much what I expect to find after that point in the progression. I haven't shaved with the razor yet so I don't have final results, but it looks good. I did note that instead of having to refresh the Botan slurry 4 or 5 times as I've been having to do recently, I did only one minimal refresh of the botan.
There's a lot to learn about this stone that I don't know. It was odd. Normally when I hit the hones, I know about where I am with the stone I'm on. This one is going to take a while to learn I can't imagine using just a TSB for a finished edge, but I'm dying to figure it out. As much of a mystery as this rock is, I think I'm in love with it.
How do the rest of you use the TSB for a finished edge or is it only a mid grit stone for you?
