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First Jnat. It’s gorgeous but I have a few questions.

1.Take pictures of the stamps for provenance, but if you want to use it they are toast. I recommend a 400 atoma lapping plate and or higher if it is in your budget. I have an 800 and 1200 plate for final finish and creating slurry.

2. I would not waste any slurry stone, if your base stone is hard. Soak your nagura in a small bit of water on a flatish side. Then use the same spot to develop slurry. It will naturally develop a flat spot during use. If your scratching your base stone, then you could flatten out a spot.

3. I normally tape the top and seal all sides. Once you are done with your sealing, lap the top and then champfer the edges of the stone. You will be good to go from there.

4. Experiment with both nagura progressions and or just slurry from your basestone. You will not know what your base stone is capabale of until you try it. JNAT slurry is friable and will break down over use. So feel free to work that slurry, in theory it will continue to get finer during use.

For your chip address this after lapping your stone and champfering your edges. See how much is left and you can address with a small file and some sandpaper. I would not try and lap out a small chip near the edge. Just sand below it and it should not impact your honing. It will naturally work itself out as you use and continue to lat the stone.

Congrats on your first JNAT its a beaut, alot of good knowledge in this forum to get you sorted!

Good advice, lap the honing surface and chamfer the efges. If the chip is still there, just smooth the edges of it with sandpaper. You can seal the edges and/or back anytime, just make sure the stone is dry.

I’d lap a spot flat on the nagura, you can use sandpaper on a flat surface if you don’t want to use a diamond plate. I’d also run a piece of sandpaper over all the nagura surfaces, bits of grit could fall off into your sluryy,

Nice looking hones, congrats !

If you want to save the stamps, you could always lap the bottom and make that the honing surface.

That would be way too much work for the generic stamps on the stone. Just lap it and start using it.

take a pic of the stamps, lap it, and get honing. The stamps could well be fake anyways. I daresay most stamps on stones are recent. If not there are sure a lot of freshly mined Nakayamas...
Thank you all for the great help! I’ve started the process and posted some updates in my other thread, but essentially:

I’ve taken all photos before and during the process. I lapped it flap and was able to remove the “chip”. I’m applying my third coat of cashew lacquer + distilled turpentine today, with light sanding between coats. I may, or may not stop at the third coat… it’s kind of tedious but I’d really like to get 5 total coats in. I’m just not sure I want to wait that long for the cure lol.

I’ll post final pictures when done. The black cashew lacquer looks realllllly good, but pictures probably won’t show its true glory.
 
"Fake" is really hard to discern now adays. Is a wholesaler faking the stamp if they have a stockpile of old Nakayama that they mark as such? Difficult to say, but a healthy does of skepticism is always valuable as you can't really authenticate between vendors with old stockpiles honestly marking stock or unknown stockpiles being marked with good names. Just worth noting that newly stamped stones may not necessarily be incorrectly labelled.

It gets even more confusing with the concept in Japanese culture of "naming things for uses" such as Nakayama sometimes being a synonym for good. It's not exclusive to Japan (just as Coke in many places means Cola) but it is a bit more prolific there.
Thanks for the moral support! I doubt they are fake stamps, as the seller is pretty reputable. I’m not worried about that.
 
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