This is a new stone from Naniwa which for the moment seems to be Japan only:
They call it a "hybrid stone" which from what I can tell means that it is a hybrid of a magnesia and a resin-bound stone. This seems to be the same stone that was a Kezurou-kai special stone a year or two back, and now is on general release in Japan. It is at the same price point as the low grit Kuromaku and a bit thicker (20mm vs 15mm).
I bought this from Kurashige Tools in Tokyo. Really, I just wanted to get a Shapton 1.5k and 5k Pro, but for the same price I could get those in Australia, I got the 1.5k, 5k, the Hayate AND a Naniwa stoneholder from Kurashige, and that's even accounting for the $60US FedEx shipping.
What it is like? I've honed maybe ten razors on it so far, so these are only preliminary impressions. The one I am most certain about is that it is bright banana yellow:
It is a dense whetstone like the Shapton Glass, in that it is pretty slow to lap, as opposed to the Shapton Pros which seem to release the binder more easily when lapping. Also like the Glass Stones, it doesn't take on water whereas the Shapton Pros will take on a little bit at the start of a honing session.
In terms of subjective hardness and wear-resistance, it is somewhere between the (soft) Shapton Glass and the (hard) Shapton Pro. It doesn't have that super hard ceramic feel of the Shapton Pros, but it definitely dishes much less readily than (say) the Shapton Glass 1k or 6k, and fairly little resurfacing is needed to get back to flat even after extended honing.
It is a fast stone. It is pretty good at not embedding swarf. Here it is after a bunch of laps:
and all of that cleared perfectly with just fingers and a wash bottle. Moreover, you can do this multiple times, whereas I find the Shapton Glass will eventually start to embed after a few clearings.
In terms of fineness: I use this between the Shapton Pro 1.5k and Pro 5k. It makes a lot of sense in that role. It doesn't feel like a mini-jump but rather a reasonable halfway house. Shapton and Naniwa do not have the same grit ratings so I guess this is not unexpected, but it seems commensurate to my 3k GS.
Now, what I really like about this stone is the feedback. It just feels classy to use. When you start honing it has a little bit of a yield to it, but in a silky rather than a spongy way. As the edge progresses the feedback starts to feel like a harder stone, but it has this real nice creaminess to it which is very hard to put into words. When I know I'm done I keep honing for a bit longer just because the feedback is so nice. I don't have any other Naniwa stones to compare against, but if I knew there were stones in other grits out there with this feedback I would buy them in a heartbeat.
They call it a "hybrid stone" which from what I can tell means that it is a hybrid of a magnesia and a resin-bound stone. This seems to be the same stone that was a Kezurou-kai special stone a year or two back, and now is on general release in Japan. It is at the same price point as the low grit Kuromaku and a bit thicker (20mm vs 15mm).
I bought this from Kurashige Tools in Tokyo. Really, I just wanted to get a Shapton 1.5k and 5k Pro, but for the same price I could get those in Australia, I got the 1.5k, 5k, the Hayate AND a Naniwa stoneholder from Kurashige, and that's even accounting for the $60US FedEx shipping.
What it is like? I've honed maybe ten razors on it so far, so these are only preliminary impressions. The one I am most certain about is that it is bright banana yellow:
It is a dense whetstone like the Shapton Glass, in that it is pretty slow to lap, as opposed to the Shapton Pros which seem to release the binder more easily when lapping. Also like the Glass Stones, it doesn't take on water whereas the Shapton Pros will take on a little bit at the start of a honing session.
In terms of subjective hardness and wear-resistance, it is somewhere between the (soft) Shapton Glass and the (hard) Shapton Pro. It doesn't have that super hard ceramic feel of the Shapton Pros, but it definitely dishes much less readily than (say) the Shapton Glass 1k or 6k, and fairly little resurfacing is needed to get back to flat even after extended honing.
It is a fast stone. It is pretty good at not embedding swarf. Here it is after a bunch of laps:
and all of that cleared perfectly with just fingers and a wash bottle. Moreover, you can do this multiple times, whereas I find the Shapton Glass will eventually start to embed after a few clearings.
In terms of fineness: I use this between the Shapton Pro 1.5k and Pro 5k. It makes a lot of sense in that role. It doesn't feel like a mini-jump but rather a reasonable halfway house. Shapton and Naniwa do not have the same grit ratings so I guess this is not unexpected, but it seems commensurate to my 3k GS.
Now, what I really like about this stone is the feedback. It just feels classy to use. When you start honing it has a little bit of a yield to it, but in a silky rather than a spongy way. As the edge progresses the feedback starts to feel like a harder stone, but it has this real nice creaminess to it which is very hard to put into words. When I know I'm done I keep honing for a bit longer just because the feedback is so nice. I don't have any other Naniwa stones to compare against, but if I knew there were stones in other grits out there with this feedback I would buy them in a heartbeat.
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