Japanese Waterstones

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Steve Maskery

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Hi all,
I have a couple of Japanese Waterstones, which, quite frankly, I've never really got on with, I usually use my old oilstones, or SiC Scary Sharp.

Having just bought the new Veritas MkII Honing Jig (very nice thank you) I thought I'd ressurect them, but the trouble is, I haven't a clue what grade they are.

One is a 2-sided combo stone, unboxed, sage green on one side and terracotta red on the other. The other is a sandstone yellow colour and has NO.A3-1 stamped on the box. The green is the coarsest and the yellow the finest.

Can anyone help me to identify the grit numbers, please? Are the colours significant? Does that code number mean anything?

All help gratefully accepted.

Cheers
Steve
 
Steve
For what its worth, red is usually 800-1000 and the sandstone one around 6000 grit.
Sorry its not super conclusive but it should become obvious with a little testing.
Hope this is of helps
Philly :D
 
Steve Maskery":13h4awpf said:
One is a 2-sided combo stone, unboxed, sage green on one side and terracotta red on the other.
I think that might be the 250/1000 grit King combo.

Cheers, Alf
 
Philly, Alf, thank you both very much. I knew what order they should be used in, but I didn't know where they were on the scale. That's helpful.
TVM.
S
 
Alf":2unjifzt said:
Steve Maskery":2unjifzt said:
One is a 2-sided combo stone, unboxed, sage green on one side and terracotta red on the other.
I think that might be the 250/1000 grit King combo.

Cheers, Alf

I agree with this. my 250/1000 is grenn/terracotta

my 1000/6000 has a terracotta 1000 grit too
 
My yellow colored Japanese waterstone is 4000 grit, as is my 8000 grit stone.. My 1000 grit stone is a reddish brown. My Norton stone is green and is 250 grit. I'm not sure if there is a "standard" so to speak for the colors though.
 
So how can you tell the difference between them, Ken? I would have thought that at that level they must look pretty much the same, don't they? Or is it obvious when you actually use them?
CHeers
Steve
 
Steve you will notice the difference when you use them, they are easyish to tell apart

Bean
 
Steve,

Take any piece of scrap iron you can find. Start working it on the stones a bit. You will fast find out which is the coarse grit, fine grit etc. If you go down in grit you'll know it real fast. On the fine grit stone your iron will just glide as if you are not doing anything. This is part of the polishing process. I stop at 8000 grit. When I hit my irons on that it's as if i'm on ice. Real easy to push the iron across. If I were to go down from 4000 to say 1000, I would feel the drag as well as hear it.

Once you figure out wich stone is which, mark them on the side with a perm marker.

Hope this makes sense to you!

I should also add that my 8000 grit stone is a little lighter in color than my 4000. They are both marked by me also, but I can tell them apart with out looking at the mark.
 
Hi Ken
Thanks for that. As I pointed out earlier, I know which is the coarsest and which the finest, etc, it was the absolute grit numbers I was wanting. But 250/1000/4000 or 8000 sounds OK to me. I'm still not in love with them, but I'll persevere.

Thank you to all for your replies.

Cheers
Steve
 
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