OHIRA YAWAGUCHI (SOFT)

INTERPRETATION OF THE STONE

This Ohira Yawa, meaning soft, had a lot of unique characteristics. A medium soft stone, fine with good cutting speed that I found suited single bevel knives really well.

Though a medium soft stone it felt like a finer harder Ohira but produced mud easily like most medium soft stones. 

Overall easy to use with very good feed back, I found it produced mud well when started with little water giving a smooth texture and feel, while sharpening across the entire surface. This stone gives a very nice kasumi finish with good contrast, and brings out very nice detail in both standard cladding like most knives by Tanaka from Sakai, as well as wrought iron and Damascus.

When used for edge sharpening the surface texture of this stone produces a very fine yet toothy edge that i really liked. Not to much drag but just enough to grip the edge and not feel glassy.

Tested on both double bevel blue and white steel gyuto, and blue 1 yanagiba and white 1 Honyaki Yanagiba all worked well but I found single bevel to have the best feeling on this stone, for both Kiriha and Ura.

A great stone for both seasoned sharpeners and sharpeners wanting to try a first well rounded natural stone.