TSUKINOWA

INTERPRETATION OF THE STONE

This Honsuita from Tsukinowa completely shocked me, I’ve looked for many stones that could give similar or better results to my finest Uchigumori, but I’ve always gone back to Uchigumori. This Honsuita was the opposite, so much so that I would use it to replace some of my best Uchigumori. It has a real smooth, clean feel across the stone, producing a dark grey to black slurry after a few strokes, excellent ease of use and polishing power with even results with every pass.

Of medium hardness and fine grain, with good contact feel and ease of use this stone is well suited to both single and double bevel kitchen knife polishing, both blade road(Kiriha) and full blade polishing.

Tested on Tamahagane Honyaki, Genkai white 1 Honyaki, standard soft sanmai white 1 from Sakai, Nantetsu and Kiyoshi Kato sanmai. The stone performed excellent across all steel both for polishing and edge sharpening. I found it best with Honyaki, especially Tamahagane and Woots, as well as fine folded Nantetsu and Rentetsu. It brought out fine details as well as texture in steel. For sanmai, giving the core steel of a dark light hazy mirror finish with detail and grain.

Best used with little water for both polishing and edge sharpening. I tend to start most of my stones with a surface texture from a worn 600 grit Atoma but also like this stone with a surface texture from a Nagura, washing of all slurry.

Overall an exceptional polishing stone, another one I would definitely add to my progression and will regret not keeping.