Well, first off I already own these stones from my knife sharpening days. But after last nights attempt at honing I believe these are grossly over rated in the grit dept.
I have a King 8K stone, 1/6K combination specifically. They have been lapped/flattened as of last night. The blade was an ebay junker w&b blade...under my 7x eye loupe I could see pitting in the blade edge so it was pretty obvious that my 1K wasnt going to take care of it all...but towards the toe the metal was pretty clean so I decided to go ahead with the hone, just to see what everything looked like as I progressed along.
First, I've read several comments about them being over-rated in the grit....Ie a 8K is actually closer to a 6K, a 6K more like a 4K etc. Anyone else experienced this? I realize that a 1K to 6K jump is rather large and probably should have a grit size in between but all in all it actually cleaned up pretty good, just spent a little extra time on the 6K.
Now after the 8K...it looked like the edge hadn't be very refined yet. Had nice even smooth scratch pattern, but nothing like my semi pro honed and pro honed (ambrose) blades in my collection. Bottom line is if I have to venture a guess its not an 8K finish by any means.
At this point I had my doubts...the only finisher hone I have currently is a 12K chinese so I go ahead and proceed with that and complete many laps on this hone (100+) Now I know some feel the 12K hone isnt really 12K, but whatever it is, it is beyond the 8K king by a bit.....it started to polish out but it was a super slow process and it still wasn't looking very pretty. I have a feeling I was trying to polish out 6K scratches with a 10K stone.
Overall I am pretty disappointed with the king stones and will be looking for a new complete setup. I very rarely used these on my knives because I never did like the outcome of the blades, always ended up using my hard soft/surgical black arkansas set. Could be I was just more familiar with oil stones at the time.
I'm thinking about a 1K, 3K, 5K chosera, 8K Snow white, and when it arrives, my j-nat oozuka nashiji stone to polish it all out. Or would you recommend a stone in between the Snow white and the J-nat?
I have a King 8K stone, 1/6K combination specifically. They have been lapped/flattened as of last night. The blade was an ebay junker w&b blade...under my 7x eye loupe I could see pitting in the blade edge so it was pretty obvious that my 1K wasnt going to take care of it all...but towards the toe the metal was pretty clean so I decided to go ahead with the hone, just to see what everything looked like as I progressed along.
First, I've read several comments about them being over-rated in the grit....Ie a 8K is actually closer to a 6K, a 6K more like a 4K etc. Anyone else experienced this? I realize that a 1K to 6K jump is rather large and probably should have a grit size in between but all in all it actually cleaned up pretty good, just spent a little extra time on the 6K.
Now after the 8K...it looked like the edge hadn't be very refined yet. Had nice even smooth scratch pattern, but nothing like my semi pro honed and pro honed (ambrose) blades in my collection. Bottom line is if I have to venture a guess its not an 8K finish by any means.
At this point I had my doubts...the only finisher hone I have currently is a 12K chinese so I go ahead and proceed with that and complete many laps on this hone (100+) Now I know some feel the 12K hone isnt really 12K, but whatever it is, it is beyond the 8K king by a bit.....it started to polish out but it was a super slow process and it still wasn't looking very pretty. I have a feeling I was trying to polish out 6K scratches with a 10K stone.
Overall I am pretty disappointed with the king stones and will be looking for a new complete setup. I very rarely used these on my knives because I never did like the outcome of the blades, always ended up using my hard soft/surgical black arkansas set. Could be I was just more familiar with oil stones at the time.
I'm thinking about a 1K, 3K, 5K chosera, 8K Snow white, and when it arrives, my j-nat oozuka nashiji stone to polish it all out. Or would you recommend a stone in between the Snow white and the J-nat?