The next stone I use in this sequence is the Yaginoshima asagi, easily one of my most popular polishing stones - and for good reason. Not as hard as the Ozuku, Nakayama or some other mines' asagis, it is just right in hardness for knife edges, yet still hard enough and slow wearing enough to use for straight razor honing. Given the proper preparation with preceding stones not to leave large scratches, this stone produces a very nice kasumi finish. It is an easier stone to use to accomplish this task than stones harder than this.
While the Yaginoshima Asagi can certainly be used without a tomonagura, it certainly can be used with one as well. In this video I demonstrate the use of the tomonagura, making a pure Yaginoshima Asagi stone slurry before beginning to sharpen the knife. This allows one to start with a finer slurry and a 'cushion' of slurry between the blade and the stone. Thus we are starting at a finer finish than we would on the stone alone. I do this because the preceding stone, the Meara has already elevated the level of refinement past just the lowest level of refinement the Yaginoshima Asagi is capable of producing. [Hope this makes sense. If not please ask.] Please note that the use of a tomonagura or stone of the same composition as the main stone produces a mud finer than the sort of mud generated by the use of a diamond plate. Earlier I specifically used an Atoma 140 for generating mud on the Kyushu Ohmura because I WANTED a coarse mud. Here I wanted to begin with a fine mud withuniformly ground stone particles of a single type. This is not to say that you can't cautiously try muds from a different slurry stone. So for instance I have used a Yaginoshima nagura stone on a Meara with good results too and other combinations. Perhaps this is a topic to go into in some depth for another discussion.
Now when we begin to sharpen / polish the knife, the slurry density is high so the abrasion rate for the stone is high as well and the slurry goes from a white cloud color to a 'stormy' cloud color fairly quickly. The final result with this stone is quite pleasing aesthetically and functionally.
The final level of refinement is quite nice from the Yaginoshima Asagi, but for this video sequence, I'm going to go a bit more refined, using a Shinden suita, sometimes referred to as the 'Queen' of suitas. These have unfortunately become quite rare. I have a few, but seriously doubt that I will be seeing many more of these in the future. Sigh :(
Contact me if you are interested in acquiring one of these. ksskss at earthlink.net
I also have a limited supply of these for the EdgePro.
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Ken
