Thread: King sharpening stones

This may assist Japanese water stones: King and Sun Tiger

Great. Thanks China.

They are all water stones and will need a good soaking in water.

They are also relatively soft (especially the coarser grades) and will need regular flattening if you want straight edges. I got rid of my King stones pretty quickly and went to diamond plates, finishing on a Shapton 12000

There is one follow-up to that - the red kings require a soaking, but they can live in water permanently (just add a drop or two of bleach once in a while to keep the water from getting rank). They are soft and kind of sloppy, but you can just put them in your water storage and wipe them off and good to go again. While they do not retain flatness, they do wear quickly (and never need to be lapped to keep cutting), and you can develop the technique to keep them flat just in regular use by allowing the item being sharpened to work over the edges of the stone. They cut consistently and won't really get aggressive with an edge that droops off of the stone like some hard stones can.

I never soaked the 6000 or 8000 stones (the fine stones are tan) as they don't really need it and are soft.

If you do want to use them just in one spot, then they need flattening often if they're being used on the backs of tools. Several times a session if you're preparing a new tool.

As to the numerical grades, 800/1000/1200 - i'm not sure how far apart they are in fineness, but if you can't tell, then it doesn't really matter. I used an 800 and a 1000 and for day to day sharpening, don't think I could tell a difference.

The tan stones can be deciphered by what they do. Only the 8000 grit stone leaves a finish that's close to a bright polish. The other two leave a hazy finish because they're not fine enough. For lack of a better way to put it, the 6000 grit stone is only slightly less expensive than the 8k stone, it's no faster and it's a real for tools. There may be some effect they were going for with knives (which is sometimes the case with waterstones when a progression makes no sense for tools or when one stone is drastically weird compared to another. Bester 1000 and 1200 are like that. The former is soft and not that aggressive, and the latter is harder and very aggressive, actually faster than the former. I think the soft stones are designed for knife sharpeners as sharpening knives on bone hard stones is kind of like...well, rubbing two bones together. The soft feel is nice and often results in a better looking finish.

That is also what I'm looking for.