Kitayama 8000 grit stone opinions and experiences?

[Tony Shea]

I was recently checking out some stones over at Chef Knives and stumbled upon the Kitayama 8000. Has anyone had any experience with this stone for sharpening tools? It seems to be a pretty highly rated stone but more so with people sharpening knives, not chisels and plane blades. How would one compare this stone with say a Shapton pro 8000 or even the 15000? I assume the Kitayama may have a better feel to it but the Shapton will stay flat longer. These new ceramics just seem to lack the feel of some of the stones of past. I have not any experience with Shaptons, just an assumption really. Any opinions are welcome about this Kitayama.

[David Weaver]

ok, no surprise maybe that I have this stone and the shapton pro 15000 (I don't have the 8k shapton, but I have the 5k). The shapton 15k is a finer stone from what I can tell, which might seem like a given since the grits are so far apart, but you never know.

It's a good traditional stone, you can make it muddy. It's soft, but not falling apart soft, and you can glaze the surface of it over a little if you freehand only and don't do anything to abrade the surface (i.e., don't use a nagura or raise a slurry).

You can't make a shapton muddy. I would much rather sharpen a knife on the kitayama than on a shapton, chisels or planes and i'm indifferent.

I don't know if it will cut M2, but it cuts A2 and D2 and O1 just fine.

Maybe a tiny bit slower than a king 8000, but also maybe a tiny bit finer, too. As fine as you will ever need for woodworking.

[Tony Shea]

I thought you might respond that you have this stone David, and I already knew that you have the Shapton 15000. I'm sure I know the answer and you pretty much indicated it but for WW tools your edge of the 15000 Shapton is def better and maybe a bit sharper than off the Kitayama? Not that I really need this stone at all as I have a Sigma Power 10000 coming from Stu in the next week or so. But then again who can have too many stones to play around with? I'm actually kind of looking at getting something in the 1000 grit or lower, maybe say a 600 or 800 grit as I alread have a Naniwa SS 1000. The SS's are def not my favorite though therefore wouldn't be against replacing it with another 1000. What's a decent 1000 grit stone that you'd reccomend? Is it still a Shapton Pro?

[David Weaver]

Tony - missed this one at first!

I like the shapton pros at 1k because:
* I don't like to flatten anything more often than necessary
* they cut carbon steel fast, they cut M2 type high speed steel acceptably if it isn't all you use (see any of the previous conversations about microbevels and hollow grounds - if they don't cut a full flat bevel face that quickly, it doesn't affect me - I'd never do that even with carbon steel).
* I hate soaking a stone unless I'm going to be in the shop for a while

gluing the pro 1k to a base of some sort is a must. More mass is nice. It's a nice stone to be able to bear down hard on (i glue all of my cheap stones ($<200?) to bases if they don't come on them, even big ones like besters).

I haven't tried stu's stones. He says they're better than shaptons, so they probably are, especially in the higher ranges where a tiny bit of softness and swarf removal would do the lazy user a bit of good on a shapton. And on the high grits, there is no need to discuss soaking because few high-grit stones need it (the chosera 10k comes to mind as a stone that works much better with soaking).

If you have a 10k SP coming from stu, you have no reason to have a kitayama stone, I'd think, especially if you're getting the SP hard and not the one that he sells that LV also sells (the one that's all abrasive). Really, either way, because slight out-of-flatness on the final stone doesn't waste your time and energy like it would on a coarser stone.'

Anyway, to answer the question, the edge off of a clean 15k pro is better than the edge off of a clean kityama stone in my experience. It is good enough for anything, all the way down to getting shavings off of a plane iron that are at or slightly under .0005", which is below practical everyday use.

Any of the stones we're talking about is plenty fine for everyday use. You only ever work back to those tiny shavings in real work if you have tearout problems, tool limitations and time. Otherwise, you'd drive yourself nuts.