Today's mail call is from Chef's Knives To Go & a lot of thought, research & experience went into this one. I was planning on ordering from my friend Keith V. Johnson over at TomoNagura's Etsy page, but he decided to take a break & do some spring cleaning & I had a limited budget this time around. So after putting in some thought & doing some research which was also based on experience, I decided to go with Suehiro water stones instead of Shapton. My experience with Shapton in general hasn't been too good & here lately, not too many people have been carrying their products. Plus you don't hear any complaints at all about Suehiro & since no one that I know of has tried any of these specific stones on straight razors, I figured why not give them a try. So we will see what happens with the Suehiro Cerax 1K & Suehiro Rika 5K as my low & mid range stones :
They arrived fairly quickly & intact thank goodness:
Here's a photo of the packing slip which states what I bought:
As much as I love my stone holder that I use my Naniwa Professional 600 grit stone on, it's limited to certain sized stones while these are not. These aren't small & can hold a full size water stone:
All in all, I'm tickled pink with these water stones & non skid bench pads. And if these stones are anything like my Suehiro mini 1/3K water stone, I'm in for a treat. I've shaved off of a razor that was finished on a Suehiro 10K & a Suehiro 20K before & the edges were phenomenal. But it's been a really long time & this was before I started honing & long before Anthony Esposito discovered Japanese Naturals which is all he uses to finish on now. The Suehiro Rika 5K is as smooth as glass. It was totally worth the $55 U.S. Dollars price tag:
The Suehiro Rika 5K did not come with a slurry stone but the factory did bevel the corners on both sides of the stone which is a lot less work that I have to do. So I don't have to spend a lot of time rounding off the corners with this specific stone:
The instructions are clear but they are in Japanese:
The Suehiro Rika 5K requires a 10 to 15 minute soak at the minimum according to these illustrations & the website I purchased them from:
The Suehiro Cerax 1K doesn't have the corners rounded as much as the Rika 5K but it's also smooth as glass & was totally worth the $45.00 U.S. Dollar price tag. It also requires a 10 to 15 minute soak at the minimum. Based on the experience I've had with my mighty mini, there is no quick soak. 10 to 15 minutes is the bare minimum from what I've seen so far:
Unlike the Rika 5K, the Cerax 1K did come with a non skid rubber ring & a slurry stone which is really cool. Not too many stones come with a slurry stone & it's a really rough slurry stone as well which also requires soaking:
And for those wondering, the enclosed non skid rubber ring does fit the Rika 5K along with their other full size stones:
I really can't wait to use these stones later on tonight. My progression will be my Naniwa Professional 600 grit, Suehiro Cerax 1K, Suehiro Rika 5K, Shoubandini type 100 Japanese natural which should produce a really fine & smooth edge that will be more than sharp enough to remove my barbed wire type of beard. Chef's Knives To Go also has a true 8K stone that I'm interested in that I've heard some things about but no details have been given & that is the Naniwa Snow White 8K stone. If I like the edges that I get from tonight's progression, I may not get it & go with Suehiro's 8K stones instead.
