This day has been coming for quite some time now. Basically after owning and using what's left of my Norton 4/8K combo and learning about grit and micron ratings, I've come to the conclusion that my Norton 4/8K combo is no better than my Suehiro Rika 5K at the most. But that's not the only reason why I had to order this. I noticed that what was left of my Norton stone had some massive amounts of flex in the stone itself with almost zero pressure. That can mean only one thing. The Norton stone is totally useless now. Can't hone on it due to the flex and can't clean or lap it for the same reason so I had no choice but to order a new 8K stone:
I narrowed the choices down to 2 stones based upon my friends Frank Misa and Keith V. Johnson's recommendations and Keith's latest synthetic 8K video. The first I chose right out of the gate was this original Naniwa Snow White 8K Junpaku which was based on Keith's top ten synthetic 8K stone video. The second choice is Shapton Pro 8K :
The only reason I didn't get the Suehiro Rika 8K was because the amount of soak time it needs to be effective which is 1 hour. The Shapton glass stones are over priced for no more stone than you get and all I would have to do is drop them and that would be it. So unless something happens to to this specific stone that I ordered, this was my last stone purchase. If I have to break down and buy another 8K stone then I will get a Shapton 8K Pro to replace this one if something happens. I've already met my go to finisher which is the Belgium Coticule. And I've already got plenty of natural finishing stones to choose from other than my Coticule if I wanted to.
