Look what I ordered.

[Lemwise]

I really wanted to try a Ohira Suita stone and this one had a decent price so I ordered it [big grin] It's on the thin side at just 14mm thick so I'm probably going to stabilise it by glueing it to a piece of aluminium. But even tho it's thin it should last many years with consistent use of the entire surface.

 

[Michael Kellough]

That's a cool looking stone.

 

[leakyroof]

What grit range is it?  I'm assuming Natural Stone, not synthetic?

 

[Lemwise]

It's a natural stone. A synthetic doesn't look like this [wink] And you can't really talk about a grit range with a Shiro Suita (or any natural stone) as the sharpening material breaks down during use and becomes finer and finer. But for the sake of argument, lets say it starts somewhere around 8000.

 

[leakyroof]

It's a natural stone. A synthetic doesn't look like this [wink] And you can't really talk about a grit range with a Shiro Suita (or any natural stone) as the sharpening material breaks down during use and becomes finer and finer. But for the sake of argument, lets say it starts somewhere around 8000.

  That's why I used the Term range.  [thumbs up]

 

[RKA]

Looking forward to reading your impressions after you have a go with it!  And thanks for adding another rabbit hole to my collection.  I spent 30 minutes reading and browsing after seeing this because I had no idea what it was.

 

[Lemwise]

I spent 30 minutes reading and browsing after seeing this because I had no idea what it was.

Sounds familiar [big grin]
If you're interested in a Ohira Suita (it's actually an Ohira Shiro Renge Suita) at a decent price your best bet is Shinichi Watanabe. He's a 6th generation master blade smith and quite famous. Go to "special", scroll down and you'll see the stones section. He's also fast to answer e-mails and he has stones that are not (yet) on his site. He selects and tests every stone himself.

 

[Lemwise]

Okay, so the Ohira Suita is basically useless for my needs. I was told it's a fast stone but it isn't, at least not compared to my coticules. It hardly removes any metal from my chisels and it's too hard. I have 2 fast coticules that are at least 10-15 times faster and they produce a very good, very sharp edge in the 8000 grit range. Apparently an Ohira Suita is a relatively fast stone only when compared to other very fine grit Japanese natural stones. I'm returning the stone and I will chalk this up as a learning experience.