JNS new red aoto

Received the new red stone from Maximo's last week sale on Monday and have been playing with it for a bit.

It is quite as Maxim describes, fairly similar to red Atagoyama, both in hardness and fineness. I think it is quite a performer for wide bevel (single bevel knives included) carbon knives; tested with Hide blue #1 yanagiba, and Sakai Takayuki blue #2 usuba so far. With semi-stainless Yoshikane SKD, cladding gummed up the stone a little bit easier.

Now for a quick photo comparison within the stone line up that I usually use.

Let's start with superb JNS 800. It is quite easy to get dark even finish with this stone.




Next is bestor 1200. Didn't spend much time on this, so finish is so so. If I spend time, a greyish even finish is obtainable.




The famous, prone to crack, synthetic aoto. Result could have been more even, but cracks interfere with sharpening and polishing a bit, although I tried to polish between crack lines.




New JNS red aoto. It can produce nice and even finish easily, not as dark as JNS 800.




Red Atagoyama. This is still a better stone that JNS red aoto tries to imitate, very close though. I still find that atagoyama feels better and a bit easier to use.




For a final comparison on finish, a hakka. If spending a bit more time, I can get a nice even, matt, relatively dark, fine finish through out the blade. There are some patches of streak in this.

 

Nice report. Do you stop with the Hakka or do you use a finer finisher after the Hakka sometimes?

Cool to have the sharpening Forum, just seen it.

 

Very nice report, adding the photos was terrific.

 

Enjoyed reading this, also good to see that there is a dedicated area for sharpening

 

Great comparison, thanks for posting.

 

Thank everyone.

For yanagiba, usually I would take it a further to my Ohira suita. Because it takes some amount of time to get and even polish the whole knife with that stone due to being harder and finer finisher, so I stopped at hakka yesterday. There is nothing wrong finishing a yanagiba with a hakka though. Hiramasa last night was happy with hakka edge.

 

Good info. At some point i'll get a nice Hakka as well.

 

Spent a few minutes to repolish Hide kensaki yanaigba with Ohira Suita from Maxim. Finish is semi-mirror/hazy mirror for hagane, and light greyish, mirrorish when views on an angle for jigane.

 

Great review, thanks. Would the hakka be too soft to use on double bevels---gyutos and such? That is, is it easy to gouge?

 

Long time, no see, Bill. My specimen from Maxim is not too soft, but it still is quite muddy. I don't think I have gouged this hakka though. Takashima from Jon was softer and even more muddy, and I did gouge it a few times.

I often use hakka to finish gyuto, petty, and chuka all the time, often just for putting on koba after stones like red atagoyama.

 

I'm on the fence about ordering this stone, any other info would be appreciated! Thanks for the review schanop!

 

Yes, it's been a while. I got kicked off the "other" forum for questioning some of its......practices.

Thanks for the hakka wisdom, looks like another stone to add to the list.

 

I was going to ask 'when the Ohira Suita produced a semi-mirror/hazy mirror for hagane, what stone would be needed for mirror?' but then looked at my Shigefusa yanagiba. 'semi-mirror/hazy mirror' describes the original finish, kind of.

 

TaJ - from what I know, if you're dealing with naturals they're basically going to be more on the side of semi-mirror/hazy as opposed to mirror, because though the scratches they make are shallower they are also less consistent and not uniform, and so reflect light differently. If you want mirror, I think you have to go with very fine synthetics and even polishing powder. Either that or experiment with finer naturals together with fine nagura for slurry or synth polishing powder. At any rate, if you currently like the synth mirror style you might still grow to like the natural finish more; it's 'warmer' I think.

 

More about the red aoto - I've got one too and I like it. Very nice size and colour, and has a good feel. You can get a good finish, and it's probably a decent substitute if you'd hoped to get a good 'red aoto' Atagoyama from JNS before the supply dried up. Yes, I did feel it gummed up a bit (carbon only in my case; small diamond slurry stone cleaned it up quickly, but was a distraction) and of course if you have a good natural red aoto, they're going to be better than the synth and generally more useful and flexible. Cost more, though. Along with the finer 'green aoto' from JNS - also no longer available - the alternative of course would be to get a traditional aoto - a Tamba or so-called 'blue' aoto - somewhere.

Chanop - also agree with you on the JNS 800 as being superb. So easy to use and get a great looking finish. Wish an identical finer version were also available. ... Also, nice looking big Ohira. Was it rated as an Lv3.5?

 

http://www.japanesenaturalstones.com/red-aoto-a297/

Speak of the devil, one just came up!

 

Not anymore!

 

Someone snagged that one already. As for the semi-mirror finish, i like it that way.

 

From what I can tell, I think the 'red aoto' - the original, natural stone - was an excellent discovery by Maxim/JNS., and I'm sure he sold a lot. There will be other stones out there though. I think there always are, and always other options.

 

Keep watching Maxim's site. He should have something in the making. There should be plenty of more cool things appearing after his Japan trip.

My Ohira was rated at 3.5, Asteger.

Re gummed up on synthetic red aoto. What I observed was that the black gummy swarf builded up quite easily. But if it did, it still would go away easily with finger smudge. The same thing happened in Max's own video around 3.50" - 4" in .