Chu Nagura Japanese Natural Toishi Whetstone

Approximate Dimensions/Weight:
138 mm (5.43") long × 50 mm (1.97") wide × 30 mm (1.18") tall / 450 grams

Extremely rare and flawless piece of Chu Nagura with plenty of surface area to hone, sharpen and polish on. Small pieces of Authentic Chu Nagura are getting harder to find as the years pass and koppa like this are absolute treasures. The gorgeous chiseling on the side of the stone adds character and charm. This is a pure white chu. The honing sensation on water only feels very dry at first and the stone should be properly hydrated during use as it will soak up water rather quickly until it's saturated enough to hold water for longer on the surface. Once hydrated, the feel is smooth and elastic with light granular feedback. Slurrying with a fine diamond plate yields a grit rich slurry which takes the audible and tactile feedback up 10 notches increases the cutting speed dramatically. The stone seems to like to be used this way. When testing 3 different Chu Tomo Nagura against each other using the Chu Base stone as a constant, all 3 of the Nagura behaved a bit differently. When testing with Mejiro Nagura, the results were notably more fine. The resulting edges are keen but not finished and more than ready to move on to a finishing stone. I used the Chu Nagura Koppa #1 as a Tomo Nagura on a Nakayama Maruka Mizu Asagi to bridge the gap in the scratch pattern and finished with a full Asano Stamped Mikawa Nagura progression, and final finished using Nakayama Shiro Asagi Tomo Nagura.
The resulting shave was spectacular and extremely comfortable. For knife polishing, the stone does a great job of removing scratches from Aoto which I used or Kaisai like a sword polisher would use. This sets the stage for Koma Nagura bench stone and Uchigumori.