The KDS is excellent. I do not recommend the KW-65 combo stone. Do not mix those two up. The KDS is literally just the normal King 1k and 6k glued together, and I very much appreciate those two stones. You can get the blade as sharp as you want with those two stones. You won't comfortably shave, but you can get it to whittle hairs. That is to say, any issue with results of sharpness is far more likely to be the fault of the user than it is the fault of the stone.
Good stuff about the King stone
- Solid performance
- Higher grit level
- Possibly the cheaper option for you
- 6k is resinoid splash n go, which is convenient
- 6k side is suuuuper hard, which can be nice. Much harder to snowplow the thing, if you're not very well practiced at strokin' it hard n fast in the middle of your kitchen. It can also let you burnish-polish your edge to a cleaner mirror and a technically higher grit rating
- You can buy direct-match slurry stones (toma nagura, if you will) which are literally just small chunks of the exact same product. You can use these to simultaneously clean your stone surfaces and kick up a bit of a slurry to work in, which some people, like myself, greatly enjoy. These are much more readily available than Cerax slurry stones, but you can also just buy a small diamond plate like a DMT 4" Coarse to achieve the same effect. I personally do both and find both solutions virtually identical in end result.
- 6k polish, especially with a fine-grit abrasive strop, like chromium oxide or 1mic diamond, is sexy as hell and will easily impress and terrify your non-knife friends
Bad stuff about the King
- The 6k side smells weird lol. Not at all a "real" problem, it by no means stinks, but if you get it wet and sniff it, you probably won't particularly enjoy the smell. Weirder still, the King 300 smells friggin' amazing, but I don't recommend buying that stone at all.
- The 1k is standard kiln-baked brick. Yes, tried and true, but still kinda boring.
- 6k side does not have best-in-class grit control. It is probably worst-in-class among all of the "real" stone brands I've tried. It is by no means bad but I have seen more consistent scratch patterns among pretty much all of my other 6k stones.
Good stuff about the Cerax option
- Vitrified bond. Permasoakable (although I find permasoak setups cumbersome and largely unnecessary)
- Both sides are vitrified making it an arguably more convenient stone for soaking (the King 6k is resinoid and therefore technically has different soaking protocol versus its 1k side)
- I did not find either the King or the Cerax 1k to be a soft stone, however, the friability dynamics of a given stone change drastically as you alter the total surface area being sharpened at any one time. I could talk your ear off about this phenomenon, but for now I will just say that I found the Cerax to be an excellent grade of hardness: friable enough to prevent me from having to refresh the surface of the mid grits manually, but as hard as otherwise possible. Very well balanced stones.
- I am pretty confident the Cerax stones are more aggressive cutters than the KDS stones, evidenced anecdotally, mostly. I don't know much about the actual abrasive density variation between kiln-baked stones versus vitrified stones. My Cerax merely appears to cut observably, but not drastically, more quickly than the red brick. Obviously the 3k finisher works faster than the 6k finisher
- I prefer the 3k edge, to be honest. I prefer a 3k edge on pretty much every blade now. It is blatantly superior on X50CrMoV15 cheapo steel, and the presence of larger cutting teeth grants me a considerable increase in edge service life. This is a personal opinion and does not really apply to sashimi type stuff, and obviously not to razors.
Bad stuff about the Cerax
- Vitrified stones are not effected whatsoever by water (this part is good), meaning there will be no increase in whimsical creaminess (this is the perceived downside) after a good long soak: any perceived alteration/improvement in feedback is merely placebo. Vitrified stones absorb a ton of water due to their porous nature, so your stone will appear much thirstier if you soak it for an insufficient amount of time before use. Don't undersoak your vitrified stones: it'll be annoying when you try to sharpen on them, with the surface drying overly quickly. When saturated, they perform wayyyy better (that is to say properly as per the manufacturer's intention and design). This is what I believe is happening when people talk about it becoming creamier. It isn't creamier, it just appears far less thirsty due to it being fully saturated. There's no magic here, this is just the proper way to use a vitrified stone. Sidenote: any stone which does increase in creaminess after a good long soak is essentially being damaged by excessive soaking and I do not recommend it. Resinoid and especially magnesia bond stones are not meant to be soaked and I adamantly disagree with any suggestion to soak these types of stones (barring exceptions like a couple of the JKI stones, and even then I think the liability is too high for the supposed benefit). The good news about Cerax is that vitrified stones are basically the most stable stones you can get. Soak it, dry it, soak it, dry it, permasoak it, do whatever the hell you want, just don't freeze it after.
- 3k edges have zero sex appeal. No bragging rights here. This is a utilitarian's stone, not a showman's stone. This goes two-fold for all vitrified finishers, of which this is one. Vitrified stones frequently have the most aggressive scratch patterns for their respective grit-class.
- Probably the more expensive option
My inevitable soft conclusion
I think both options are great. I love all of my Cerax and King stones (except for my KW-65, which I through out).
I'd probably choose the Cerax 1-3 though, personally. But hitting that Murray Carter style 1k scrub, 6k strop stroke, to a quick dusting on some bare leather and whittling hairs is suuuuper satisfying... You can whittle hairs with a 3k edge though. I can do it with many of my 1k stones. Many better sharpeners can achieve "maximum practical sharpness" with even coarser stones, but your approach will change regarding which option you choose. The Murray Carter approach with a 1-3 just doesn't work as well. And I'd actually argue it works even better with a 1-8 combo. With the 3k, you gotta set the whole edge to 3k, not just the apex. Which I find to be more enjoyable in maintenance sharpening, and I also find the balance between using up either side of the stone to be far more equal this way. With the 1-6 approach, your 6k will last literally forever, but your 1k will shoulder like 98% of the workload, so you'll use up the stone disproportionately. It's damn hard to beat that 3k edge too, in my opinion. Low-finishers and high mid-grits (basically 2k-4k is what I mean) give such an awesome balance of sharpness. It can push cut and draw cut sufficiently, and has enough tooth to remain serviceably sharp for as long as possible without being basically a hacksaw edge.
Bloody hard choice there, mate. Better buy both
