Norton Waterstones - quick view

HeavyHanded

HeavyHanded

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Jun 4, 2010
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Short video demo'ing the venerable 1k/8k waterstone and some best practices as I use them. These were the first complete waterstone set I bought after tinkering with a King 1200.

I do not demo the 220 (I recommend avoiding that stone anyway) or the 4k. In use the 4k is handled exactly like the 1k. I still use these fairly often even though I own a number of other stone sets. They work well on most steels up to higher carbide stainless. Even then due to their somewhat rapid wear rate they can still do a good job but it won't be pretty. They are absolutely the best stones I own for lower/mid 50s RC stainless or any steel that likes to form tenacious burrs.

They work best in a series, but stand alone edges can be crafted without much difficulty, the 4k is a near perfect utility edge. Their grit rating is not equivalent to most Japanese stone sets, the 1k is more like a 6-800, the 4k is more like a 2-3k. The 8k seems to be pretty comparable to other 8ks and is a fast, user friendly stone.



 
Thanks, I've been wondering about these stones and why they are rarely discussed.
If I sharpened (other people's) Germans, these would be pretty useful to me. Since they have trouble with harder steels, I see why J-knife users don't mention them.
 
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Ourorboros said:
Thanks, I've been wondering about these stones and why they are rarely discussed.
If I sharpened (other people's) Germans, these would be pretty useful to me. Since they have trouble with harder steels, I see why J-knife users don't mention them.
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I think the main reason is overall hardness of the stones themselves. The 220 is almost useless, the 1k and 4k are soft. The 8k is a resinoid stone and very comparable in overall hardness to my Suehiro Rika G8 or Suzuki Ya 8 or 10k - hard but can be gouged if not careful. They're not exactly cheap either, which is probably the biggest strike against them.

On most steels they still do very well but will dish if not kept rinsed. I used them on some of Luong's (Bluntcut) knives and they started to have trouble with his W2 (62RC) and M2 (65RC). Admittedly I didn't go overboard working on them as I was testing them all using 800 grit wet/dry and the waterstones were for personal edification. They did well on Cruforge, 52100 (63RC) and 1095 (64RC), so in practice they should work well enough on any steel that is still workable by AlumOx.

Before I branched out into other makes, the Norton's completely replaced my Kings for all waterstone use, and they still get the nod for a lot of jobs based on type of steel, ease of QC and user friendly qualities. Really, I learned a lot of my technique on these stones, so very comfortable using them. I might do another vid showing the 4k as well on one of my harder plane blades or chisels.
 
Thanks for the video. Couldn’t agree more on avoiding the Norton 220 lol. Sharpening on a sand castle with that one.

Really enjoyed the video. Please post more!
 
Metal Man 007 said:
isnt that the same with all water stones? That is pretty much what I read so I went with norton oil stones for the low grit stuff.
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More or less, yeah. Aside from the Shapton Glass 220 and the Pro 220, I have been largely disappointed by ~220 waterstones with respect to my specific needs. I’m sure they’re more apropos for genuine Japanese wide-bevel cutlery than they are for my EDC needs...

I couldn’t agree more with you. If I need low grit aggression, I’m going diamonds and Crystolon
 
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