Shapton Pro Series 1000 Grit Waterstone Review

yoda4561

yoda4561

Joined
May 28, 1999
Messages
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Just got this in today, I'll be sharpening more knives with it over the next few weeks, only had some slightly dull kitchen knives to sharpen today, can't quite bring myself to resharpen most of my collection because they were all recently touched up. This stone was bought brand new from HMS Enterprises.

First Impressions:

Very nicely packed, shipping was quite expedient too, I ordered it late friday night and it got here the monday after. It comes in a nice plastic box with rubber feet on the bottom, and the top is molded to hold the stone while sharpening. The bottom of the plastic container is also vented, I'm assuming to maintain humidity so that the stone doesn't dry too fast after it's used. The stone itself is yellow orange in color, apparently all the Shapton waterstones are color coded to their grit, not just dyed on the surface.

In order to use the stone you don't need to soak it for any period of time, just douse it with a good amount of water and keep the surface wet. I reprofiled the edge on one stainless steel kitchen knife, and resharpened my 7 inch Japanese Deba (3/8 thick, sorta like a cleaver for fish and poultry) and an Old Hickory chefs knife.

The stone cut both the stainless steel and Old hickory knives very quickly, the stone rapidly removed metal and formed a burr. The Deba is very hard, so it sort of slid on top of the stone more than the others, but still cut very fast. That was somewhat impressive as I've been having difficulty keeping it sharp, it just slides over my polish stone, which is cuts 60RC ATS 34 just fine. :D

The edge I wound up with was.. not what I had expected. The finish looks comperable to a 600 grit diamond stone, and fresh off the hone it feels very similar. Stropping the edge I get with a 600 diamond leaves me with very toothy microserrations, which easily bite into the pad of my thumb. When I stropped the edge to finish however the cutting edge suddenly became smooth to the touch and would easily pop hairs. Looking closely under a light source I can still see the microserrations on the stainless steel and Deba, the old hickory's edge doesn't appear to have any microserrations at all. :confused:

Edit: Forgot to add, the stone stayed nice and flat through all 3 knives, no visible dishing or uneven wear of the stone's surface. In addition, loading (metal buildup on the surface of the stone) wasn't a problem as long as it was kept nice and wet.

That's all for now, more to come whenever something dulls a bit :cool:
 
Yoda

Do you happen to have any Busse's or Swamp Rats? I ask for 2 reasons. 1, the convex edge and 2, how does the Shapton 1000 edge compare to the factory edge as far as 'toothiness'?

I'm looking at the Shapton and also a Aoto natural or man made blue stone, but these are just a bit finer in grit.

Sharpen some more stuff and get back to us. LOL Go cut something!

Rob
 
Okay okay, :p I got impatient with lack of dulling chores so I took my Natural outlaw, M2 AFCK, and Becker Magnum Camp to the stone. It cuts like a dream, not as fast as I'd like if I were going to be doing serious stock removal with it, but the Busse edge angles aren't "that" far off of what I sharpen at naturally.

The "toothyness" factor is an odd one to pin down. See, both Busse's I've owned (natural outlaw-E, basic 5) have come with edges that look like they were finished on an 80 grit belt, then stropped, but they have no real tooth to them, they aren't what I'd call grabby. The shapton was a similar experience at first, after I polished the edges on a loaded strop the tooth the first 3 knives had was gone, with a hair popping, smooth feeling edge (even though the scratch pattern looked like it should be much coarser) When my M-2 afck went to the strop however it retained a fair deal of the microserrations the stone imparted.

I didn't remove enough steel to reform the edge on the Natural Outlaw, I haven't used it enough to justify a full resharpening just yet, so I can't comment on how infi reacts to the microserrations the stone leaves. The becker took a while to recut, because it was dull, had a wide convex edge grind (used a slack belt) and still had a good bit of factory edge left near the tip and belly, which I decided to let the stone take care of instead of hurrying the process on a more appropriate tool. When I finally got it finished though I was rewarded with a very sharp transition from edge to primary grind, and a slightly toothy edge.

I think the biggest factor is technique. When I first got the stone I wasn't going for a sharp edge, I was using it in a rather rapid manor to establish a new bevel on the 3 kitchen knives. This probably resulted in a crosshatch scratch pattern that wasn't conducive to microserrations on the edge, whereas with the afck and becker I finished with proper sharpening strokes. I haven't used the blue stones, they're next on my list of things to get. I can wholeheartedly reccomend the shapton 1000 as a general purpose waterstone though. It will deliver a shaving sharp edge in a very short period of time, as well as remove minor edge damage. With a little practice I should be able to get a consistent, microserrated edge that will still grab hairs above the arm.
 
Yoda like we talked about I beleive your stropping just may be smoothing out the tooth your seeing. I have to beleive a 1000 water stone scratch isn't as deep as a 600 diamond and even a 600 diamond will polish out pretty darn quick if you strop it too much. A quick test of what type of edge the 1000 can give would be after stropping and getting a very polished edge try 1 or 2 strokes per side on the water stone and see how you like the bite of the edge.
 
Bill, I've done some thinking, and I think the problem may be that the stone raises a burr way faster than I'm used to, I usually don't strop until I've removed the burr with a finer stone, usually a white ceramic, so perhaps I'm just pushing the wire edge back straight and polishing it off with the loaded strop. This might explain why the harder steels :M2 AFCK(advertised as rc 64 when I bought it), 64 Rc Deba, and the becker (58 or so) had more bite than the softer steels did once stropped. The burr was easier to control on those steels, so the teeth were cut sharply, instead of just being smoothed off by the strop.

Edit: I also need to learn to stop trying to judge edges with my thumbs when they're all soaked up with water, since the sensations are alot different. That stainless steel kitchen knife that looked like it had microserrations(but felt smooth to the touch at the time) had easily felt serrations as I ran my thumb along the edge, the deba was a bit finer, but had a tendency to want to grab the pad of my thumb. The M-2 afck I was apparently not quite consistent with, as I ran my thumb along the edge it slid easily and then was grabbed all the sudden, almost cut myself. :eek:

I don't think I'm gonna comment too much more until I've had the stone for a few weeks, so I can get a good feel for what it's actually doing instead of all this supposition :cool:
 
Sounds like good ideas. :) Yeah a wet thumb or skin can really throw me off too.
 
Had the same problem with the strop polishing out the micro serrations. My solution was to get some coarser compound from HandAmerica for my 2 sided strop. Coarse on one side and not so coarse on the other. Both however are way lower in grit than say the green compound.

It's easy to experiment. You can remove compound easily from a strop using GoJo and the lanolin in the Gojo helps condition the leather. Put the new compound on and see how you like it. I think at the moment I have like 320 on one side and 600 on the other. I put a + and - on the wood with magic marker to keep the sides straight.

I will only have the $$$ for 1, but it's either going to be the Shapton 1000 or the Man Made Blue. Probably both eventually, but it will be awhile between purchases. You know how that goes.

Rob
 
Hey, did you dull up that NO yet?

Got a feeling it's going to be the Shapton Pro 1000 over the blue stone, but I still want to research somemore and ask questions.

Rob
 
Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, but I just can't seem to get the Outlaw dull enough to warrant regrinding the edge unless I chop on concrete, and that's not something I tend to do often :p I've used it on more kitchen knives though, and can say that it does leave a very fine but grabby edge, and cuts very quickly. If you're sharpening something like a Busse or SR I'd reccomend the 1000 without hesitation, if you want a finer edge it's no problem to just strop it for a while, but if you get the 2000+ grits and find they cut a little too slowly or leave to fine an edge for you there isn't much that can be done about it. On very hard or very wear resistant steels like M2 I've found natural stones really don't cut well at all, they still leave a great edge but it feels like trying to sharpen on a block of wet ice. On plain carbon steels like the 10xx series or on knives with very thin edges the natural stones work very nicely.
 
FWIW, I've used my Shapton 1000 Pro with VG-10 and S30V and it cuts quickly without loading at all if you keep the stone wet. Shapton recommends 2000 as the highest grit you can effectively shape edges with. I try to have my edges perfectly formed when I finish with the 1000 because I switch to 5000 grit next. The 5000 Pro cuts smoothly but loads up slightly no matter how wet I keep the surface. The embedded metal can't be rinsed off completely under the sink; I have to wait until the stone needs flattening to remove the marks, which is a long time with this stone. Fortunately the 5000 doesn't need much time to do the job coming off the 1000, and the minor loading doesn't reduce the cutting efficiency by much.

On a side note, after the 5000 I strop with CrO and finish with a smooth leather strop, no compound. I removed the burr before stropping by slicing lightly into wood (I heard Murray Carter does this; I need to watch his sharpening video). S30V gave me a grabbier edge than VG-10, though both were well-polished. I only have one VG-10 knife but I'll have to try my other S30V blades to see if this is repeatable.
 
Yoda

A fine but grabby edge sounds good to me. I think the Shapton Pro 1000 would be fine for me till I get some quality Japanese knives where the higher grits would be appreciated. It seems for the Busse's and Rats the 1000 is more than fine enough and a good stone to start out with.

I still have a bunch of HandAmerica stuff for finer polishing if needed, just wanted to give waterstones a try.

Thanks for the review and info.

Rob
 
I can say with confidence that any higher than a 3000 grit waterstone is overdoing it unless you have some specialized task in mind. Like I mentioned in the review above, the 1000 grit shapton will easily apply a hair popping sharp edge, and with a light stropping will grab hairs above the arm without difficulty. I've about relegated my 6000 grit polishing stone to small pocketknives and chisels/woodcarving tools.
 
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