ShaptonK0709 Blade Blade, #320 Rough Blue Black

perfect stone for re-profiling, or to repair minor chips in knife edge. the stone is rough but uniform, it cuts fast and reduce workload by significant margin. you literally don't need to spend more than 2 minutes on this stone before moving on to 1k grit. it's also a very hard stone, so it's hard wearing, and will not crater or dish out easily from normal sharpening. nice flat surface and long service life, love it.

I purchased an entire line of the Shapton Kuromaku Whetstones with grit ratings of 100 to 4000.This #320 is a must have for extremely dull or reprofiling work. The hype is real from what you may have heard about the Shapton Kuromaku. I can verify all the hype- that they work incredibly fast, have great feedback and are VERY uniform. These are long lasting ceramic based stones that are known for their uniformity, speed, longevity. I have used this stone to profile(sharpen) 20 knives so far and have also purchased this as a gift for my Step Dad who is equally impressed. This is a critical stone to have as it is used for setting the knife's profile and does the raw sharpening (first stage). if you dont' get this right, the finer grit stones won't help.. so this is a critical stone to have in your collection. With care, I expect this to last a life time.

For anyone just beginning with sharpening or even the professionals, these stones are ones to certainly have in your inventory. They are pretty spot-on with their grit classifications. Which is important when choosing the correct stone for your work. If you get the ceramic, which this is, you have to prevent the stone from hitting a hard surface (dropping it) as they will shatter. They do take a little care, but when you buy quality, you have to come to expect some work involved, otherwise everyone would be an expert. The shape will fit most holders with no modifications, but they do come in a convenient storage box, that can double as a stone-holder, if needed. In short, they will do what you expect them to do. It will take a little practice, and ceramic stones are what they call "forgiving stones" and if you spend that time learning the technique, these are certainly the stones to start (or end) with. High quality, well made, and do the job.

Great, great stone. My best sharpening experience with this stone.

I really like this stone for helping to round out the low grit side of my collection. I like the fast cutting action; it raises a burr in no time flat, and the feedback is satisfactory to my relatively inexperienced hands.My only real complaint is that it wears faster than I'd like. I'd say that's about equal to or just a little bit slower than my King Deluxe 1000. Not a huge deal, but because I use it for both kitchen knives and chisels/plane irons it means that I just have to remove a ton of material relatively speaking after every knife sharpening session to bring it flat so that it's ready for my next plane iron sharpening session.I have read this to be the "equivalent" of the Shapton Pro series, intended for the Japanese market as opposed to the US Market (which is what the Pro line was developed for); I can neither confirm nor deny that (in fact I hope to one day get the equivalent Pro stone to compare directly). What I can say is that objectively this is a pretty decent stone and despite its shortcomings is great to have in my arsenal.

These are some high quality sharpening stones. You can feel the grittyness as you work the blade on the stone. The case it came in is also. a nice touch. Now I just need to practice until I am a better sharpener. Thanks!

Tried sharpening a pair of scissors with these. It was either get them sharp and cutting or throw them away. Worked better and faster than I thought. The kind of metal you're using against the stone can make quite a difference. This stone = Think about what you're going to do ... and be deliberate.

I bought this whetstone to have a different grain size and I’m so glad I did. I used it a few times back in December and was really surprised by how quick it help sharpen knives. I’m sure it’ll only get quicker once I get the hang of it.