CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE
SUITA AWASEDO with NASHI-JI
207mm x 77mm x 35mm
Reads on the stone top from the upper left down in kanji within a box SHO HONZAN AWASEDO (original mountain finish sharpening stone).
And down the middle reads DAI GOKU JO (biggest best of the best)
To the left center within a circle (circle in Japanese is maur) is YAMA KA or MARU YAMA KA (mountain flower)
This Suita stone is a riot of NASHI-JI (skin of the pear dot pattern) on a soft peach colored base stone. It came from a store in a small town in Japan that closed in the 1970s containing stock dating back to the 1930s. The awasedo has not been used other than to test the quality at one edge of the stone as you can see in the photos and it is considered to be New/Old Stock.
Weighing in at 3 pounds this stone has tons of character. It is wrapped in a band of urushi and has a hand chiseled back. The stone is fully marked in the traditional way, but it is cracked. Now why would the stone merchants go to all of the trouble of banding and shaping a cracked stone and marketing it too? They did it I think because of all of the Nashi-ji that is so evident. This helps create excellent sharpening characteristics like fast cutting and fine grit. You can see the "su" in the close up photos but the stone has a very even grain like a tomae type stone.
I want someone to love this stone, and to use it for as many years as they can, and to feel that they got their monies worth out of it when it needs mending again. I know that to find a buyer who will be devoted, I am going to have to almost give it away.
This is not a deep strata Hon Suita, but is a softer Suita stone that is very easy to use and develops its own paste quickly. This is a very fine grit stone that produces a classic hazy like finish to the hard steel hagane that you can see in the photos while leaving the soft iron jigane contrasty. This is not a difficult stone to use. See a grit test comparison HERE for this stone #63. I found the grit base to be above 20,000 and with compression the grit particles will easily crush down into the mid 20,000s range if not finer.
Hardness Grit Speed/Strength Price in U.S. $
8/10 9+/10 9/10 SOLD
A vintage 1950s Swedish blue steel Ishido Teruhide blade was used to sample this stone.