Natural Stone (Cris Anderson)

Hey Everyone,

I've never posted a review about a stone before but thought if there was every something I wanted to write about it was this. In talking with Cris a bit it came up that he had a few stones he was looking to make available to those that bought his knives, said the stones were some sort of american natural stone that was very hard, splash and go, didn't really dish at all and worked great on his W2 steel with RHC 64-65. Needless to say this sounded intriguing, he had a broken one that was offered on loan to me for a bit.

I've been using the stone now for a few weeks and honestly really like it yet at the same time I'm a bit confused by it. The stone has some odd properties to me in that it's super hard, splash and go, very heavy, doesn't seem to dish at all, cuts fairly fast, leaves a finishing edge and yet can remove a ton of metal if needed yet it something like a 2-4k stone. I have never ventured into the world of Japanese Naturals because the cost was always prohibitive so maybe this fits in line with those but for someone quite used to synthetics this was kinda new to me but enough about the stone itself, how does it cut and what kinda edge does it leave?

The stone cuts fairly fast, it's interesting in that I've tested it out now with FKM-8, White #2, R2, Shigefusa Steel, Blue #2 and some random junk stainless and it cut all of them well. It seemed to generate a burr quickly yet the burr was relatively small and easy to flip. I used the knife quite a bit on my Takamura R2 which was suffering from a lot of micro-chipping of the OOTB edge. The stone took out all the micro chips without a problem using only light pressure and small stropping strokes. Didn't bother using any harder pressure or even my regular sharpening technique with this thing, just edge trailing strops back and forth. Was able to flip the bur after maybe 2-3 strokes per side and the burr was abraded very quickly on some felt and balsa. It took the Takamura's edge (trouble with tomato skin and a bit chipped) back to super sharp (hair popping sharp and no issues with tomato) and took out the chips. I haven't since gone to a lower stone since this one has been able to maintain everything I've tried it on aka didn't have any really bad shape knives.

Regarding how this thing matches up to some other stones, well I've used The Suehiro Rika as well as some Gesshin stuff (Gesshin 6000, 4000 and 8000) as finishers/had knives with these edges. I vastly prefer this thing over the Rika which I never really got along with, I was never really able to get the kinda edge I wanted off the Rika, edge always seemed a bit too smooth or polished for me and I didn't like the stone feel, wanted something harder. In terms of the Gesshin, I love the Gesshin 4000 edge and that is still my favorite finishing edge BUT that stone is $110+ or something and for comparison this thing is $50. For $50 this stone performs very very well, again, I would say the gesshin 4000 edge is more to my liking (toothy and just seems to cut so well) and that stone in general was/is highly impressive but for the price I would just buy one of Cris's. The Gesshin 6000 and 8000 didn't leave enough tooth for my liking, wasn't a huge fan of these. They were nice stones but again just not my preferences.

So where does that all put us? Well, it pretty clearly says to me that if you have one of Cris's knives you should probably pick one of these things up since it's well priced and seems to work very well (he uses it to finish all his stuff and I used it on a ton of different steels and knives). The stone is something fairly different from most of the synthetics you see and honestly, I really enjoyed using it. Would I take it over something like a Gesshin 4000? Well no if they were both free but if I'm footing the bill on this, Cris's stone win's on value without a doubt. That said, there was some talks of this stone being available a bit but Cris mentioned not having any interest in "getting into stones" it was mostly for people with his knives.

Anyhow, just wanted to post this up because it was definitely a new experience for me and something I wanted to share. Thanks everyone and sorry for any spelling or grammatical errors, I'm posting at 4:41am because why not?!

 

Real quick disclaimer guys! I believe this stone is Chinese, not American! I think when we were discussing them in PM's, there was some confusion with my Apache Red and Apache Strata stones, as they are both American naturals.

Sorry for any confusion! As was said, I don't really retail these stones outside of my friends and customers for my knives...so I'm hoping posting to clear up any confusion is acceptable!

 

Really wish I could edit my title.....

And Yes Chris is entirely correct, I incorrectly assumed that this stone was from the same guy as the Apache stuff and same location. I thought they were all lumped together, my mistake on that.

If possible could a mod or someone edit the title to maybe say Mystery China Stone (Cris Anderson) or just Chinese Stone (Cris Anderson). Basically I just want a more appropriate title

 

Maybe @Toothpick can edit the 'American Natural (Cris Anderson Stone)' to 'Natural Stone (Cris Anderson)' lol?

 

Looks like you edited and I posted at the same time lol.

 

A while back, I was watching a youtube video about this sharpener in Hong Kong that's supposed to be world famous. He uses 9 stones progression for sharpening, and most stones he was using is not really recognizable and they are probably Chinese stones. That video and this thread makes me really curious about Chinese stones now.

 

Here it is. It's a playlist so not sure if it shows properly. You can ignore most of the conversation, it's mostly him boasting.



Don't think the playlist would show completely, so here's the link.

 

The Chinese stones are ok. I have a 12k (the same one you can buy at Woodcraft for $25-$35). I bought it for razor progression...and possibly for an ultra high kitchen knife finisher, and never use it. I have better razor finishers, and better kitchen knife finishers. One of which is this '2k'...which actually acts like a 1k-6k depending on how you use it.