Naniwa Professional stones, formerly called Chosera, are Naniwa’s top shelf series loved for their fast consistent finishes. These are excellent for wide and single bevel knives as well as double bevel.

This kit includes:

(1) Naniwa Professional (Chosera) 400 Whetstone

This stone is great for quickly bringing back dull edges or for helping in thinning and repair. For very drastic chips or sculptural overhauls of thick blades a coarser stone might be necessary but this stone does a huge amount of work. We found it cuts fastest with a thin watery mud and a bit shallower and slower with a dry layer of slurry. For longest lift be sure to flatten during heavy projects to avoid digging deep furrows into the stone.

(1) Naniwa Professional (Chosera) 1000 Whetstone

This stone is faster than the shallow scratches would suggest, it is an excellent stone for either maintaining slightly dull knives or for removing the scratches from a coarser stone like the Naniwa 400 stone when a knife needs more thorough edge re-shaping. When working on wide beveled knives this stone provides a surface that is easy to polish.

(1) Naniwa Professional (Chosera) 2000 Whetstone

This stone finishes very finely and is more in line being categorized with fine stones rather than medium stones given it’s bright finish. It provides an excellent surface to polish from and the edge provided by this stone is excellent for Japanese butchery knives such as deba or honesuki which require ‘bite’ and is also a great edge for many simpler Japanese stainless steels such as molybdenum stainless that can feel washed out quickly when sharpened at very fine polishes. Medium fine finishes have become a mainstay in our sharpening service for many knives and this stone is proving to be a great addition to our lineup.

(1) Naniwa Professional (Chosera) 5000 Whetstone

This stone polishes much brighter than many other stones in it’s general grit range, it provides a great edge for knives that benefit from this type of fine toothed edge. It is a great finisher for Japanese knives made with shirogami, aogami, ginsanko or many Japanese powder metals such as R2, SG2 etc. For knives used in butchery or softer western stainless steels a coarser polish can provide longer edge life however.

Naniwa Professional stones have a high concentration of a very evenly graded grit bonded in a magnesia binder, they are on the boundary between a hard and soft stone leaning on the harder end.

Because magnesia binder can dissolve we recommend a short soak of 15 minutes only. The mud generated during sharpening will add cutting material when sharpening wide surfaces of single bevel knives or thinning wide bevel knives, during sharpening small amounts of water can be added to help adjust the sharpening feel

(1) Chromium Oxide Stropping Compound - 50ml bottle

Progressive gradient sub micron to several micron blend Japanese made chromium oxide compound in a water based paste. Easier to apply than hard bars made for buffing wheels and a much richer concentration than ingots or watery solutions. This mix of chromium oxide has variety of abrasive particles formulated for the sole purpose of deburring steel. Just aggressive enough to de-burr without aggressive abrading. The polishing action of this compound is enhanced with the smallest commercially available size. It has nice adhesion without being greasy. This has been our favorite paste for de-burring from fine Japanese stones in our busy sharpening service.

(1) Rubberized cork strop

Rubberized cork with recycled rubber base for use with polishing compounds. 14" x 3" long and 3/8” thick with taller base for extra height and slip resistance.

It successfully de-burrs and enhances the finished polish; finely honing the work of the fine synthetic or natural stones.

Since this strop is rubberized, it can be cleaned with soap and water if it accidentally gets greasy in a kitchen or to remove unwanted or spent abrasive. We have been using these strops for over 10 years and find they typically last us at least 5 years in our busy sharpening workshop stropping at least 50 knives daily each.

When used with paste compounds, let the compound fully dry before stropping. A small amount should be spread thinly over the strop and cover most of the strop face; re-apply a smaller amount over spent abrasive, a little goes a long way!

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