Vintage Sun Tiger Natsuya

Size (mm) / Weight

~210x80x65 / ~2300g

Performance

Hardness / Fineness: 5- / 2+

These stones are very consistent stone to stone in my experience. They are quite hard and not overly fine. With a forced slurry, they will work rather quickly and cleanly creating a solid base polish or very toothy edge. With only water cutting slows down dramatically. This isn't a bad thing, however, as it leads to two unique characteristics. The first is that the coarser grit combined with a dense matrix and slower speed allows for thorough and crisp deburring of a relatively coarse edge. The result is a long lasting immensely aggressive edge that is a delight to use in the kitchen. This type of aggressive but clean edge is difficult to create as many stones in this range will raise a new burr with each stroke rather than leaving a crisp apex requiring additional stropping to function well. The other benefit of this behavior is in polishing. After creating a nice base finish with slurry, the polish can be refined and burnished with just water leaving a hyper-detailed surface with very shallow scratches that is ready to be a lovely working finish on its own or a step into finer stones. The ability to bridge synthetics to finer naturals so easily and the ability to create an easily maintained yet enjoyable finish with one stone on knives that see frequent use.

Aesthetics & Other Notes

These Natsuya are vintage-mined from a large lot of Sun Tiger branded stones. While less dramatically patterned than modern variants, I find the performance superior. 

These stones should be sealed prior to extensive use. This stone is not sealed, if you would like to have the stone sealed, please select that as an option at purchase. 

Natsuya (夏屋)

Natsuya is, confusingly, used to refer to stones from differing mines with vastly different characteristics. The common thread linking them is orange, yellow, and/or cream base coloring. Most stones sold today are either very sandy and coarse in the 600-800 grit range or heavily striped with a 1,000 to 2,000 grit finish. Some older varieties are capable of finishing finer, while others are more in line with the modern striped variants.