Originally, I was planning to get the full set of Shapton glass stones, but it took me a while to decide what grits I wanted, and meanwhile I figured out there were better options than that, especially for higher grits. On the other hand, Shaptons are very famous and I was really curious to test them out. Reviews and opinions are kind of mixed, some people really like them, others have their complaints about them being harsh and scratchy. So, when one day Dave Martell had a sale on Shaptons in his Japanese Knife Sharpening Store, I've decided to pull the trigger and get one for testing. The reason I've decided on 220 grit, which is the coarsest Shapton makes, was that if it turned out too scratchy or didn't work for whatever reason, that was cheapest, and in case of excessive scratching I still had Beston 500 grit stone to smooth out those scratches.
General
- Shapton® Glass Stone™ are quite unique in their construction and makeup. For one, they are much thinner compared to other whetstones. Second, they have a glass base and don't require soaking in the water at all. Just spray the water on the surface and you're ready to go. This is the biggest advantage for the Shaptons®. I don't know what is the synthetic material used in this stones, but it sure looks different from anything I've seen so far, here take a look yourself - Shapton 220X Glass Stone™ magnified 60 times. As for the rest, the stone has rectangular shape, exact measurements are 210mm×70mm×5mm. Comes with a plastic box, and in general packaging is nice.Performance
- So far, I've used this stone twice and it works pretty well. It does have really harsh feeling when sharpening. Comes much closer to DMT D8XXC diamond benchstone than anything else I have. However, this isn't something that would prevent one from using it. Harsh or not, it does the job and cuts the metal pretty fast, which is what you're looking for in the sharpening stone. Water consumption is pretty high, but still behind Beston 500 grit and Bester 700 grit whetstone. As for the resulting surface, it sure comes out scratched pretty good. I was using light pressure, but still, it did scratch up the edge quite deep, and the scratch pattern was more uneven compared to Beston 500. Which partly is explained with coarser grit, but not the only reason for it. Other than that no complaints. I've cleaned up the edge with Beston 500, followed by Bester 700 grit and then proceeded with Aoto 2000 grit natural whetstone and other, finer grit stones and abrasives. The end result was very satisfactory.Conclusions
- I'll be keeping this stone as part of my knife sharpening equipment. Works pretty good for what I need it for, and scratching isn't that much of a problem when using this stone, granted that I do good work with follow up stones. Water consumption is ok, and the fact that no pre-soaking is needed is a plus too. If you plan to use this stone and then jump to 1000 or higher grit, forget it. Too rough of a surface, you'll spend a lot of time with 1000+ grit stones polishing it up. You definitely need 500 or 700 grit stone in between. I use both to save time. Well, that is if you care about scratches and polished edges :) Otherwise, you know better.Related reading:
Last updated - 05/19/19