These vintage Chu Nagura are great for removing scratches from medium grit stones. When used in conjunction with a harder base stone, the Nagura's slurry is abrasive and more coarse than the base stones particles. This allows for a situation in which a hard, fine base stone can serve as a medium grit stone as well. In practical use, the Nagura's slurry is granular in texture and a bit dry feeling overall. The initial granular texture breaks down rather quickly with impressive range of finish from start to finish. The overall fineness of these Nagura seems to be a bit more coarse initially then Botan and breaks down in the range of Tenjou after being worked.
NOTE: Nagura 0004-0008 are a but softer, have a dry, chalky feel and they don't bring up much base stone in use. These Nagura start out feeling on the dry side with a medium grit type abrasive slurry. The slurry feels slightly crisp and abrasive with the slurry break happening on the quicker side. After the slurry break, the texture changes quite dramatically with changes from crisp, to silky and ending quite fine. These Nagura have good range from start to finish and would work well following a bevel setting stone or medium to medium fine natural stone.
All sides except one have been coated with cashew lacquer to preserve the integrity of the nagura.
Weights:
#0001 - 114g
#0002 - 120g
#0003 - 105g
#0004 - 150g
#0005 - 138g
#0006- 149g
#0007 - 138g
#0008 - 138g
Chūnagura (中名倉) is a medium-grit Nagura stone (~3000–5000 grit) used for refining edges and polishing blades. It generates a sharpening slurry on finishing stones, smoothing out scratches from coarser stones. Chūnagura is finer than Ban Nagura but coarser than Koma Nagura, making it ideal for intermediate sharpening before final honing.
