Amakusa Red Tomo Nagura
This is an older piece of Amakusa Red; a coarse calciferous sandstone that was quarried in Amakusa which is located in the Kumamoto Prefecture on Kyushu Island.
Some Amakusa are red, others white. This piece here is sort of orange/striped so I suppose it’s a ‘ Red’. Some people say the red stones are 800x-ish. This piece seems to be somewhat finer than that.
In use, most Amakusa are often riddled with particles of inconsistent sizes, and they’re fast cutters. Some pieces are loaded with a good amount of hard quartzite inclusions that could seriously damage any blade or razor. Other pieces are fairly clean but still contained large crystalline particles. They soak up a good amount of water, and feel quite gritty under the blade. With some work – they produce mud that feels a bit pasty/silky.
This piece of Amakusa is a bit different than the others I’ve tried. For starters, it’s notably harder. It’s still gritty and fairly fast but it’s also quite clean and consistent. Plus, I have not seen or felt any very hard inclusions. In the first paragraph I mentioned that it was older. Well – all stones are really old. What I meant was that this was mined long ago. The rice paper wrapping is new and it’s coated with Urushi.
Originally, I bought this to use as a coarse Tomo Nagura, and it works well as such. It’s also large enough to hone on, you can see that in this video.
Approximate Dimensions: 2.75 x 2.75 x 1.0 / 70 x 70 x 25 mm
Weight: 11.3 oz / 320 g
