Chroma Haiku: #800 Whetstone H11 Sharpening stones are used to grind and hone the edges of steel tools and implements. Examples of items that may be sharpened with a sharpening stone include scissors, knives and tools such as chisels and plane blades.

Historically, there are three broad grades of Japanese sharpening stones: the ara-to, or “rough stone”, the naka-to or “middle/medium stone” and the shiage-to or “finishing stone”. There is a fourth type of stone, the nagura, which is not used directly. Rather, it is used to form a cutting slurry on the shiage-to, which is often too hard to create the necessary slurry. Converting these names to absolute grit size is difficult as the classes are broad and natural stones have no inherent “grit number”. As an indication, ara-to is probably (using a non-Japanese system of grading grit size) 500 1000 grit. The naka-to is probably 3000 5000 grit and the shiage-to is likely 7000 10000 grit. – H11 – 2 – A68-3