Gesshin 800 Vitrified Diamond Stone

The Gesshin 800 grit Vitrified Diamond stone is the most used stone in my personal collection. Since starting to use these a few years ago, they quickly became my favorite. I believe that most professional sharpeners are always on a quest for the best coarse stone they can find, but its always hard to find the perfect coarse stone. This one comes as close as any I have tried. While its not as fast as our Gesshin 220, it is as fast cutting as many 320-400 grit stones. However, being 800 grit, it fits within the medium grit range (naka toishi). The scratches it leaves are not as deep as those from the coarser stones I would normally start with. This allows me to jump directly from this stone to my finishing stones, cutting my sharpening time drastically. For example, a common 2 stone set up in our workshop might include this 800 grit stone and any one of our 3000-8000 grit stones (most often, it ends up being one of our 6000 grit stones). 

Unlike other diamond stones found commonly in the market, this stone acts more like the traditional soaking stones many are used to. It is porous and actually soaks in water while providing a more traditional whetstone feel. Because it is extremely thin, it soaks rather quickly (in just a few seconds), so despite not being technically splash-and-go, it is probably the closest one can get.

As you can see in the picture, the stone is mounted on a glass plate. The stone itself is only about 3mm thick. However, the stone is extremely slow-wearing, and does not need flattening often. As a preventative measure, one should sharpen as evenly as possible on the surface of this stone to prolong flattening intervals as they can be rather tedious, time-consuming, and detrimental to some flattening devices; do not use diamond flattening plates. The most effective device for conditioning and flattening is the pink Gesshin Extra Large Stone Fixer. Also, this stone is particularly aggressive on soft stainless cladding and may leave deeper scratches when cutting on soft stainless cladding.

All in all, this is probably my favorite stone of all of the ones I own.