Shapton Rockstar

Most of my knives are sharpened to 3000 grit. It’s a good stopping point for most kitchen knives. Some knives - especially carbon steel blades do better going to 5000 or 8000. In either case I leaned on my CHOSERA 3k and my Jende Resin diamond 9 micron way too much. I was wearing out expensive stones. So, the Rockstar 3k looked like a a more economic route. It cuts a bit more than the CHOSERA 3k, but does a decent job of cleaning up rougher stone scratches from SIC and diamond plates, when I’m going to 5k or 8K. If it’s like the other Shapton stones I have, it should last a while.

I use the RS 1k to further refine scratches from using diamond plates or SC extra coarse stones. It follows the RS 500. The RS 1K cuts more like the NANIWA CHOSERA 800 than a 1k stone. I can get a decent edge with this stone. Often, I finish with a 2k or 3k stone, so this stone is very important in my sharpening sequence. I’ve used it on stainless steel and VG10. I’ve yet to see how it performs on high carbon steel, but suspect that it will do well. As with the RS500 it is a good value and is a decent refining stone for most steels. Beware that this is not the stone to use for high vanadium steels. For those steels - the Shapton Pro stones are a good choice if you use whetstones rather than diamond stones.

The RS 500 is the stone I use to start clean up after using coarse, extra coarse diamond plates, or silicone carbide stones. It could serve as a starting stone for any minor sharpening inasmuch as it performs minor profiling well. It reduces the jagged toothy edge you get with coarse shaping stones. The RS 500 is a good choice because of its pricing and performance.