Japanese water stones

[richard ball]

This information can mainly be found in the book "The art of Japanese sword polishing" by Leon and hiroko Kapp, yoshindo Yoshihara and Setsuo Takaiwa.

Foundation Polishing stones
Sythetic stones
Arato a the coarest stone used in a diagonal direction
Kongoto the 2nd coarest stone again in diagonal direction
Binsui is the next grade down from Kongoto and again used in a diagonal direction.
The above 3 stones are only used for new swords or for swords in bad condition
Kaisi again a finer grade then binsui and if a sythetic kaisi stone is used again it will be in a diagonal direction.
Natural stones
Kaisi agin finer then Binsui stone and finer then synthetic Kaisi natural kaisi is used lengthwise across the sword.
Chu-Naguri finer then natural Kaisi and used lengthwise
Koma-Naguri finer again and used lengthwise
Uchigumori Hato again finer and used lengthwise
Uchigumori Ji-to finer and again used lenghtwise

Hopefully by this stage you will have a hamon and other activety on the blade
Note all directions of the stone on the surface of the steel are diferent so that you can see the previous stones scrathes disapear.