MA is in the purposeful pauses in a speech which make words stand out. MA, in essence, is what makes minimalism possible. However, minimalism is limited to physical form and space, where MA is not. The presence of MA makes the minimalism of a Japanese tatami room so serene. Look at it this way: When you feel there is too much clutter, it is not because you have too many things it is rather because you don't have enough MA. (Picture to the right is the Japanese kanji character for MA.) Minimalism and Beyond
#JAPANESE WHEEL OF LIFE FULL#
MA is the emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled. The essence of Japanese aesthetic is a concept called 'MA' (pronounced "maah") - the pure, and indeed essential, void between all "things."Ī total lack of clutter, MA is like a holder within which things can exist, stand out and have meaning. Where there is too much, nothing stands out. The human hair cuticle is about the same thick, and a blade that sharp whittles a human hair lengthwise.Where there is clutter, even valuable things lose their value. Verhoeven, in the chapter "Experiments with the Tormek machine", honing on the chrome oxide loaded leather wheel produces 0.35 microns edge as shown by scanning electron microscope. In the "Experiments on Knife Sharpening" by John D. So, after SJ, I hone the blade on the Tormek honing wheel loaded with Green Rouge, and this invariably gives a sharper edge.įor harder steels, I also have to add a few puffs of 100,000# (0.25 micron) diamond spray over the honing wheel already covered with Chrome Oxide.įor example, I could never achieve hair splitting sharpness with SJ 4000 alone, shaving - easy, but as to the hanging hair test, the best I got was 'violin', but even that not always.Īfter honing with Chrome Oxide, hair splitting is a usual result. However, extra sharpness can be achieved by honing with Chrome Oxide, which is 0.5 micron. Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) 4000 grit is 3 micron particles, and Tormek Honing Compound consists of 1-3 micron particles, effective 3 micron. with this settings all my search for getting always a perfect sharp edge VERY FAST, is over.
#JAPANESE WHEEL OF LIFE MANUAL#
All my bevels now are looking as they were before and the big difference is the edge stays as when I was using the manual version to sharpen my tools. I got an aftermarket 800 Japanese stone and now I am tempted to change my occupation from “wooder” to “sharpener”. Using a 4000 Japanese stone the Tormek version SG250 for a secondary micro bevel improved a lot the amount of time the edge remained sharp, but I still was not where I wanted.
I’ve tried hardly to grade the stone to get closer results to the real 1000 I pressed the grader so hard I stalled the motor and the best thing I’ve done when pressing so hard and for long time was to untrue my wheel. If you compare the scratch patterns between the Tormek wheel graded at 1000 and an actual 1000 stone there is a huge difference, and if you add a magnifier glass everything gets amplified. the so called 1000 grit in my opinion is far from it. In 2009 Ionut had said all I could possibly say on this topic, so I just refer to his original post, a fragment of which I quote below: The main advantage of using a dedicated 800 grit stone over graded Tormek standard SG is that you do not have to grade finer grit from the original 220 grit, and hard grading can untrue the wheel and get the corners out of square (the latter mostly frustrates knife sharpeners). is somewhat finer than 'finely' graded Tormek #1000. Note that Japanese grit JIS #800 corresponds to US ANSI #600, and European FEPA #1200, i.e. The Japanese Sun Tiger 800 grit grinding wheel has become available as of today from this German seller: