A small shop in Bristol, Wisconsin

Pride Abrasive has made abrasive stones in Bristol, Wisconsin since 1978. It is family owned and it is small, a handful of people in one building in Kenosha County just over the Illinois line, and it has stayed that way for nearly fifty years.

What it is not is a knife brand. Pride is an abrasives manufacturer, and the water stones you will find here are one line out of a catalogue that mostly goes somewhere else entirely.

The day job is industrial

Most of what leaves that building never sees a kitchen. Honing stones for hydraulic cylinders and aerospace, sticks for the tool and die trade, cut to whatever size the job calls for.

Which is worth knowing, because it is the same shop making the stone on your bench. Here a stone is a consumable with a tolerance on it, not a product designed to photograph well.

Two bond strengths in one range

The water stones are ceramic aluminium oxide, and the range is built around a deliberate split. Through the coarse and medium grits the bond is left comparatively weak, so spent grain releases under pressure and fresh grain comes up behind it and the stone keeps cutting. At the fine end, 8000 and above, the bond is harder, so the stone wears slowly and holds a flat face while it polishes.

The other difference is one you can measure with a ruler. These are a full inch thick, appreciably more stone than most of what sits beside them on the shelf, which matters on something you will be flattening and wearing down for years.

What we carry

Singles from 220 through 10,000, including the 600 and 800 that most ranges skip. Then the combinations, which cover the jumps people actually make: 220/1000 to reset an edge and bring it back, 400/3000 and 1000/6000 through the middle of the range, and 1000/8000, 3000/8000 and 6000/10000 for finishing.

A 120 grit flattening stone as well, because a water stone dishes, and a dished stone quietly rounds the edge you are trying to put on.