Suiban stone?

I am curious what people use for the medium in suibans with a stone. What kind
of fine stone, gravel etc is best to use. I have turface and haydite but they seem
out of scale and too course. Thanks

I've used sieved beach sand, river sand, play sand (from Early Learning Centre in the UK), builders sand etc.

Bugeye wrote:I am curious what people use for the medium in suibans with a stone. What kind
of fine stone, gravel etc is best to use. I have turface and haydite but they seem
out of scale and too course. Thanks

I usually use my turface fines leftover from sifting. I use them because they're readily available, and don't cost me anything more. If I were planning on putting the stone in a public display, I would probably be more particular in the sand I used.

Hi Bugeye... In the Tokyo area, there are two sand types distributed commercially for suiban; each arguably serves particular stones better than the other. The finer grained sand is more uniform in color & is especially nice for finely textured black stones-- it comes from a river carrying reddish Kurama granite. A more coarsely grained sand with more variance in grain color is perhaps the better choice for more colorful stones including green, red & brown.

One Japanese expert identifies the second sand as imported from Taiwan. It is close to some pool filter sands distributed in the USA as buff in-color-- I use one of those, but mine was obtained at Yuji Yoshimura's retirement auction in 1995. I have to wash it before each use for good results.

In IBC's old site threads, sands were discussed at length. One fellow showed sand he had taken from an ant hill which looked very similar to the finer Japanese sand. The quest for good suiban sand is constant for most enthusiasts. A PVSG member collects sand from a river in West Virginia that has been used in some club displays.

It is important that the neutral (beige-to-wheat spectrum), natural color be distinguished between wet & dry form since an essential function of viewing is to watch sand dry slowly along with the landscape-view stone during intimate viewing.

Here is a Japanese webpage devoted to suiban sand selection. If you auto-translate it into English, substitute Kurama granite for the clunky references including the word "horse."

Thank you this is what I was looking for. Chris, this is the detail of the sand I was looking for. Now the hunt begins. Thanks again to everyone for there input.