Recent content by Lurkernomore

Masao is read Shōbu. It’s a Sakai thing, many yanagi you can buy from the old wholesalers are Shobu and it says so on the box as well.

Happens. You need to buy a lot of honyaki to be able to establish a frame of reference and a lot will have bends, warps, low spots and other fun stuff. This holds true across all sharpeners and smiths. Yours is fine, obviously not perfect but ok. The bend will not affect honbazuke to the point...

Looks like he is working, carbon knife just posted a video of him on their Insta.

He ain’t a skater. He’s like 74. Truth is in Sakai it doesn’t take an accident for things to go mysterious ways. They always do and you can do nothing. That said it was suspicious from the start. I would have tried H&K and Nigara.

It’s got masayuki on the tang so maybe ikeda tatsuo.

Togashi is the best because of proper, science based annealing and not an excessive amount of tempering. Just the sweet spot. It’s really the annealing though.

Both are not from Sakai and myojin doing his own thing means myojin not doing konosuke. Tadokoro used to sharpen cheapo knives for Sakai wholsesalers but not anymore. Why would he. We can really take both off the list and add them to the well established masters from Tosa list.

That’s a no from me. Baba, yauchi, masamoto sohonten (by proxy) and Aoki have the biggest grinding workshops and most importantly young people they trained themselves. All others are dependent on independent craftsmen. That’s how konosuke went downhill, it only works and you only grow as long...

That’s just rebranded ashi though, or am I wrong about that? Yusuke was a wholesaler.

武蔵國 Musashi no kuni (Tokyo basically) 水心子 suishinshi (esoteric reference to an edo period swordsmith) 藤原良明 fujiwara yoshiaki 作 saku (made by fujiwara yoshiaki). The usual. Apparently made like six years ago.

The higher price. The funaki guy regularly sells his stuff for about 30000 to 40000 at crafts markets in Kyoto. Add the mystical sharpening and you get three times the price. Kinda like the dude with the Kyoto made rentetsu gyutos that he sells for three times the Japanese retail price. Right...

This happens a lot but it’s so weird to me: why do they take on oem work when their own stuff is sold out all the time and they’re way behind on orders. The whole industry is way too clubby.

Simple, I give you that.

That’s a hobbyist take. They’re wildly successful and have a bunch of staff and physical stores. Of course they’re not knife nerds, they’re already a step above most industries if they’re knowledgeable enough about what they are selling themselves. It’s a business. They also get from TF whatever...

A propeller twist I’d address with a chisel I guess, though I haven’t yet done it. I only use sticks so I can’t fix warp. About the uradashi thing: assuming a bevel without low spots and a low spot in the urasuki, wouldn’t hammering down the bevel to make contact create a low spot in the bevel...