I have Salty's Mizuno from the passaround and when I saw John's thread about the Masamoto honyaki I offered to try and polish the knife to bring out the hamon line.
The knife had patina and some pitting marks from use.
I started with green Aoto slurry and polished out the patina and brightened the blade up a lot.
The hamon started to show, at which point I moved on to finger stones.
The result was an OK finish, with milky hamon, that did not stand out too much, at least not as much as I would have liked. I did not feel like grinding finger stones to powder and polishing with it to try and get more contrast.
The hamon on the front of the knife was hard to photograph and was not as pronounced as the back hamon.
I did not like the natural stone look of the polish so Instead I tried that vinegar / lemon juice method, and I liked the results a lot better.
I did 3 treatments with vinegar and lemon juice in order followed by polishing with 1k Wa powder, then 2k Wa powder.
Continues in next post.
The knife had patina and some pitting marks from use.
I started with green Aoto slurry and polished out the patina and brightened the blade up a lot.
The hamon started to show, at which point I moved on to finger stones.
The result was an OK finish, with milky hamon, that did not stand out too much, at least not as much as I would have liked. I did not feel like grinding finger stones to powder and polishing with it to try and get more contrast.
The hamon on the front of the knife was hard to photograph and was not as pronounced as the back hamon.
I did not like the natural stone look of the polish so Instead I tried that vinegar / lemon juice method, and I liked the results a lot better.
I did 3 treatments with vinegar and lemon juice in order followed by polishing with 1k Wa powder, then 2k Wa powder.
Continues in next post.