Is it possible to thin your knife with messing up the finish?

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drake

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Is it possible to thin a knife without messing up the factory finish? And if not how can you restore that finish?
 
no... thinning will cause scratches... however, you can make things look nice again in a variety of ways (stones, finger stones, powders, belts, etc.)
 
I've never heard of finger stones or powders. How would I make it look nice with just using a stone?
 
If you're careful and don't thin too much it can looks pretty good, give you a nice big shiny bevel
 
I've never heard of finger stones or powders. How would I make it look nice with just using a stone?


Progressively increase the grit until you like the finish. However you will never be able to get it back to the factory look. That's why I've just ended up polishing the entire blade face to blend it in to my own desired finish.
 
If the "factory" finish runs orthogonal to the length of the blade, it can be restored with a fine or very fine Scotchbrite belt on a grinder. I've done this with many knives, including Konosuke, Devin Thomas, Kato, Carbonext, etc.

If the finish runs parallel, it can often be matched with wet/dry sandpaper. I've had good success restoring Shigefusa finishes with worn 220 or new 320 grit paper.
 
Apart from JNS, where does one get finger stones?
 
Just thinned a new-to-me Hiromoto tonight and the soft cladding looked pretty bad initially. Just work up a little mud w/ each stone and polishing a little before moving to the next stone helps. By the soft cladding really came back quickly with some 600 wet/dry sandpaper. No mirror shiny obviously, but scratches polish out in literally one minute. Monosteel blade requires more work, so I tend to just polish on the stone and leave the remaining scratches.
 
Sandpapper and mud from the stone :)
 
If thinning a Kurouchi finished knife, will you do any harm exposing metal that lies beneath in terms of adding reactivity to proteins? Thinking kurouchi finished AS Blue steel.
 
If thinning a Kurouchi finished knife, will you do any harm exposing metal that lies beneath in terms of adding reactivity to proteins? Thinking kurouchi finished AS Blue steel.

Well yeah it'll make the steel under the KU more reactive. I also remember Dave saying that on some knives this area is iron not steel so will not form a patina. Maybe something to consider. Kurouchi is a big advantage to carbon knives and when you take it off you still have a lot of rough marks and dings that were covered up

What kind of sandpaper?

Standard wet/dry will do. Where you start depends on what grit stone you started thinning with. 400 is a pretty good place to start I'd say
 
When you say standard wet/dry is that just normal old sandpaper I can get a Home Depot?
 
Wet/Dry is silicon carbide and is dark gray or black depending on the manufacturer.
 
When you say standard wet/dry is that just normal old sandpaper I can get a Home Depot?

Yes, Home Depot and Lowe's carry wet/dry sandpaper. They do have a limited variety though. As GlassEye mentioned, auto parts supply shops and auto paint supply shops especially will have a wider range of wet/dry sandpaper. There are heaps of it available on-line. Amazon for one has a good selection.
 
I do agree with most previous posters. To give an idea about thinning try to establish a relief bevel at a much more acute angle than you would normally do.
 
I haven't had a problem with iron forming a patina on a knife that I removed the KU from. It could be mild steel though... Is there any way for me to tell?
 

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