rounding spine

Hi All,

I've got a Tojiro that I use as a bit of a beater, and it works just fine but it always hurts my hand on the spine whenever I do a lot of cutting with it. I'd like to soften a bit of the spine, add a curvature to it, and I was wondering if anyone knew a good method for doing that without much effort. I figured I could take a XXC diamond plate to it, or put some diamond paste onto a wooden dowel and use that, but wanted to get advice first.

Thanks!

Yeah i had the exact same thing for the same knife.
I made a cardboard protector around the blade edge and then taped it in place so I could get a better hold on the knife and it's safer.
Then a fine metal file did most of the grunt work and I just used some of my poorer stones to progressively get a more refined curve out of it. Just work slowly and you will be fine, it really doesn't take much and you don't want to take much metal off because then you thin the spine and that will hurt even more so don't be real aggressive. I think I did mine over a couple of weeks. Doing a couple of sessions and refining it a little here and there and it worked out.

Someone on her mentioned placing blade down in a phone book to hold it, then sandpaper in a shoe shining back and forth motion for the spine.

skiajl6297 said:

Someone on her mentioned placing blade down in a phone book to hold it, then sandpaper in a shoe shining back and forth motion for the spine.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did with the Nakiri. Since you do not need to round the whole spine (only the pinch grip area) the process is very quick. I started with 220grit wet-dry sandpaper and then polished with 800grit one.

Yup. I use silicone carbide sandpaper with the knife held in a small vice. A phone book will do too. I tape the blade with a heavy tape within about a 1/4 inch of the spine because slips with the sandpaper can scuff the blade quite easily.

If you are in a major metro area, you might look around for a professional sharpener who can do the rounding for a small fee. I've had two different places round knives for me, and the most I was charged was $10 for a 270mm gyuto.

You might find that just easing the two edges of the spine will make the knife much more comfortable to use. I have used a coarse stone to round the edges of the spine and then a medium grit stone to smooth the scratches left by the coarse stone. Whole process took less than 10 minutes.