240mm Kato Bent to Hell - Please Help!

Well, my knife related luck hasn't been up the last few days. My 240mm Kato came back from re-handling and to my horror, when I opened the box the knife was crazy bent. Upon inspection of the box, it seems that something VERY heavy had been sitting on it for a long time. Would someone please just tell me that this is in any way fixable? I am worried to say the least. I would contact Maksim as he knows these knives in and out but he is still on vacation for a bit.











I was recommended to put the knife in a vice between two boards under light pressure. So that's where it's sitting now. Any thoughts at all? Would someone please chime in here?

Sorry to see that-- must hurt.
You might want to wait for Maksim to come back.
From my limited experience, the vice isn't going to be enough. You (or someone else) will probably need to bend it back past straight to make it right. Murray Carter's sharpening video shows him doing this. I think there's a good chance it's fixable, but I'd look for someone with more experience.
Good luck, let us know how things go.

toddnmd said:

Sorry to see that-- must hurt.
You might want to wait for Maksim to come back.
From my limited experience, the vice isn't going to be enough. You (or someone else) will probably need to bend it back past straight to make it right. Murray Carter's sharpening video shows him doing this. I think there's a good chance it's fixable, but I'd look for someone with more experience.
Good luck, let us know how things go.

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lus1:

OUCH!!!!:shocked3::shocked3::shocked3::shocked3::shocked3::shocked3::shocked3::shocked3:
I always thought your forum name was an ode to a Metallica song, not the state of your knife and stone collection!
Just wait for Maksim to return. I've tried to straighten blades before to no success. It's not the easiest thing to do.
Good luck! I hope all your damage will stop!

San mai knives are lot easier to straighten compared to monosteel or honyaki , I was able to straighten few thanks to Jon's instructions . However that blade looks worse than what I had to fix

was the delivery insured? U might be able to file a claim.

Thanks a bunch for the kind words.

I can deal with a broken stone and Maksim was so kind he sent a replacement for it. I can grind metal and fix a broken tip. But I have no clue what to do with crooked Kato. I don't dare bend such a hard and thick knife to pry it back to straight. I just don't have the balls for such an operation. I hope Maksim has a magic trick up his sleeve for this one, or I'm up the creek... It's been in the vice for a good 26 hours now and it has only ever so slightly improved.

Of course this would happen to the best and rarest and most expensive knife I own....

And I hate to get all snooty on you but my name is a reference to a sub-episode of a chapter in Gravity's Rainbow, not that I would expect anyone to have a halfway decent chance of guessing that. Though I do enjoy Metallica's older recordings.

Mingooch said:

was the delivery insured? U might be able to file a claim.

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Delivery was insured up to £500. But Royal Mail is not too certain that a bent knife equals a broken knife.... So insurance is in no way guaranteed.

Oh man, that looks bad...

My first reaction was: how did the re-handler pack the knife? You have to expect that parcels are stacked under things, and they have to be protected against weight. I guess you would know how it looked as you unpacked the knife after receipt. Was it adequate?

There's a traditional kind of device used to straighten blades, a piece of wood with a gap in the middle sort of, but I don't have links or images of it to show you. Bends can also be hammered out.

The vice solution to me doesn't look good and I'd pull it out of there. If pressed between 2 pieces of straight wood, unhealthy pressure will be applied at the ends of the blade, by the tip and tang. Seems especially bad for the former. The wooden-gap thing pressures the area closer to the bend, which is as not delicate like the tip area. I don't really know more though. I imagine if pressure is spred out at strategic points of the blade, so as also not to stress things, this could work.

If I were you, I'd find a way of sending it to a smith somehow. Worth it for a 240 Kato gyuto.

Good luck

I have unbent bent knives the same way the Japanese smiths do it, which (if they are not heating and hammering) by numerous very slight bending adjustments between two / three offset dowels set in a pegboard set up for this purpose. This is done by hand and is done gradually and checked frequently. Some blades are more brittle than others. Some long blades naturally bend over time (not that I am suggesting that here obviously) and require periodic straightening. Many blades are straightened this way after forging and sharpening as often there is a slight curvature. If you have never done it or never seen it done, then send it to a smith. I would fully expect this to be fixable. Don't panic: all will be well.

Don't bother with the vice. Won't work cold.

There was a thread somewhere on KKF where I asked advices about straightening of badly bent Shigefusa knife. There were few advices similar to those that you already got, but the one that actually worked was from Devin Thomas. Basically he said to reverse the operation that caused the bent. If it was hit by something heavy, then you'll need to hit knife with a heavy hummer once again. If it was bent slowly then your trick with vise should work (though you'll need to actually bent knife the other way, not just clamp it straight).

icanhaschzbrgr said:

There was a thread somewhere on KKF where I asked advices about straightening of badly bent Shigefusa knife. There were few advices similar to those that you already got, but the one that actually worked was from Devin Thomas. Basically he said to reverse the operation that caused the bent. If it was hit by something heavy, then you'll need to hit knife with a heavy hummer once again. If it was bent slowly then your trick with vise should work (though you'll need to actually bent knife the other way, not just clamp it straight).

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Thank you very much for the info. To be honest, I don't have the confidence to whack my Kato with a hammer and hope for the best. Maybe I can find a talented smith to take a look at it.

OMG!!! I can feel your heart bleeding..... sorry to see that

xwhatever on waiting for Maxsim. if you were in the US I think Jon has tackled some prettybad ones before.

I'd ask one of the knife retailers & one of the knifemakers from this forum to write you a letter stating that the knife is beyond repair and use that as proof to claim the insurance.

Update:

I found the thread with the bent Shigefusa and after seeing the results, I gained a little courage from the words or Mr. Devin Thomas. I wrapped a mallet in cloth and laid the knife on a flat part of my vice (an improvised anvil if you will) with a thin cloth under it. I started very very gently tapping away on the bent section of the knife and kept going for about 25 minutes.

These are the results:




There is still more work to be done but I feel good about it so far. Thoughts? Am I crazy? Did I screw something up beyond repair?

Looks like nice work to me.

That's an easy fix with a 10" wide and flat wodden stump using a brass hammer, lightly so it will not likely leave any marks

Holy smokes that looks great. Be careful you don't add any twist to the knife. I'm not an expert here but as you start to sharpen knife any bends and especially a twist will cause uneven sharpening. May want to just send knife to Jin, dave, Korin, etc and let them tune and sharpen once. You'll be happier long term.

Update:

"The Good"
Alright, I got the spine completely straightened out now.

"The Bad"
But twice the cloth came off my mallet and left surface dents.... And the edge is wavy... I have no idea how that happened and I have no idea how to fix it. I haven't been able to sleep all night because of it.

Dent's from the mallet won't affect cutting so just threat them as battle scars that adds value (or ignore them). When I hammered Shigefusa petty I used metal hummer and left tons of scratches and dents. Most of them were polished out later with a help of sandpaper.

But the twisting on the edge is a problem. Is it possible to capture the problem on photos?

Can't take any more photos. Knife is wrapped up, packaged and about to be shipped to Maksim in the hopes that he can do something.

Crossing my fingers on this one...

Hope your knife gets fixed!

Why are you wasting Maxims time? The idiot who did the re-handle owes you an apology and a refund. The packaging job was done terrible. A cardboard tube with no support in between is a recipe for disaster.

He already gave me a very heartfelt apology and we agreed on letting Maksim take a look before filing a claim with Royal Mail. And I'm paying Maksim for this. It's not charity work.

And the tube was quite heavy duty and thick and the knife (and knife box) inside was wrapped in many layers of bubblewrap. Something abnormally heavy seems to have crushed the package. Any other cardboard box filled with bubble wrap would have been crushed all the same.

CutFingers said:

Why are you wasting Maxims time? The idiot who did the re-handle owes you an apology and a refund. The packaging job was done terrible. A cardboard tube with no support in between is a recipe for disaster.

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That wasn't a toilet paper roll, every tube I've ever seen in that size is at least 3-5mm thick and has no deflection when pressed with a reasonable load. The problem may have been that it was able to roll around during shipping, regardless something very heavy would have had to have done that damage. I think the fault is with the shipping company.

My condolences to you DamageInc regarding your recent knife issues.

Update:

Just got home from vacation and the knife was awaiting my arrival placed on my lawn. Apparently, since I wasn't there to receive, the postal worker just tossed it onto the grass. Which normally would be fine, I guess, but it was raining. Luckily, the water had not permeated into the knife thanks to gratuitous layers of bubble wrap.

Spine is still completely straight from my hammering. I had just sent the knife to Maksim to see if he could fix the edge, which was slightly wavy. Got a call from him a few days later and told me that it was fixable with a little sharpening and that I shouldn't worry. A flood of relief came over me.

Anyway, the edge is now 97% straight. The last 3% will come over time as the knife is used and sharpened. Maksim did indeed put quite a nice polished edge on it I must say.



Hammer marks. I don't really mind them to be honest.



I don't have the photography skills to show the edge properly. But it's as straight as can be now.

Good to hear the knife wasn't a write-off, what a shame that would have been.

My 275 Carter also has some marks in the cladding as well on one side near the heel, not sure if from sandblasting or from hammering. At any rate these are cosmetic at most.

Glad this had a happy ending

All sounds fine to me. A few hammer marks: well, now the knife has more history. To me the point of the workhorse Kato (also the non-workhorse you can get from Japan and elsewhere, aside from the more exclusive and expensive Kato) has never been a lovely finish. Nice kanji but there's no special finish on the knives and you have those deep spine-to-edge grindmarks that take ages to wear away, if that's what you want. With some patient polishing the marks will fade some, I guess, and you can also take out some of the grindmarks and get some kasumi contrast with the hagane too.

Yeah I have no gripes about the finish and I can redo that any time I want. Maybe the next time the knife needs thinning. Or if I'm feeling really adventurous, I'll bash the whole thing and call it a tsuchime finish.

I'm still going to grill Royal Mail over this whole debacle...

DamageInc said:

Maybe the next time the knife needs thinning.

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Cladding's pretty hard on Kato and marks take some time to fade, I'd say