New used knife and buffing out scratches

Hey all,

I just picked up a used Shibata Kotetsu 180mm Bunka from ebay. It's in pretty good shape (needs some sharpening), but it has a few minor scratches on the blade (picture below taken to highlight scratches). Nothing deep. Some appear to be from sharpening (?) and some from going in and out of a poorly fitting saya.

From reading a bit, it seems like polishing out scratches can end up being more trouble than its worth, but this knife originally comes with a rougher finish anyway, so I wouldn't be looking for a highly polished shine. What would be recommended for cleaning up the scratches a bit? Wet sandpapers starting at about 320 and going until I like the finish? I have up to 2500.

I know these are cosmetic and this will be a working (in the home) knife rather than a show piece, so I'm fine if the consensus is "don't bother". But if it's not too tough to clean it up, it'd be nice to start with something in A+ shape.

For what it's worth, core is R2 stainless and it has a softer stainless cladding.

Thanks,
Tyler

Hmmm... Tricky one. I have a Kotetsu petty and it had a scratch. Unfortunately, the finish direction is vertical which, unless you have buffing wheels and spindles, is really hard to maintain. You could try and convert them to horizontal lines, which I attempted but those grind marks run pretty deep so you're going to be sanding for a very long time. That said, if you have the patience, you could do it by hand with a wet & dry sandpaper progression going from heel to tip concentrating on keeping your motion steady and keeping the lines straight.
Godspeed

Horizontal strokes seems to be easier to do by hand but agree with above- grind marks run fairly deep. You will have to go to a lowww grit to try and start working those out. Possibly 1-2 stages lower than 320. Or, have plenty of 320 grit sheets
Vertical strokes -take lots of care. I learned unfortunately that I have quite a curve to my up& down stroke, not having a good vise or clamp or anything set up, just laying it down on a table with a small prop

As someone who went down the rabbit hole, I am tempted to say don't bother. Otherwise you might end up getting bothered by the new scratches and do you keep going and before you know it, you end up with a mirror polish. Pretty to look at, but sticks to certain foods a lot.

I have no advice to give, but I am interested in how you are going to handle that. Please keep posted!

Eh, so I opted to leave well enough alone. It'd be nice to clean it up a bit, but realistically, it really doesn't matter. This is a user knife and not a show piece, as I said. I have a feeling that I'd get going trying to clean it up, quickly reach a point of no return, and then be stuck for forever trying to make it decent looking again. I appreciate the advice though!

Instead of cleaning up the knife, I opted to make a saya for it out of curly maple (scraps from a mirror frame I'm building). I tend to need sayas, as I don't currently have a good storage location for our good knives. Still need to make the pin, but my lathe is occupied with another project at the moment.

Thanks!
Tyler

Lovely looking saya

You got skills. That's a beautiful saya.

Out of curiosity, do you have a magnetic knife holder? They're so practical and easy to find a space to position them in. The added benefits include easy access to your knives, better, in my opinion, health of the knives, and,for me, having your knives on display. If you do end up going this route, just make sure the magnets are relatively powerful and note that some of them have magnets spaced along the holder, whereas some have the magnetic pull continuous along the whole holder allowing for the more versatile positioning of the knives.

I should pay you to make me a saya for my Kotetsu!

Thanks for the compliments! Woodworking is my primary hobby, so I have some fun woods in my garage along with the tools to make things like sayas.

Yes, I am familiar with magnetic knife holders and plan to custom make one for myself eventually, again with a fun wood. I'm eager to do so, but we've been talking about redoing our kitchen, so I figured I'd just live with sayas until then. Plus, sayas have the added benefit of making the knives easy to hide when guests are looking for a knife, so they automatically grab one from our more obvious knife block of lower end knives.

Tyler

OneStaple said:

Plus, sayas have the added benefit of making the knives easy to hide when guests are looking for a knife, so they automatically grab one from our more obvious knife block of lower end knives.Tyler

Click to expand...

My experience is just the opposite. No guests dare to touch the knives as if they would be afraid of them

With less expensive knives I treat the soft stainless with coarse ScotchBrite
https://s19.postimg.org/3yvaw5i1t/Scotch_Brite.jpg