Sharpening up an A-Type

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schanop

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Not sure if Dave is going to like this :scared4:, another A-type post.

This is what now I do sometimes when knife budget hits the limit. The knife is A-type kiritsuke. I have got it for a while, and started to get tired of its original look and finish. After lots of elbow grease on stone and abrasive papers, here is what it looks like:

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The idea of fake kasumi is a rip off from Tatsuya's article athttp://www.suisin.co.jp/toku02/2009-01/index.htm. You guys probably have seen other example in JKS cutting videos where chef Ueda uses inox honyaki usuba with a cool fake kasumi.

The main thing that I am not quite happy with the knife is its edge holding. Without thick enough high angle micro bevel, the edge just wants to roll to the left :(
 
Cool. I've noticed the same thing with the rolling. I seem to recall someone testing theirs for hardness and getting a 58 hrc back. Too soft for a true single bevel, really.
 
Thank Dave.

I hope Tatsuya-san would, Jon. Thank to you for lots of sharpening tips. Giving this guy a hamaguriba edge allows making Kasumisshimo easily.

Factory bevel comes at a very low angle already, can't do anything much to it to help strengthening the edge.
 
awwww cmon man, now i cannot rest until i get that look on my newly acquired a-type gyuto

seriously that is amazing work that you should really be proud of...hats off to you

if you dont mind me asking, what stones and abrasives did you use?
 
That link needs a translation! Google Translate just doesn't cut it.... Anyone???
 
@UglyJoe, have you tried ocn? I have found that ocn (via FoxLingo, FireFox only) gives me more readable page, if it can translate a page. Try this ocn translated of Tatsuya's article.

For the gears used, beston 500, bester 700, and probably bester 1200 were used to flatten out the body as well as grind off the logo on the front side. Once that's done, after many sessions and hours you bet, it is a lot easier with wet/dry sand paper ranging from P240 - P3000. Then it is 3M polishing paper, the colour one, 600 - 8000 grit. Nothing fancy, just lots of elbow grease pretty much. The mirror polish on the body part will be an on-going process from now, taking out finer scratch out bit by bit.

For the bevel, I did faux kasumi with king 800 first, then progressed to polish the edge with naniwa SS3K and Kitayama.

Some how before I started doing this, I had been looking at Suisin Momizi a fair bit. You can think of this a-type as a poor man substitute. Momizi and other thin Funayuki, like one in densyo and hayate series probably have much better edge holding ability.
 
I'm thinking about getting one of those for the sushi bar. Is that a 270? You put 2 bevels on it? How is it working out for you? What do you use it for...hehe.
 
That is a 240 mm one, got it directly from Aritsugu Tokyo, a gift from my Japanese friend.

After having been using it for a while, I tend to think of it as a closer cousin to an usuba rather than a yanagiba or a kiritsuke. Although it has a curve up edge at the tip like most kiritsuke, the rest of the edge is pretty straight. As it is now, it has a curve up at the heel, but that's my sharpening boo boo when I didn't know enough and over ground the heel :-O Its spine is quite thin too, about 2.5mm at the heel and not quite 2mm towards the tip. If you have a copy of "Japanese Kitchen Knives", in the usuba section, look at the demonstration knife. It is a thin, single bevel knife, fairly similar to this Aritsugu. That knife is perhaps a little bit taller, or shorter. For the bevel, I put a hamaguriba edge (like my other single bevel knives) which has two distinct parts, the upper bevel faux kasumi part, and the edge it self. If counting the micro, then there are three, tee hee.

It works well for me as a vegetable knife though, using it in an usuba manner, and not too bad for meat and fish slicing task. But I wouldn't look at a new A-Type single bevel again if it is going to be my fish knife.
 
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