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https://item.rakuten.co.jp/honmamon-r/hw_my300/
軟鉄と鋼の鍛接跡の“地境”がある。

稀に、この地境に微かな隙間がみられるが、 包丁の硬度を高めるために、

職人が“低温で丁寧に鍛接した証”である

There is a “ground boundary” of forging marks of soft iron and steel. In rare cases, a slight gap can be seen in this boundary, but in order to increase the hardness of the knife, It is proof that the craftsman carefully forged at a low temperature.

Screenshot_20230814-142910.png
 
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Some old style knives have heels shorter than the middle of the blade. Kind of awkward to use, but more curve makes things slice easier. Puts more weight toward the tip, and encourages the knife to follow the arc. A style of Tokyo nakiri I think, have this.

Also, when doing initial ura work, the uraoshi line can make contact everywhere except one spot in the middle of the blade. First, bend the knife away from the ura, so that part of the ura can be sharpened to establish the line. Then straighten back, and sharpen as normal. Use a flat plat as reference. This helps to avoid hammering the iron.

I think this can also be done to make the uraoshi sharpen more evenly, by bending and thickening the uraoshi line where it's thin, but I haven't tried that yet. I've only done it where the line is non-existent, and no uraoshi means duburring cannot be done unless the knife sharpened with a back bevel
 
Google image search, showing related images, seems to be a really great way to find related topics. Google search in Japanese usually just sucks. . . It only seems to index a couple of things in the regular manner. So I google search blacksmith and kitchen knife kanji, then go to images and click and click to find new info
 
refcast said:
https://item.rakuten.co.jp/honmamon-r/hw_my300/
軟鉄と鋼の鍛接跡の“地境”がある。

稀に、この地境に微かな隙間がみられるが、 包丁の硬度を高めるために、

職人が“低温で丁寧に鍛接した証”である

There is a “ground boundary” of forging marks of soft iron and steel. In rare cases, a slight gap can be seen in this boundary, but in order to increase the hardness of the knife, It is proof that the craftsman carefully forged at a low temperature.

View attachment 262271
Click to expand...
Ground boundary is a mistranslation. Ground refers to the mild steel layer of the blade, called 地金 jigane (vs 鋼 hagane). Jizakai then means the border (sakai) line where mild steel and carbon steel meet.
The people I work with never use jizakaki though, they only refer to the whole mild steel area on the back as Jiai and to the weld itself as kaisaki 開先 which means something like welding groove.

It’s not supposed to come apart but it does happen and it doesn’t actually matter at all but on the export market people tend to get their panties in a twist about it pretty hard. I’d trust a smith with the occasional aike (cold shut spot/ not properly welded spot) more than the ones who it never happens to. The latter mostly go at very high temperatures that negatively affect the steel during forging and forge welding.
 
Excuse the double post but I’d also like to share a resource (that’s probably well known already):

The best resource on Sakai knives and sharpening in my opinion is the suishin blog.
https://suisin.co.jp/daily-practice/or
https://world.suisin.co.jp/wp/daily-practice/
Aoki Tatsuya is great at sharpening and explaining things. The blog also illustrates the quality of high end Sakai knives very well.
 
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