Carter refinishing

Decided to stop delaying and even out the bevels on my 210mm Carter -he called it a yanagi but being double beveled it's more like a short suji/ large petty. Being the SFGZ line deep scratches had been left in the finish and I wanted to even it all out

Initial finish


Started with 400 chosera until the bevel was flat and even, this took longer than expected as there were a number of over grinds in the edge, but once these were gone it was relatively quick through 1k chosera, 4k king, unbranded 6k, jck 8k.

Starting with the 400


Over grind near tip


Initially I was planning to put a mirror bevel on, but quite liked the hazy finish the king stone put on and I had some finger stones WillC had given me to have a play with so decided to give these a go.

King 4k finish


Trying to show hazy and bright mirror finish from finger stones


Pretty happy with the results, put an 8k microbevel on then stropped with CrO loaded balsa and it cuts like a beast

Next to another SFGZ, just need to rebuild the blue patina on the core.....

Looks good, Tom -

M

Great stuff! You ballsy guys refinishing your Carters amaze me!

Cheers, I'm not touching my HG for fear of messing with the geometry. This was quite fun though, has made me want a 10k SS for mirror polishing though

Nice work T! I just adjusted mine ... once again ... As you know it's a HG and actually I'm a littlre surprised about the grind. Seems like the side with the stamp were hollow grind (from 1 cm and up) and the other side were convex. Well I put in some a-grease and started of flattening both sides, rounded the tip - followed by convexing both sides slightly. Seems like a much better cutter now - and it looks great too

Peco said:

Nice work T! I just adjusted mine ... once again ... As you know it's a HG and actually I'm a littlre surprised about the grind. Seems like the side with the stamp were hollow grind (from 1 cm and up) and the other side were convex. Well I put in some a-grease and started of flattening both sides, rounded the tip - followed by convexing both sides slightly. Seems like a much better cutter now - and it looks great too

Click to expand...

Strange yours was hollow on one side, in the pics you posted it looked like it may have been but I couldn't quite tell. Mine is already nicely convexed on both faces, and I quite like the thickness (so don't want to thin it too much which I think I'd have to to get an even finish). It was your HG and looking at pictures of Curtis's Carters that made me take the plunge with this

Nice!! TB Its looks great, But how does it cut? is there a notable improvement?

HHH Knives said:

Nice!! TB Its looks great, But how does it cut? is there a notable improvement?

Click to expand...

Performance is pretty much the same as it was before, which I'm treating as a victory as i didn't really want to change that, just make it a bit prettier
I kept the angle the same and just flattened out the unevenness and got rid of all the deep scratches.
It's a bit sharper than it was before but that's just where I hadn't put it all the way through a progression on the stones for a while, and I'm hopefully getting slowly better at keeping consistent angle, pressure and deburring.

Looks good!

That does look very good. I'm always afraid I'm going to make mine cut worse, lol. I'm sure I'll work that secondary bevel sometime down the line though. Hopefully, it comes out as well as yours did.

TB_London said:

Strange yours was hollow on one side, in the pics you posted it looked like it may have been but I couldn't quite tell. Mine is already nicely convexed on both faces, and I quite like the thickness (so don't want to thin it too much which I think I'd have to to get an even finish). It was your HG and looking at pictures of Curtis's Carters that made me take the plunge with this

Click to expand...

Take a look again. You can see sanding at the top and in the bottom, not in the middle part.

Nice work!

That's very nice. How's the left hand bevel?