SOLD 240mm honyaki gyuto

[refcast]

Sold
Spf and I still need to finish it

Same as the older BST but I'm done now (if it doesn't sell see you guys in a month or so while working on it more)

$650 with handle and saya
$560 without handle and saya

White steel, mizu honyaki
(Feels more like mizu, having sharpened a couple different mizu and aburs honyaki)

168 g without handle
38 g is ho wood handle weight
84 g is ebony handle weight (silver spacer and horn endcap)

216 g with ho wood handle
252 g with ebony handle


Heel to tip 230mm
Handle to tip 246mm

50mm at heel

4mm at handle
3.5mm at heel
2.5mm at middle of blade
0.8 mm 1 cm before tip

Sakai made

Still comes with ebony handle and saya. Saya fits better now, with friction point closer to full insertion. Handle is a bit scuffed though, sadly. Saya is close to untouched though since I left it elsewhere.

Slight righty bias at bevel

Still lower grit scratches I didn't get completely out, especially on right side. . . Still working on it I guess, thought I might be done.

Cuts like it looks . . . Good food penetration from the thinness behind the edge, good control due to the stout spine, food food release due to spine and convexing, good finesse due to distal taper, great tip action due to paper thin tip, especially the last cm for ultrafine detail work.

Steel feels like Sakai honyaki white . . . Sharpened a couple so far and they feel more similar than different. This example feels water quenched and quite crispy . . . Not sure how much the steel matrix vs carbide properties contributes to that. Compared to tf white, less sharpness maybe, but similar league. Crispness and edge feel on jnats is far nicer on the honyaki. Better feedback and responsiveness . . . Tf can feel a little glassy. This feels like a crisp charcoal stick rubbing on concrete whereas tf somete felt a little like a dessicated stick . . . Harder to abrade.

The honyaki steel feels like it might be tougher but can't tell yet, and don't want to stress test it. Compared to wat honyaki steel, more similar than different . . . Wat is slightly harder and harder to abrade, but I like white steel more.

The feeling of mizu honyaki feels more like a hard aggregate . . . Pieces fall off sharply during abrasion. Abura honyaki feels tougher like the binder or matrix is tougher, and material that makes up the aggregate itself is a little less hard. Both feel different that clad knives which feel like the binder is a bit more fragile.


Is a middleweight, with a thick spine at the heel but still pretty thin behind the edge.

Grind is pretty 50/50, not perfect, but pretty close when I put it on a flat plate. Convex grind. Close to the tip it gets flatter, but still convex.

Choil is super eased Sakai style, so pinch grip is more comfy compared to normal easing. It has triple easing; the bottom of the neck is tilted for a righty, the corner on the right side is eased for a righty, and the edge between the blade face and choil is eased. Similar is done to the left side, but to a lesser extent.

Tip is a bit too thin for me personally. It's very thin, especially compared to the rest of the knife.


My preference is for knives thinner at the spine, and clad knives so selling this.

Old BST:
https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/...yuto-ebony-handle-and-saya.55836/#post-851286

 

[Sparten007]

Such a uniform and beautiful hamon!!!

 

[jedy617]

This looks amazing, if I didn't grab a shiraki for sale at KnS I would jump on this.

 

[refcast]

Spine straightness pics

I double checked straightness against a vertical line on the wall too, both edge and center line of spine, and it should be good.

 

[birdsfan]

Really nice work on this since that last post! Heck of a deal for honyaki!

 

[refcast]

Willing to break up the set, too:

$560 honyaki only
$50 handle only
$70 saya only

Also I don't mind doing more work to the knife, I just need more time to do so

Tip detail: straighness, taper, and handedness

 

[refcast]

 

[Kippington]

Far out dude. At this point, I would just keep it for myself...
Awesome work!

 

[refcast]

Although it's fun to have and use high priced knives, I don't actually like keeping them, haha.

Also the tang is pretty darn thick in the knife . . . It swells to like 5mm halfway down, so part of the weight comes from that, and it makes the knife more neutral balanced and heavier than other gyuto I've used

 

[Geigs]

this looks so nice, you've done a great job dude. If i had available funds, I'd take it. Maybe I should sell a couple to grab this lol

 

[Luftmensch]

Beautiful work @refcast. Well done!

I know there is no point speculating.... The wave on Shiraki hamons are typically lower in amplitude. Ikeda?? He has been producing a steady stream of honyaki of late...

 

[refcast]

It doesn't look Ikeda -- Yoshikazu Ikeda's are very symmetrical circle like waves. I know it doesn't look too much like old shiraki. Maybe new nakagawa since he makes a lot of honyaki relatively speaking. . . but I'm not sure.

I've seen togashi make a lot of different hamon shapes, so i'm not sure it's him. I think there are a couple other honyaki smiths in Sakai, but I haven't seen any of their work too much. I know there's one on a german kitchen knife website, but I haven't checked that again yet.

I really have got to get the deeper scratches out . . . sandpaper alone is inconsistent in how it abrades . . . either too slow or gouging, so I've been combining that with sic powder

 

[refcast]

Spine again, tilted left and right, choil

Took out all the deep scratches and thinned a bit again .. so I'm at the polishing stage again

Also, anyone know who might have been the kaji/blacksmith?

 

[refcast]

Spf

Interesting pics

 

[ethompson]

That hamon is yummy!

 

[Vancouverguy]

I'm pretty sure I'm 2nd for this

 

[ReiHamono]

Any updates?

 

[refcast]

Refinishing again. Void cracks appeared 3 times and I had to thin to remove them. The cracks are removed already. Still working on refinishing.

Another honyaki gyuto from a named Japanese maker also had a similar crack . . . .so I assume these are common for Sakai honyaki. It was a Mizuno. Also I guess I have to try to keep temperature swings to a minimum with the knife too I guess.

I'm pretty slow at refinishing

Also learned that lenses can distort straight lines, like for checking straightness of spine or choil shots

Learned about different grind tapers so that was cool (whether grind is same at heel vs tip, or linear, or log, or exponential). That there can be different grinds in a knife. Learned that sic + sandpaper is good for blending and choil area thinning vs stones for bulk thinning. Learned about how neck area thickness and angle affects on grind, balance, or how locked in and secure the grip is.

Also the spine specs and choil shot are close to the JKI Ashi honyaki, but thicker at the heel, and thinner at the midsection and tip.

 

[refcast]

 

[Alder26]

Absolutely killer polish. Really fantastic work!

 

[refcast]

Progression is

1k gesshin

400 grit sandpaper with 220 grit sic and wd 40 and 6mm creatology foam cut out with nitrile gloves

220 grit sic with wd 40 by foam, and then by glove

500 grit sic same way

The foam is essential to creating contrast and to abrade along the banding

Simichrome

Plus lots of cuts


choil

 

[Mikeadunne]

Laundry soap?!

 

[refcast]

@Mikeadunne

Uh yeah! Powdered tide

I noticed that laundry soap helped drastically reduce rusting and patina, then I noticed it etched steel in a gentle way without making the knife feel rough like with acids. And much faster than concentrated citric acid. . . which for me tended to just make the knife whitish and feel rougher.

I would imagine anything else with a higher pH would work ok too.

Really though its laundry soap + sic powder. Laundry soap to etch, then sic to bring out more contrast from the etching. Last is simichrome to make gloss and remove surface scratches.

It is so easy to scratch knives

 

[refcast]

Sad news ,the void cracks came back, and more numerous, and on both sides. Here's the right side.

They don't seem to go through all the way . . . but I dunno. I've seen a mizuno honyaki crack along the hamon a bit, then the crack went away.

I think these could possibly go away, but they are quite deep, and not worth it. When I shine the knife in light, the crack reflects back steel, so that's why I think it's structurally ok for now.

I thought maybe using SiC powder could possibly aggravate the internal stress in the steel, but regular sharpening wheels are also quite aggressive, too. The cracks also seem to concentrate at the 1/3 point toward the tip on the hard steel. Even if I tried to remove more steel to remove the scratches . . . I think the knife would be less stable that way and there could be more cracks, either there, or that would form. Internal steel stresses on honyaki are intense it seems.

The crack structure is totally weird though -- it's not like a regular surface initiated crack, where the crack starts at the surface. It's very much like a uncover a void. Just a pinprick, and the I remove more metal and I see the void appear.


Good news is the knife cuts great though, ha


Aside from that, ohira powder with oil performs so closely to powdered sic or AlOx that I don't think I'll use jnat powder.

The laundry soap actually didn't seem to help much . . .it was mostly sic and alox it seems when I checked again.

I used the sic or AlOx with wd 40. Then a paper towel or cotton pad. Then the 6mm creatology foam pad for pressure distribution and force. This was actually abrasive enough to remove shallow scratches, and make a sort of mirror, too. Even though the grit was 500 for sic, and 1000 for AlOx.

 

[ethompson]

That’s a bummer. Still a great project though and I’m sure you learned a lot along the way. Planning to try out that laundry soap etch tonight…

 

[Vancouverguy]

Could this knife be one of those " b" quality knives that's why there's no makers mark on it? Like when knifewear does garage sales?

 

[refcast]

@ethompson

I realized that the 500 sic powder + 6mm foam + paper towel layer for friction was what helped the most for banding . . .

@Vancouverguy
As for "B" quality knives . . .well maybe, but I'm not sure it's strongly correlated to the cracks . . . there were no cracks on the surface of the blade, so I have no idea how someone is supposed to tell there are cracks inside the blade. Unless maybe they used those state of the art structural steel crack detector things.

The steel is still good and similar to other honyaki I've tried. And it's not an obvious failure with a perpendicular crack tearing it apart on the edge, or at the end of the hamon. Those are the obvious failure ones.

 

[refcast]

Okie dokie, honyaki back up for sale. $460 blade only. I'm 85% certain the cracks don't extend through the blade. The valley of the crack reflects light like a flat surface. So a cheap, light middleweight, polished, thin behind the edge honyaki for sale.

Mirror

 

[refcast]

Left side

 

[refcast]

Right side