Fingerstone help

[superworrier]

1. I got some streaks of shininess under the cloudiness. Further polishing won't really make it go away as far as I can tell. I'm using uchigumori hazuya. Are these just scratches? Would I be better off evening the surface with fine-ish sandpaper first? Or do I need to work up more mud? The problem is with mud I have a hard time with lubrication.
2. The cloudiness is not hitting the area around the kanji? I'm guessing the right thing to do here is to flatten it a bit with sandpaper. I'm hoping it wont take too long since the raised piece is probably a relatively small area.

BTW, my fingerstones are prepared in the normal way. Paper backed, flattened to around 0.5mm, broken, polished on Arashiyama 6k, corners cut off, etc. I'm using moderate pressure as I've seen described (a little less than what turns under your finger nail white) with enough water so I can move smoothly.

 

[tostadas]

Not all stones will perform the same way on all steels. Sometimes it's a matter of finding the right stones for your particular case

 

[superworrier]

Not all stones will perform the same way on all steels. Sometimes it's a matter of finding the right stones for your particular case

So it's prob worth preparing a few more from the bag I got then?

 

[ethompson]

Picture of the effect on the knife would be helpful here

 

[drsmp]

After polishing with a FS , I use a wet hard felt pad with the FS mud to even out the polish

 

[tostadas]

So it's prob worth preparing a few more from the bag I got then?

Well, if they're all from the same stone, there might not be a huge difference. But if you have other harder/softer stones also, you might want to test them out and see how they compare.

 

[superworrier]

Yeah I bought them from Namikawa Heibei. No idea if they’re from the same stone

 

[ethompson]

Based on what I can see in the video, you do need to lay down a better polish before moving to finger-stones to get the desired effect. To get really Nice effects off finger-stones you need a really, really clean base polish. Finger stones are not a good way to erase scratches as you'll just use up a ton of them that way. They are great for eliminating minor streaking and gently changing the brightness and detail of an already good stone polish. Nutmeg has a really excellent on these somewhere on here.

It also looks like you have some finer grained harder fingerstones. These can work wonders on some steels in bringing out detail, but only when paired with the right knife. The most versatile ones are super duper soft and create that flawless matte finish. Sadly finger-stones that soft aren't easy to find. For general purposes I actually like to use uchi powder made into a mud and rubbed in with hard felt, much easier to get a nice uniform finish that way without hours of bench stone work before in my experience. That said finger-stones are better to get really, really, really smooth top notch kasumi with lots of detail.

 

[ethompson]

The kanji probably still have a raised lip due to the engraving, the only way to effectively get that area polished is to flatten that area fully so it can completely contact the stone. Stone mud will do better at masking that than finger-stones if you don't want to flatten.

Nice gyuto by the way!

 

[ReiHamono]

You can try making the stone smaller or thinner or using less pressure or more mud

You need to use some stone powder on there and just let the mud and finger stone do all of the work.

I’m super light when I’m doing this as it’s not meant to do any work, rather it just adds a finishing effect.

You can do more serious work with finger stones but not when you’re using them to finish

 

[superworrier]

Based on what I can see in the video, you do need to lay down a better polish before moving to finger-stones to get the desired effect. To get really Nice effects off finger-stones you need a really, really clean base polish. Finger stones are not a good way to erase scratches as you'll just use up a ton of them that way. They are great for eliminating minor streaking and gently changing the brightness and detail of an already good stone polish. Nutmeg has a really excellent on these somewhere on here.

It also looks like you have some finer grained harder fingerstones. These can work wonders on some steels in bringing out detail, but only when paired with the right knife. The most versatile ones are super duper soft and create that flawless matte finish. Sadly finger-stones that soft aren't easy to find. For general purposes I actually like to use uchi powder made into a mud and rubbed in with hard felt, much easier to get a nice uniform finish that way without hours of bench stone work before in my experience. That said finger-stones are better to get really, really, really smooth top notch kasumi with lots of detail.

Ok this makes sense to me. This one is a factory finish effectively but on my other knives I polished with sandpaper I'm not having this issue.

I'm also wondering if maybe the scratches could be from a loose piece of grit from my Atoma. I didn't notice anything, but I did use the mud from preparing the stones to start the slurry.

I'll probably try mud in the meantime and maybe work on working on it with sandpaper when I have more gumption.