kagekiyo finish?

[rgar4012]

I picked up a beautiful 240 b#1 kagekiyo from jki a while back. I used it a few times and was very happy with it, but was in the middle of testing some edges and put it away for a bit. When I brought it back out, I found some rust on it and immediately went to wash it, and I scraped it up with my wife's new "micro-dot" sponge... Anyway, I'd like to get it back to its original finish as I believe one of the big selling points is how stone-ready these are. What's the easiest way to remove light rust and a few scratches and get this back to its original look? The rust is also on the hira, so I will need to touch that up as well. Would prefer to fix all this without losing a large portion of steel. It really was a thing of beauty. I've tried a rust eraser on another knife before and am not willing to subject it to that without a solution to fix the appearance afterward. I can acquire anything I need to fix this up if I don't already have it.

ps. I'm fully aware this is a tool to be used and have no issues with it picking up patina and the occasional scratch from use, but I screwed up here and would like a reset.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Pictures will help the folks guide you.

 

[rgar4012]

Fine, here’s my shame.

 

[refcast]

Edit: Oh dude, just simichrome should fix it right up or any metal polish. It will lighten the kasumi on the iron but barely


(The below I wrote thinking you had heavy rust)

Rust eraser parallel to the diagonal grind marks on the hira (blade face)

Fingerstone on the blade road parallel to edge profile. . . Extremely easy to cut your self.

You'd have to make your own fingerstone from a synthetic stone. A muddy ~300-500 grit and a muddy 1000 grit should work.

I have used cerax 320 well, sigma 400 and gesshin 400 as fingerstones, and I imagine a cerax 1000 would work well for this purpose. I usually use aoto fingerstones I made.

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

No shame at all! And good for you to come looking for advice. I'm not the right person to help but they'll be along.

 

[jedy617]

Kagekiyo are some of my favorite. They most certainly are not stone ready though. You will very rarely find stone ready knives out of japan, especially under like $1000...

On those scratches I would probably be using sandpaper up to like 800 grit above the shinogi grind, with the final strokes only going one way

 

[PPIIBBSS]

Doesn't seem like anything some flitz/simichrome and a bit of elbow grease won't fix

 

[yummycrackers]

As the others have mentioned, metal polish. I will also say that I find micro-mesh pads very useful (if not exactly cheap...).