Martyfish's Knife Makeovers (Thinning, Refinishing and Handle Making)

[Barmoley]

Giving my Eddworks handle a bit of a Spa treatment, namely removing some minor low grit scratches and applying a more durable oil. These photos were taken after bringing the handle up to P2000 grit, but before applying any oil and the ironwood already looks stunning, even without oil.

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I thought ironwood was too dense and already had natural oil, so that extra oil is not needed and doesn’t get absorbed very well. It also darkens with oxidation over time and to bring it back it needs to be buffed every so often with a buffing wheel. Do people usually oil their ironwood handles?

 

[HSC /// Knives]

I thought ironwood was too dense and already had natural oil, so that extra oil is not needed and doesn’t get absorbed very well. It also darkens with oxidation over time and to bring it back it needs to be buffed every so often with a buffing wheel. Do people usually oil their ironwood handles?

this is my understanding as well,

Therefore, I have never oiled any hardwood handle including Ironwood

when it turns dark, you can restore some of the figure by fine sandpaper of course, or also try rubbing with very fine steel wool

 

[Martyfish]

I thought ironwood was too dense and already had natural oil, so that extra oil is not needed and doesn’t get absorbed very well. It also darkens with oxidation over time and to bring it back it needs to be buffed every so often with a buffing wheel. Do people usually oil their ironwood handles?

Ironwood is very dense, and also naturally oily, however it does dry out over time as the natural oils get absorbed or transferred. This handle was starting to absorb water, which to me is always a sign that a handle is overdue for a coat of oil. I have made a few ironwood handles to date and it takes oil without issue and the oil both enhances the grain and prevents fluids from being absorbed. To add some additional data points, Eddie frequently works with Ironwood and uses an oil / wax blend to finish his handles and is also kind enough to include a little container of this oil / wax blend with his knives.

In my experience, all woods oxidise and darken to various degrees over time, although I expect that this is somewhat mitigated by oiling the wood (reducing exposure to oxygen) and also reducing exposure to UV light, which I understand acts as a catalyst for the oxidisation. Already oxidised wood can be removed via sanding, cutting, etc., to brighten the wood and increase the contrast between light and dark areas, but am uncertain if buffing would be sufficient to achieve similar results, due to the reduced amount of material that would be removed.

Below you can find a before / after picture of another handle showing the effect of a higher grit finish in addition to tung oil. It's dark here at the moment, so I unfortunately can't get a representative photo of the ironwood right now. The top picture was taken after sanding the handle to P120 grit, the middle picture was taken after sanding the handle to P2000 grit and the bottom picture was taken after applying tung oil to the P2000 grit finish. As well as protecting the handle, the tung oil also darkens the wood, heightens the contrast and gives additional depth to the colours.

 

[Martyfish]

In the process of going through trade offers for my Kamon gyuto, an opportunity presented itself to purchase a second Kamon with dimensions that more closely match my preferences. Lacking all self control, I pulled the trigger and now instead of trading my Kamon as planned, I have two in my possession (such a KKF experience).

The second Kamon that I purchased was well used (the visual differences are well illustrated in the above photo) and I wanted to try to give it a visual overall with the aim of improving it beyond where it was originally. The main things that I wanted to do were to darken the areas where the kurouchi had been worn away and bring out the banding in the steel.

Darkening the areas where the kurouchi had been worn away was easy and just involved a quick wipe over with a cotton makeup pad soaked with ferric chloride. Brining out the banding was more consuming and involved a sandpaper progression from P240 grit up to P2500 grit, followed by a bit of time on a Naniwa Pro 3k and then the use of diamond polishing compounds from 2k-8k grit, which left me with a very decent mirror finish. Once the mirror finish had been attained, I dipped the blade in ferric chloride for a minute or so and the banding emerged. Both the mirror finish and banding are shown below and you can see the remnants of a few scratches that weren't removed completely in the second video.

Being ever critical, I wasn't quite happy with the finish, and went through several cycles of etching and polishing, which resulted in micro pitting that could no longer easily be polished out. Living with these kind of set-backs is part of polishing unfortunately and round two of mirror polishing is already in progress.