I visited Isasmedjan last weekend for a 1-on-1 class in knifemaking and got to make two knives with guidance from Jonas at Isasmedjan. Since I’m not a craftsman and couldn’t have done this by myself, I’m posting it here. Anyway – wow. Incredibly fun.
The knives was a forged a san mai gyuto kurouchi, and a stock removal honyaki petty. Jonas at Isasmedjan did similar knife types and demonstraded step by step on them, so I got plenty of time to make my own mistakes on my blades, and Jonas could step in and assist me when I got stuck. Which I did, frequently
The really big trouble was grinding. I got a somewhat even start when the angle is steeper down by the edge, but as the surface area increased so did the level of difficulty for me. After some less than clean passes I could make a clean pass, immediately followed by one or two where I created a new ridge here and there. Then another clean pass, followed by two bad. The shinogi went up, and so did the edge
So, when I felt close to where I wanted to be and risked messing it up completely if I went on, I had to ask Jonas to clean up the grind. It looks so easy…
With the honyaki – the first part with profile, taper and clay worked pretty fine – but Jonas did the heavy lifting on the grind. No way I could have made a crisp shinogi and finish like that at my first attempt. Kudos to him.
I enjoyed getting a sense of how the process works and understanding how complex it is, many moving parts. Design is very close to my heart, and it was really interesting to understand the lines, after removing too much in one place it’s tricky to know exactly where to adjust to get the lines back in order. Once again, Jonas has a very sharp eye and could guide me.
A truly perfect weekend – and (at least to me) wonderful knives! Oh, and did I mention that Jonas was a great guy? He was. He is.
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