Show your work! Uchigumori and co...
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user 16756
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can you share how you did this?
I used all shapton pro stones from 150-5k, never use above 5k as they will scratch, 8k diamond powder, etch, 14k diamond powder, etch, 50k diamond powder, etch
A series of very light etches FeCl+ Vinegar+water as needed, rinse, very gentle clean with soap on a cloth, very gentle cleaning with dry cloth
This is A2 which has natural alloy banding
The knife is mirror finished with a dark rainbow etch
A series of very light etches FeCl+ Vinegar+water as needed, rinse, very gentle clean with soap on a cloth, very gentle cleaning with dry cloth
This is A2 which has natural alloy banding
The knife is mirror finished with a dark rainbow etch
user 16756
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Im surprised to hear you etched between polishing steps. IME etches are very fragile and even the lightest of abrasives can completely nuke them. I think I will take from your experiment some ideas about that as I have some knives which show banding just from stones and Ive wanted to try some performance enhancing drugs on them.
stunning results btw!
For honyaki I’ve been repeatedly told to just use straight vitamin C. In this case you use a kind of abrasive fabric cloth and rub the whole knife with good pressure
When you finish just use uchi powder to finalize a stone look finish
This whole series of techniques prevent you from making a mistake on a natural stone
When you finish just use uchi powder to finalize a stone look finish
This whole series of techniques prevent you from making a mistake on a natural stone
For the etch, did you dip the entire blade? Or apply the etchant only to the blade road with cloth, a q-tip, or some such? Just wondering how, (if at all), it affects the KU.
The first technique with FeCl I just dip the whole knife, it makes the Ku and blade darker, for the second technique I keep rubbing the whole blade and it makes the blade cloudy with alloy banding showing and makes Ku lighter as well
Ku can always be darkened or restored with cold bluing methods, so keep that in mind if you ever want to create that effect
Ku can always be darkened or restored with cold bluing methods, so keep that in mind if you ever want to create that effect
I thought rust-bluing was the only food safe way to blue, (and a huge PITA). What are the cold bluing methods you've found effective on blades?
Most ambitious project yet, a refinish (or maybe just a first finish?) on this Takahashi Kajiya I picked up from @thebradleycrew a little while back. Still a long road ahead if I decide I want to keep it, but the profile has had all the holes removed, I established actual bevels, and put a working polish on, This hand laminated steel has insane carbon migration at the cladding line which is really fun to play around with on different stones. Included a before video for reference where I started yesterday morning.
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the Kuzan Oda yanagiba, 360mm, honyaki
I was afraid of not being able to get this blade done with good conscience. This made me almost angry because of the efforts put in it..
The sword-looking blade is now going back to its owner.
You are probably thinking it was easy.
Those who tried to polish a honyaki may have noticed how hard it is. And how time consuming it is.
You can try to imagine this very hard and tough steel, resisting to pressure on coarse diamond plates. And when you put it on finer stones and JNATS, you can imagine the little quantity of metal you're removing after each stroke...
And it sounds like you feel frustrated because the iron clad you polished before felt like melted butter in comparison.
On your kasumi you gave 20% of the work and get 80% of the result. An invitation to trade offs and it's still more than good enough.
Same with honyaki? Unfortunately not.
You give 20% and get nothing .
You are hardworker and at a point you're feeling to be at 99%. (When you're close to give up and the result begins to be "not bad")
So what's the next best step?
When you polish a knife, you can take the easy way and make the whole blade look mirror. Idiot proof, the scratches remain always but are not that visible a couple of feet away.
And your blade became featureless.
Are you giving up on getting a sword-like finish?
"No way!"
The good thing, if you don't work for a museum: you can feel free to polish the way you want
Anyway, there are some kind of "rules" you have to be aware of.
_General geometry *
_As scratch free as possible when you look the blade at minimum distance (15-20cm) *
_Shinogi as a clear line and sharpest as possible (highest acutance)* * *
_Sharp delimitation in color, texture and geometry at the tip (strictly perpendicular)* * *
_Bevel with feeling of exact homogeneous height from heel to tip *
_Whitish below the hamon line but not shiny* * *
_Dark above the hamon line but not too shiny* * *
_Dark mirror above the shinogi *
* Impossible with full mirror finish
* Difficult with finger stones
* Important steps on bench stones. Have to be respected in further steps.
* Only with finger stones
All these points above are impossible to reach with sand paper.
Every additional box you're ticking is doubling your work.
I was afraid of not being able to get this blade done with good conscience. This made me almost angry because of the efforts put in it..
The sword-looking blade is now going back to its owner.
You are probably thinking it was easy.
Those who tried to polish a honyaki may have noticed how hard it is. And how time consuming it is.
You can try to imagine this very hard and tough steel, resisting to pressure on coarse diamond plates. And when you put it on finer stones and JNATS, you can imagine the little quantity of metal you're removing after each stroke...
And it sounds like you feel frustrated because the iron clad you polished before felt like melted butter in comparison.
On your kasumi you gave 20% of the work and get 80% of the result. An invitation to trade offs and it's still more than good enough.
Same with honyaki? Unfortunately not.
You give 20% and get nothing .
You are hardworker and at a point you're feeling to be at 99%. (When you're close to give up and the result begins to be "not bad")
So what's the next best step?
When you polish a knife, you can take the easy way and make the whole blade look mirror. Idiot proof, the scratches remain always but are not that visible a couple of feet away.
And your blade became featureless.
Are you giving up on getting a sword-like finish?
"No way!"
The good thing, if you don't work for a museum: you can feel free to polish the way you want
Anyway, there are some kind of "rules" you have to be aware of.
_General geometry *
_As scratch free as possible when you look the blade at minimum distance (15-20cm) *
_Shinogi as a clear line and sharpest as possible (highest acutance)* * *
_Sharp delimitation in color, texture and geometry at the tip (strictly perpendicular)* * *
_Bevel with feeling of exact homogeneous height from heel to tip *
_Whitish below the hamon line but not shiny* * *
_Dark above the hamon line but not too shiny* * *
_Dark mirror above the shinogi *
* Impossible with full mirror finish
* Difficult with finger stones
* Important steps on bench stones. Have to be respected in further steps.
* Only with finger stones
All these points above are impossible to reach with sand paper.
Every additional box you're ticking is doubling your work.
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Admitting you ticked many or all the boxes..
Do you really want to leave the ura untouched?
It seems like you don't want to touch the ura too much.
And it feels like it's because you can't use any benchstone on this side..
It sounds like you are probably planing to use only finger stones on this side.
I've got bad news and it is really gonna stink.
The surface on the ura is about twice as large as on the other side.. You can imagine, the larger the surface, the larger you can see every tiny scratch or finger print.
Without benchstones, you won't get as much contrast as on the other side and it looks like you won't be able to "prepare" the blade correctly by removing scratches.
It looks like you're going to need more finger stones than you planed.
Kitchen knives are made of HARD steel.
Swords are made of not-that-hard Tamahagane.
Is the hardness difference negligible enough to use the same finger stones?
Unfortunately, Honyaki kitchen knives need much softer finger stones than swords. Hazuya/Jizuya are names that apply to tools for swords only. Harder stones will leave a scratchy surface with weak contrast.
As a bonus: If you can get finger stones everywhere, these ones are extremely difficult to find.
Ridiculous, isn't it?
Do you really want to leave the ura untouched?
It seems like you don't want to touch the ura too much.
And it feels like it's because you can't use any benchstone on this side..
It sounds like you are probably planing to use only finger stones on this side.
I've got bad news and it is really gonna stink.
The surface on the ura is about twice as large as on the other side.. You can imagine, the larger the surface, the larger you can see every tiny scratch or finger print.
Without benchstones, you won't get as much contrast as on the other side and it looks like you won't be able to "prepare" the blade correctly by removing scratches.
It looks like you're going to need more finger stones than you planed.
Kitchen knives are made of HARD steel.
Swords are made of not-that-hard Tamahagane.
Is the hardness difference negligible enough to use the same finger stones?
Unfortunately, Honyaki kitchen knives need much softer finger stones than swords. Hazuya/Jizuya are names that apply to tools for swords only. Harder stones will leave a scratchy surface with weak contrast.
As a bonus: If you can get finger stones everywhere, these ones are extremely difficult to find.
Ridiculous, isn't it?
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Good lord man...
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I regret not buying this now, anything else you have for sale you polished? Lol. Do you take other peoples knives in? Curious what you could do on my shiraki honyaki....
tostadas
Hobbyist / Craftsman
Playing around with a cheap TF
So smooth! This is a nashiji right? What I find on my mab is contrast is difficult to show on the cladding.Playing around with a cheap TF
tostadas
Hobbyist / Craftsman
Yea its a TF nashiji. I've found that for TF knives in general, it is really hard to bring out anything in the cladding. Both the cladding and the core are really resistant to any sort of abrasive. Many of my stones have absolutely no effect on the steel. This may be a good thing for use, but for thinning and polishing, it's time consuming to get it to how I want.
user 16756
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yeah if you want a good result on tf cladding go get every stone off your shelf, try them all, swear a lot, then somehow on the second try the worst one the first time makes a great result
or actually just use a mauroyama shiro suita. both of the ones Ive had have been the only ones where every time I used them on a TF I got a good result.
tostadas
Hobbyist / Craftsman
Yea that's pretty accurate. This one in particular was pretty resistant even vs synthetics. I couldn't thin it using a coarse norton crystolon. All it did was burnish.
user 16756
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expensive sandpaper and a kasfly is how I deal with such stones. which is unfortunate; I prefer to work on stones but such is life
Beginner attempt. I didn't like how the patina on my Kaeru WH was developing, especially some yellow blotches from unwisely using it to smash garlic, so I decided to clean it up. Koyo Sunlite paste following by micromesh pads and binsui powder. Forgot to take a 'before' shot unfortunately.
tostadas
Hobbyist / Craftsman
Some more playing around with a bunch of various things to etch the TF from previously.
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DanielC
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After reading Nutmeg's absolutely beautiful post on the polishing of his honyaki, I really feel that anguish inside considering the difficulty. It is absolutely true. I have only "stone polish only" a single modern steel honyaki without using sandpaper or acids and all that for finishing, and it was a pain. So much so that I haven't forgotten about it since. Mine thankfully didn't involve a shinogi however, but it is a hamaguriesque/conve geometry.
It wasn't a perfect polish, I don't think I've ever achieved a perfect, scratch free polish, but it did take me a lot of time to do, with an injured shoulder even. I would polish and have to ice my shoulder for a few days, and polish another afternoon and keep icing again. It was pretty ridiculous The ashi can use more time with fingerstones I'm sure, but it can be mind numbing.
The hamon is yahazu (notched type).
And this was a WIP pic from earlier in the polishing showing the hamon a little more.
It wasn't a perfect polish, I don't think I've ever achieved a perfect, scratch free polish, but it did take me a lot of time to do, with an injured shoulder even. I would polish and have to ice my shoulder for a few days, and polish another afternoon and keep icing again. It was pretty ridiculous
The ashi can use more time with fingerstones I'm sure, but it can be mind numbing.The hamon is yahazu (notched type).
And this was a WIP pic from earlier in the polishing showing the hamon a little more.
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My polishing skills are improving faster than my photography… one of the most even finishes I’ve managed so far. Off a soft nakayama suita.
Well this is an excellent thread that I hadn't really noticed before, some top work here!
For a while I've had a chunk of Shoubu Karasu Suita, that had a couple of quite nastily toxic suji through it
And I wasn't really having much success with lapping or digging, so I broke it up and got rid of the toxicity on a belt sander:
I'd never used fingerstones before, so had no idea whether they'd work or not. Here's my stone testing knife beforehand:
And after a few mins:
Some potential here I think...
For a while I've had a chunk of Shoubu Karasu Suita, that had a couple of quite nastily toxic suji through it
And I wasn't really having much success with lapping or digging, so I broke it up and got rid of the toxicity on a belt sander:
I'd never used fingerstones before, so had no idea whether they'd work or not. Here's my stone testing knife beforehand:
And after a few mins:
Some potential here I think...
I'd be interested to hear people's thoughts on why Japanese stones are so good for polishing in comparison to most others...
In a strictly geological sense there's nothing particularly special about jnats - they're the same basic thing as loads of other naturals. I have, and have tried, quite a lot of the world's other stones, and many are markedly better than jnats for actually sharpening things, yet finding ones that will bevel polish well is vanishingly rare. Why do we think that is?
---
One type that does polish well is Belgian Blue Whetstone - it's a really good kasumi stone. Here's a quick BBW finish - if I'd gone a little longer it'd would've started to break down and round out the garnets to get rid of some of the scratch patterns too, but you get the idea:
But really apart from jnats there's not much out there tbh - very few other fine stones are soft or friable enough perhaps, and it fecks up the cladding. You can mirror polish with Thuringians if you find one big enough, and Tam O'Shanters can work when soaked, but large format versions of those stones would be more expensive than a Japanese stone that would do it better anyway.
In a strictly geological sense there's nothing particularly special about jnats - they're the same basic thing as loads of other naturals. I have, and have tried, quite a lot of the world's other stones, and many are markedly better than jnats for actually sharpening things, yet finding ones that will bevel polish well is vanishingly rare. Why do we think that is?
---
One type that does polish well is Belgian Blue Whetstone - it's a really good kasumi stone. Here's a quick BBW finish - if I'd gone a little longer it'd would've started to break down and round out the garnets to get rid of some of the scratch patterns too, but you get the idea:
But really apart from jnats there's not much out there tbh - very few other fine stones are soft or friable enough perhaps, and it fecks up the cladding. You can mirror polish with Thuringians if you find one big enough, and Tam O'Shanters can work when soaked, but large format versions of those stones would be more expensive than a Japanese stone that would do it better anyway.
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Rather a lot, I would say!
This excellent thread has made me decide to thin and polish (and probably wreck) my nakiri next weekend.
Having every bit as much fun with wrought iron as I thought I would. Just got this in the mail today, but couldn’t help putting it straight to the stones. Not a huge fan of etched finishes, though this Shihan was pretty well done on that front, and wanted to see what it’d look like with a full stone finish. Pretty tight progression from an aoto up to an Okudo suita.
