Show your work! Uchigumori and co...

[Pie]

Prepolish on Takeda x Knifewear hideriyama

Hideriyama finish

Unknown origin hard suita

Not sure what I did wrong here but came up with super funky black mirror cladding.

Things are getting better, step one I think is making bevel even. Step 2 is managing mud on harder finishers. Might have to try to full mirror step down method outlined by @Steampunk. I don’t know how you guys get the whole thing so consistent, I got those perma-shakes at 36 years old.

 

[user 16756]

I don’t know how you guys get the whole thing so consistent, I got those perma-shakes at 36 years old.

well Im hardly the king of super consistent finishes on most knives as I tend to leave low spots on purpose to extend life, but I will say that it really helps to get some felt, cork, microfiber, whatever and use stone mud/powder from your finishing stone. Ive found that this definitely can give a minor but noticeable improvement to consistency. YMMV

 

[Froztitanz]

My latest attempt at convex polishing and bringing banding out from the cladding.

 

[Bart.s]

Same process here with this one

Looks good! What mind of micro mesh pads did you use? Just the regular soft pads?

 

[Pie]

Alllll the way back to the basics - cerax 320 —> Amakusa. Just for fun/practice. Less dark haze than synthetic, but much much brighter core steel with that cool pearliness. Getting the hang of mud management with crappy stones. Cladding line waaaaay cleaner as well.

 

[ReiHamono]

How do you like amakusa and binsu? I’ve never tried them before, I wasn’t a fan of aizu or natsuya

Alllll the way back to the basics - cerax 320 —> Amakusa. Just for fun/practice. Less dark haze than synthetic, but much much brighter core steel with that cool pearliness. Getting the hang of mud management with crappy stones. Cladding line waaaaay cleaner as well. View attachment 143672

 

[Pie]

How do you like amakusa and binsu? I’ve never tried them before, I wasn’t a fan of aizu or natsuya

Mine are the basic mass produced/mined imanishi ones.. I hear there’s better from morihei, and some fancy uniques from JNS and tosho. They’re not amazing, the amakusa is fairly coarse (~800 grit?), harder and non-uniform. Mine has some nice goma looking spots that spit big gritty chunks at random. Synthetics do a better and more consistent job both pre polishing and for edges.

Binsui… quite hard. Doesn’t mud up but seems to glaze instead. Somewhere in the 1000-1500 range, but atoma slurry feels a bit scratchier than I expected. Sort of difficult to manage the mud because it’s quite stingy. The polish is scratchy but works, smooth to the touch. I could stop here and it shouldn’t be draggy through food. Might be too coarse to jump to the finisher tho. I suck at edges on this stone, but they’re toooooothy if you don’t work the mud very long.

I’m still looking for a stone for next step, oddly enough natsuya and aizu

Disclaimer - I’m terrible at polishing, barely passable at sharpening. I only pulled these out because I’m easily charmed by jnats, and I didn’t want to flatten my NP1k.

 

[crocca86]

Looks good! What mind of micro mesh pads did you use? Just the regular soft pads?

Just the regular one with stone powder

 

[user 16756]

Mine are the basic mass produced/mined imanishi ones.. I hear there’s better from morihei, and some fancy uniques from JNS and tosho. They’re not amazing, the amakusa is fairly coarse (~800 grit?), harder and non-uniform. Mine has some nice goma looking spots that spit big gritty chunks at random. Synthetics do a better and more consistent job both pre polishing and for edges.

Binsui… quite hard. Doesn’t mud up but seems to glaze instead. Somewhere in the 1000-1500 range, but atoma slurry feels a bit scratchier than I expected. Sort of difficult to manage the mud because it’s quite stingy. The polish is scratchy but works, smooth to the touch. I could stop here and it shouldn’t be draggy through food. Might be too coarse to jump to the finisher tho. I suck at edges on this stone, but they’re toooooothy if you don’t work the mud very long.

I’m still looking for a stone for next step, oddly enough natsuya and aizu

Disclaimer - I’m terrible at polishing, barely passable at sharpening. I only pulled these out because I’m easily charmed by jnats, and I didn’t want to flatten my NP1k.

Natsuya and Aizu tend to be about a step apart. I really like both but I dont find Aizu super necessary. I have other stones I can sub in for the Aizu but none for Natsuya, which is unique because mine is quite a coarse natural, but it doesnt suck. Which again, is unique.

 

[drsmp]

Fingerstones from JKI / Jon Broida and Halcyon Forge gyuto

 

[ethompson]

This project has given me even higher levels is respect for you people who get flawless polishes on honyaki. Polishing that much hardened steel is a serious exercise in patience (and photographing it ain’t easy either). About ready to move to finger-stones, etching, and stone powders on this little santoku. This eventually will be my go-to weeknight prep knife for when I just need to cut half an onion, some herbs, etc.

 

[ReiHamono]

This one was 100% synthetic stones Sapton pro up to 12K

It’s the first time I’ve done it with synthetic stones, I had to try some new things to get the geometry right (6hrs total starting at 150grit)

Really wish I had the 30K stone, as this would be a good chance to fully appreciate a 30k stones results. If anyone has one they want to sell let me know I’ll give it a try

Shihan makes some really amazing knives and that mesquite wood is just killer, Ultra strong hard and impervious to water

I might come back and finish this off with my Nakayama or just etch it, either one will bring out the metal alloy banding

 

[heldentenor]

Damn. That's impressive!

 

[JDC]

This one was 100% synthetic stones Sapton pro up to 12K

It’s the first time I’ve done it with synthetic stones, I had to try some new things to get the geometry right (6hrs total starting at 150grit)

Really wish I had the 30K stone, as this would be a good chance to fully appreciate a 30k stones results. If anyone has one they want to sell let me know I’ll give it a try

Shihan makes some really amazing knives and that mesquite wood is just killer, Ultra strong hard and impervious to water

I might come back and finish this off with my Nakayama or just etch it, either one will bring out the metal alloy banding


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I have a Shapton glass 30k. It’s a very very hard stone, and while leaves a full mirror at certain angle the blade looks totally scratched. I think a natural mirror polisher is much better for this job. Do you see scratches with the pro 12k? I know the glass 16k also scratches.

 

[tostadas]

Put a working finish on my newly rehandled SS clad Wat, and etched the core with lemon juice. (little bit of tape residue near the handle I didnt completely clean off before taking the photo)

 

[user 16756]

I had been looking at that HUGE lvl 3.5 Atagoyama stone that James had listed and when it went on sale during his birthday sale I broke.

It is an interesting stone; good contrast, reasonably muddy so it's not super hard to use, a sharpening face so big you can basically put a whole 210 gyuto on it. Not the most detail, if I'm honest, but dark, uniform cladding and it doesnt totally blast the details away. the edge is actually really nice, probably the best part of the stone, but this is the polish thread not the "cut a wet paper towel cleanly" thread.

 

[Pie]

Polished up on various finishers until landing on a beautiful hard suita that I love, but suck at using. Resulted in mirror core and cladding, with a sort of light smoke coloured kasumi and pearly cladding line. Hard to catch the light contrast on camera, but it’s kinda cool when you look at it irl. I’ll be honest, I don’t know what I’m doing with hard jnats, and what to expect as a “finish”, like I don’t know what it looks like when done properly.

Plenty of pressure applied, some mud made, but still hard to get to an even polish. This is the best I could do on a bevel I convexed myself. Apparently I did a crappy job on previous stones, as you can see from the scratches but fudging the lighting can make it look decent. This particular picture shows how bad it really is in bright light.

This is the beauty queen (to me) in question. I was mad frustrated with this thing, but twice now I’ve convinced it to produce smoky mirror cladding. Maybe it’s starting to like me a bit more.

 

[tostadas]

TF Maboroshi, now with 25% less wabi-sabi

 

[Bart.s]

TF Maboroshi, now with 25% less wabi-sabi

Wow, that looks really good!! Can I ask what you did to get it there?

 

[tostadas]

Wow, that looks really good!! Can I ask what you did to get it there?

For the blade road, I used a sandpaper progression to 1500 to remove the vertical grind marks. Then followed with finger stones and Jnat powders. Core steel was several cycles of lemon juice etch and light buffing with stone mud in between.

Spine, choil and any sharp edges on the handle were all sandpaper from P120 to P2500.

 

[Bart.s]

For the blade road, I used a sandpaper progression to 1500 to remove the vertical grind marks. Then followed with finger stones and Jnat powders. Core steel was several cycles of lemon juice etch and light buffing with stone mud in between.

Spine, choil and any sharp edges on the handle were all sandpaper from P120 to P2500.

Thanks

 

[ReiHamono]

Mazaki 270mm gyuto kasumi

I learned something very interesting tonight. I feel I’ve perfected the perfect mirror finish and I’ve perfected contrast. However, I’ve never been fully satisfied with my kasumi finish until now

I used the macro lens as much as I could for this one.

I’ll put a sexy handle on there, 150mm, something exotic and fun

 

[Justablacktee]

Mazaki 270mm gyuto kasumi

I learned something very interesting tonight. I feel I’ve perfected the perfect mirror finish and I’ve perfected contrast. However, I’ve never been fully satisfied with my kasumi finish until now

I used the macro lens as much as I could for this one.

I’ll put a sexy handle on there, 150mm, something exotic and fun

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Nice job !
Have you done a full Hamaguri grind to erase the shinogi line before polishing it (with stone/sandpaper/pad/powder) ?

 

[DanielC]

I have been battling shoulder pain from a year ago Injury, and my polishing has been pretty nonexistent for the most part. After a frustrating weekend with a big knife project, I had to blow off some steam and peek at a bevel on a knife that I plan for later release. It's scratchy and just a quick polish, but I thought the contrast was quite good. Images after different stones and lighting. I have had a lot of cladding with banding in the past, but this is like butter with some finer activity that will be brought out with a careful polish.

Your thoughts?

Edit:

Upon further iinspection, I was wrong about the no banding part

This will be a fun one to polish.

 

[DanielC]

The entire knife has a clean benchstone polish (with some stray scratches, but even surface), but revealed banding further with finger stones...

 

[refcast]

White 1, old iron yanagiba, Okuizumo region blacksmith (shinogi rounded need to eventually fix)

 

[adrianopedro]

sorry, Wrong post

 

[ReiHamono]

Nakagawa 240mm Mizu honyaki

All synthetic stone finish, might do finger stone tomorrow

 

[Pie]

Prepolish done with white amakusa

Side A - Takeda Hideriyama

Side B - Shobu suita

Dramatic lighting

 

[JDC]

My friend’s Konosuke Deba finished with a Nakayama kiita iromono.

The soft iron cladding is not as soft as expected, and it didn’t patina up at all during the whole process.