Thinning a ginsan santoku

[Mr Kooby Shemayrew]

About a year ago I bought two ginsan santoku 165mm-ish blades off IbukiBlade and made handles for them. One was for my wife and one was for my sister-in-law. I sharpen my SIL’s knives from time to time and this one came back this time around. She really values a sharp knife and she goes hard in the paint….in the kitchen. The knife has significant wear and some small chips but it was still pretty sharp and could still slice paper. For me this is the best knife to sharpen, one that is very heavily used but also treated with respect.

I wanted to mix some thinning in with the sharpening to get the edge back in optimal shape. I started with a SK-11 150/600 diamond plate. This plate goes for about $37 and in a sided this a bargain for what you get. It’s probably not the quality of an Atoma but it’s price point is unbeatable IMHO.

Note the electrical tape. Three layers at the back to help prevent any slip up and grinding higher than I want to grind.
After the diamond plate I went to a Sigma Power 400 and 2000, then a Dan’s hard Ark. The Dan’s comes in about a 6K finish and if preceded by a good 1k-ish (give or take), it produces an absolutely superb edge. This is an 8x3x1 and was about $125. It is worth every penny.

From the Dan’s to a leather strop with a little 0.125 diamond and 0.5 CBN gets this

 

[Blank Blades.]

What about near the tip?

Also I can never get these videos to play. I wonder if it's because I'm on mobile.

 

[Stockman]

How do you rate the Ibuki blanks?
I have also built a few recently, a Blue#2 Petty and a HAP40 un-ground Nakiri Blank and after very limited use, they seem great.
Unfortunately I don't posses any quality made Japanese knives to compare with.

 

[Mr Kooby Shemayrew]

What about near the tip?

Also I can never get these videos to play. I wonder if it's because I'm on mobile.

I didn't check it for popping hairs near the tip but the whole knife is plenty sharp.

Try pressing the play button a few times. I think wherever the video is hosted is just slow. It’s free video hosting so it is what it is. I try to keep the videos short. I should try reducing the resolution as well…

 

[Mr Kooby Shemayrew]

How do you rate the Ibuki blanks?
I have also built a few recently, a Blue#2 Petty and a HAP40 un-ground Nakiri Blank and after very limited use, they seem great.
Unfortunately I don't posses any quality made Japanese knives to compare with.

I have a number of their blanks including a Muneishi 150mm petty in blue 2, and the same hap40 Nakiri but I got the finished (edged) version. Both of these are killer knives.

The Muneishi family is supposed to be masters with blue 2 and they claim up to 65 HRC with it. Their petty is very well thought out and designed. It is thicker at the spine than most but it well tapered and thinly ground near the edge. This makes it strong while also getting the most out of the blue 2 core.

The hap40 Nakiri is real interesting. It’s a stamped hap40 core with stainless cladding. The ground version is quite thin and evenly tapered straight down from the spine. Hap40 being such a durable core means it can get amazingly thin. Being stamped…. and to me this is the crazy part… it was like $75. I bought 2 actually and gave one to my wife’s other sister. For much less than $100 you can get a primo hap40 knife that performs like this? If this was forged it would cost a crapton more.

I also bought two of the non-edges hap40 215mm gyutos. Grinding those things down with a sanding disc on an angle grinder was excruciating. I couldn’t do it again. The one gyuto I left as is, and it made me realize that I much prefer flat bellies on knives. The other one I cut the belly off and put on a nice ironwood burl handle. I really liked this knife. A chef friend of mine that a sharpen for periodically gifted me a $250 pocket knife so I gave him both of these gyutos. Turns out he prefers the one with the belly more.