To polish, or not to polish?

[pavhav]

I managed to grab one of the decently sized Prendergast gyutos a while ago. Iron clad W2, 252×53mm. It isn't quite a laser, but a fairly light middleweight with light convexity the in the rear 2/3, and nearly flat near the tip.
As the title alludes, I'm on the fence about polishing this blade. While I think it'd look nice with a nice kasumi, I suspect the fairly rough finish helps with food release. The bevels look pretty good: no glaring high/low spots, so I shouldn't be losing too much metal in the potential process.
What are your learned opinions?

 

[OkayMode]

If you like it just fine how it is right now and you’re enjoying using it, I’d say just crack on using it. Especially if you haven’t done a full kasumi before.

It will take a while to get a full polish on there, the integral bolster could get in the way, and it could end up being a while before it looks good.

This is heavily biased by my own experiences where a knife I otherwise really liked ended up sat on my projects bench for weeks.

 

[Bico Doce]

+1 on avoiding integral bolsters for polishing projects. They are a pain to deal with. This looks like it would be quite the undertaking and one I would be hesitant to do myself. You could easily spend 20 - 40 hours on this thing and not be satisfied with the end result.

 

[deltaplex]

I agree that it'll very likely look excellent with a well done kasumi on it.

Just going by the pics you posted: to get an even polish on this knife is a really, really massive amount of work. Something like 85%+ of the entire surface area will end up needing to be polished. Those low grit belt marks are pretty deep, it's almost certain that they're hiding a good amount of topography once you start working them out. Add in having to do all this with a complex convex to flat grind and add in the integral bolster to work on/contend with and 40 hours is probably underestimating the total time for anyone who's reasonably proficient with this sort of thing. I'd bet that it would end up taking 2-3x that time estimate.

 

[Benuser]

Find it hard to see how polishing would benefit to the blade's performance or its looks. You now have a pretty patina. A polish is likely to cause sticking, and certainly won't stay all that nice.

 

[ethompson]

I wouldn't consider this one a good candidate for a kasumi personally. I think it's lovely as is!

 

[Matt Jacobs]

I had one in the past and when I wanted to thin/remove patina, I just hit it at the same angle with a scotch bright belt when I was done. With that bolster I would be more inclined to use sand paper progressions to get rid of the lines

 

[Blumbo]

Even thinking about putting a kasumi on this guy hurts my forearms and fingers - if you do try, it’ll likely take much longer than you’ll use the knife over the course of a year but I’m sure it’d look great

 

[pavhav]

There seems to be a consensus. Back in the rotation it goes, unmolested.
Thank you all for the input.