UPS hates me - a Yamada story

[Logan A.]

Hey guys! SO I bought this really cool Blue #1 Yamada with a full convex grind and insane spine taper. Two actually. A 240 gyuto and 210 petty. The problem is that they both had grinds more fitting for wood chopping rather than cutting food. See exhibit A: Fixer-uppers

I love Yamada knives and decided to take these two Axes and get them refinished a bit. Thin the knives while keeping a soft convexity was the goal. I did not want them to turn into wide-bevel knives. It felt dishonest to the nature of the blade as it sat…. I also already have a wide bevel Yamada

The thinning job I sent out for. It was done well and was fairly inexpensive. The cutting geometry of the knives is just *chefs kiss* exemplary.

The problem comes in the return of the knives. The packaging was done by UPS and not the man I sent the knives off to. They gave him a hassle about insurance. You can imagine how well of a job they did. The knives came back in a beat up box and the gyuto had lost a massive chunk off the tip.
See exhibit B: Tragedy

After being fairly frustrated I opted to take the knife to my Atoma to fix up the tip….

After about 20min of that torture I decided that more drastic measures were in order and brought out the dremel. This is where real progress was made.

I used ice to keep the steel cool and worked patiently with the dremel on a high setting. This worked really well as long as I maintained a steady hand. Any slip onto the face of the blade would have spelled disaster.

The dremel worked wonders and I was finally ready to go back to the Atoma. I progressed from the Atoma 140 -> Shapton glass 220 -> morihei 500 -> morihei 1000
This let me ease up onto the tip and refine the spine polish a bit as I went.

 

[Logan A.]

The new tip was put in but the finish was bad. The thinning of the edge left some verticals scratches and it was completely uneven with the face of the blade. I don’t have as many in-progress photos, but I took some 1500 grit sandpaper to the blade and balanced out the scratch pattern a bit. I then toyed around with some finished with black and red iron oxides. Those didn’t play out so I went with a classic soft kasumi off my morihei 4000 with some mud and a felt pad. It turned out well and I’m happy with the finish as a working knife. Definitely something worth taking some ferric chloride etching to in order to see the full beauty of the wrought, but not tonight. Here’s the finished knife!

The video does best to depict spine taper. Performance-wise this thing is crazy nice. Couldn’t be happier.

 

[refcast]

I recently had to fix a tip I snapped off too, a yanagi snapped 20mm off. . . I also found atoma too slow, and coarse stones actually were slow as well, gesshin pink stone fixer, 220, cerax 320, suehiro stone fixer black. The yanagi had an iron inclusion

What worked was indasa rhynostick 40 grit mounted to a granite plate (or whatever you can stick it to). I used about 5-6 feet of it, knife got hot enough that it got too hot to hold right at the tip, but it didn't discolor from temper.

After pic, snapped tip pic . . . I didn't take a snapped yanagi full pic

Thanks for the pics and story! Super cool

 

[Molokai Livin']

Hey guys! SO I bought this really cool Blue #1 Yamada with a full convex grind and insane spine taper. Two actually. A 240 gyuto and 210 petty. The problem is that they both had grinds more fitting for wood chopping rather than cutting food. See exhibit A: Fixer-uppers
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I love Yamada knives and decided to take these two Axes and get them refinished a bit. Thin the knives while keeping a soft convexity was the goal. I did not want them to turn into wide-bevel knives. It felt dishonest to the nature of the blade as it sat…. I also already have a wide bevel Yamada

The thinning job I sent out for. It was done well and was fairly inexpensive. The cutting geometry of the knives is just *chefs kiss* exemplary.

The problem comes in the return of the knives. The packaging was done by UPS and not the man I sent the knives off to. They gave him a hassle about insurance. You can imagine how well of a job they did. The knives came back in a beat up box and the gyuto had lost a massive chunk off the tip.
See exhibit B: Tragedy
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After being fairly frustrated I opted to take the knife to my Atoma to fix up the tip….
View attachment 353168

After about 20min of that torture I decided that more drastic measures were in order and brought out the dremel. This is where real progress was made.

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I used ice to keep the steel cool and worked patiently with the dremel on a high setting. This worked really well as long as I maintained a steady hand. Any slip onto the face of the blade would have spelled disaster.

The dremel worked wonders and I was finally ready to go back to the Atoma. I progressed from the Atoma 140 -> Shapton glass 220 -> morihei 500 -> morihei 1000
This let me ease up onto the tip and refine the spine polish a bit as I went.

The picture of the chipped tip made me gasp... but it looks like you did a fantastic job converting it to a k-tip!

 

[JPAU]

The new tip was put in but the finish was bad. The thinning of the edge left some verticals scratches and it was completely uneven with the face of the blade. I don’t have as many in-progress photos, but I took some 1500 grit sandpaper to the blade and balanced out the scratch pattern a bit. I then toyed around with some finished with black and red iron oxides. Those didn’t play out so I went with a classic soft kasumi off my morihei 4000 with some mud and a felt pad. It turned out well and I’m happy with the finish as a working knife. Definitely something worth taking some ferric chloride etching to in order to see the full beauty of the wrought, but not tonight. Here’s the finished knife!
View attachment 353173
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The video does best to depict spine taper. Performance-wise this thing is crazy nice. Couldn’t be happier.

It’s turned out really nicely, in my view!

 

[OkayMode]

I would have been so cross with that tipping after having gone to all the effort to get it thinned. Glad you’re happy with the performance of the end result and it was worth it!

I have seen Oli k-tipify tipped knives at Blenheim with a bench installed belt sander and frequent dunks in cold water as a 5 minute solution.

Is that all just exposed core steel on the front right hand side of the blade, or is there a different scratch pattern hiding the cladding?

What’s the process like ordering a Yamada, and do you know if he’s planning on doing anything about his stock grinds any time soon?

 

[bermuda_chub]

Wowzers! Nice work, Logan. I’ve been thinking about buying a Dremel…

 

[gentiscid]

So, they gave the guy a hard time about insurance, not wanting to pay it or what? And they decided to take the items and package them themselves? Were the knives not packed already in a box to send them by the receiver? Or he just took them with him to UPS to box them there? I kind of get confused here. But anyways…

Insuring these high-end knives is no question. Not worth the headache. What I have learned from my own experience and others in the past, when u make the shipping label you can also make the return label and email it to the receiver. Which is insured and the receiver just has to print it, stick it on the box and drop it off.

Or you can communicate with the receiver and guide them through the return process.

I’m sorry this happened to you and you did a great job restoring it!

 

[JASinIL2006]

Nice repair, but I would never ever send my knife to someone who couldn't be bothered to correctly package the knife for shipping. That's just negligent.

 

[Logan A.]

I purposefully opted not to think too deeply into the packaging/insurance matter. Doesn’t make sense to me either and is quite frustrating, but not worth the headache in my eyes. I fixed the knife and intend to do any future thinning myself, or with someone local.

 

[Logan A.]

I would have been so cross with that tipping after having gone to all the effort to get it thinned. Glad you’re happy with the performance of the end result and it was worth it!

I have seen Oli k-tipify tipped knives at Blenheim with a bench installed belt sander and frequent dunks in cold water as a 5 minute solution.

Is that all just exposed core steel on the front right hand side of the blade, or is there a different scratch pattern hiding the cladding?

What’s the process like ordering a Yamada, and do you know if he’s planning on doing anything about his stock grinds any time soon?

Just exposed core steel. It was ground pretty thin in that area initially so I expected to lose that wrought. Gives an interesting look to it.
The process was pretty easy but took a good while. His stock grinds are sooooo hit or miss. I wouldn’t qualify these as fictional knives when they first arrived. Now they’re stellar.
I have another gyuto from him that came wide-bevel and the grind on that was wonderful. Workhorse oriented but well done.

 

[ethompson]

Just exposed core steel. It was ground pretty thin in that area initially so I expected to lose that wrought. Gives an interesting look to it.
The process was pretty easy but took a good while. His stock grinds are sooooo hit or miss. I wouldn’t qualify these as fictional knives when they first arrived. Now they’re stellar.
I have another gyuto from him that came wide-bevel and the grind on that was wonderful. Workhorse oriented but well done.

Can you share pics of the one that was well done? I've yet to see one come from him that wasn't an absolute axe. Such impossibly cool and special knives, but I view them more as blacksmithing art than functional tools.

And yeah, he doesn't really forge them to shape all that much so if you start thinning you rapidly run out of wrought iron and end up with acres of really hard steel

 

[Logan A.]

Certainly.

It’s on the chonk side, but thins well towards the tip along the bevels. My favorite knife actually.

 

[ethompson]

T

Certainly.
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It’s on the chonk side, but thins well towards the tip along the bevels. My favorite knife actually.

That’s definitely the best one I’ve seen by a wide margin. Even tapers! Nice!

 

[Logan A.]

T

That’s definitely the best one I’ve seen by a wide margin. Even tapers! Nice!

Between this and the reground ones I may be the one and only owner of Yamada knives that cut well

 

[OkayMode]

Between this and the reground ones I may be the one and only owner of Yamada knives that cut well

My heart wants one of these but my head can’t ignore the whack grinds. If he was consistently knocking them out like your (intentional) k-tip with some distal taper to boot, I’d be unable to stop myself.

What was the ordering process like? I know cultural differences mean you can’t be picky beyond speccing most basic dimensions and form, but it would add so much peace of mind if you could check the grind before paying.

 

[Logan A.]

My heart wants one of these but my head can’t ignore the whack grinds. If he was consistently knocking them out like your (intentional) k-tip with some distal taper to boot, I’d be unable to stop myself.

What was the ordering process like? I know cultural differences mean you can’t be picky beyond speccing most basic dimensions and form, but it would add so much peace of mind if you could check the grind before paying.

It’s about what you’d expect. Mostly communication though diagrams, but you can’t get too specific. A significant amount of luck comes into play.
I’ll likely be letting this one go at some point soon. I have a petty with the same finish so it’s a bit redundant with my other gyuto.

 

[brimmergj]

I have a Yamada nakiri that I bought from Ed a while back. It already had work done to it when I got it and I put in hours of additional time and it's cuts well and I really enjoy using it. It's a neat looking knife and I love to see it on my rack.

Great job with the that trip repair!