Yanagiba restoration

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RRLOVER

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I recently purchased a 270mm Shigefusa Kitaeji that was a little rougher than I expected....I don't have the proper stones to fix it...Is there a shop in the US that does restoration?
 
I recently purchased a 270mm Shigefusa Kitaeji that was a little rougher than I expected....I don't have the proper stones to fix it...Is there a shop in the US that does restoration?

Second for Bernal, Strata, and Carbon. Would also highly recommend Jon/Japanese Knife Imports. Have direct experience with all but Carbon as sharpeners and can highly recommend each.
 
Maybe a hot take, but I wouldn’t let them mess with the ura on a large wheel. Only person I’d trust in the US with a single bevel and one of those is Jon
I was going to email him tomorrow.
 
I vote for you to hire @ethompson to do it for you. He’s got the stones for the job, that’s for sure.

Besides him I’d definitely trust Jon to do it, but not sure if he is taking on work on knives that weren’t sold by him. He might make an exception for a Kitaeji though.
 
I will be sending it to Jon this week...Here are some pics of the before and will post some after pics.
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Unless the back is seriously wavy or something this is fine. There is a secondary bevel, yes, but do your honbazuke and you’re good. The shinogi line sweeping upwards toward the heel is because of the trademark shigefusa taper. To get rid of that you’d have to take material off the hira and then refinish the whole thing. You are lucky that it’s engraved on the back so it’s easier to do work on the front but it’s still quite a bit of work. It’s a very common occurrence with shigefusa knives.
Let’s see what kind of finish they can do at JKI, I am sure they will deliver.

My own shigefusa kurouchi nakiri has some severe grind issues as well. It looked stunning new but has the mother of all low spots on both sides. Needless to say the beautiful suita finish is now gone.

By the way if the back is actually super wavy which is unlikely then the kanji on the back can end up getting partially ground out. Hand engraving often suffers when polishing and or repairing stuff.
 
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