Masamoto KK 270mm yanagiba project part 3 - New handle and mirror polishing

Hello there:D

At least I have finished new handle for Masamoto yanagiba. I have to say that it is the best handle I have ever done. It's made of Stabilised brown maple burl, water buffalo horn and new silver. I had some problems with grinding it because new silver was getting hot very quickly so I had bucket full of water with ice and I immersed handle in it every few seconds. When I was finished and started to polish it I had to unglue it and glue it again just for sure. Also I checked for straightness and symmetry every few seconds.

Before shaping:

After shaping:

 Finally polished:

Then I mirror polished flat face of the knife. I knew that it will be little bit concave so instead of doing it with sanding paper I have used stones.
I started with Atoma 140 to flatten it. You can see that I was removing steel from sides first. This shows me that it is concave.

 Then I followed diamond plate with Beston 500, JNS 1000, White binsui, Red Aoto, Shapton pro 8000 and after that I used my polishing mops and compounds. It took me few hours but it was definitely faster than with sand paper. I didn't remove all Atoma scratches because these were very deep and I had to do that with first hard mop and green paste. Maybe I will do that again.

 

My next step will be removing original grind scratches from blade road, sharpening and polishing and when I'll be finished I will make kasumi with Uchigomori fingerstones.