Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba - mirror polish

Hello again.
I couldn't resist to ask owner of that blade about mirror polishing flat part of the blade. It was screaming about it and I decided to give it a go. I thought that I will start from polishing compounds straight away but after 3 mintues I gave up. I must prepare that part for final polishing. The point is that first kanji is hand made and it is not very deep. This is a reason why I am a liitle afraid about removing metal from that part.

Second kanji is stamped and it is quite deep so I don't have to worry about it. Here you can see some original grind scratches which I have to remove before polishing. They doesn't look like but they are very deep.

I have used small DMT diamond plate as a base and wrapped 320 grit sandpaper with felt baking.

Also I've read somewhere that it is good to use glass cleaner instead of water when using sand paper. I've tried it when I was removing low spots on diamonds and it worked well. I gave it a try with sandpaper.

That part of knife is not perfect flat, as someone would say, so I was removing metal from sides. It is little concaved in the middle. Anyway it started to reflexing some light.

I didn't have more time today because of my day time work but I will wake up earlier tommorow just to spend more time on polishing. Once I remove original scratches I will start polishing with compounds. It shouldn't take a lot of time. TBC

 

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba part 2

Hello.

I continued my work on Masamoto today at the morning. It took me about 2,5 - 3 hours to remove all low spots. There is one very small on the heel but it doesn't affect anything. The whole blade is even now. To be honest the grind of Masamoto helps here a lot especially in front part of the blade and because of that I could focus on grinding. There is one very important thing about sharpening the blade road. I am usually using force when I push forward. Today i did it the other way around. I have used force only on back motion obviously with fingers on shinogi line. I think that this in theory rised shinogi line a bit and it helped me to remove low spots. Actually the rise of shinogi is unnoticable.

Here you can see even finish on the whole blade. Tommorow I will start proper sharpening and blade road polishing. TBC

Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan part 4

Hi.

I kept polishing with white binsui today. After that it was time to sharpen the blade on Red Aoto but i didn't wanted to polish the blade road on that stone because I don't like finish which it gives. I think that scratches are deeper than after binsui. It's strange because Red Aoto is finer that Binsui.
Anyway I decided to give it a go.

So when I finished sharpening, polishing and making ''Hamaguriba'' edge on Red Aoto, I used Aoto mud and polished it with wine cork.

Next time I will try to sharpen on Red Aoto but I will polish on White binsui. I hope that jigane will be darker.
Ok so it's time for last stone - Oohira Tomae (hardnes Lv.4).

Because Oohira is very hard it scratched jigane. It's not a problem because at that time I had to use finger stone (on left). I don't know what kind of stone is that but it's soft and it's not scratching jigane that much.

 

So I finished working on that knife. I am happy with results because it's my first knife which I had to sharpen and polish from scratch. Now it's sharpened properly, low spots are almost gone and it's sharp as hell:D Next time will be better but you should judge yourself.

Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan part 3

Hello there:)

Yesterday I found some time and continued with yanagi. I was working mostly on diamonds and finished evenening the blade road. There is still low spot on shinogi line near heel but it doesn't affect anything. Another one few cm  further is small now and it will disappear after few sharpening sessions. Proper hamaguriba edge will help as well. There is no point of removing more steel at the moment.

Here you can see even diamond's finish.

When I finished with diamonds I started proper sharpening on Beston 500, followed by JNS 1000 and finished on White Binsui. I am very happy with results. Also I am starting to better understand that stone. It's not self-sufficient, it must be used after roughter stone like JNS 1k but it gives very nice toothy edge and nice hazy finish on jigane. When I started with binsui I make some paste with diamonds and using more force i polished the blade road. I still didn't finish with that stone. 

Nice contrast between jigane and hagane:)

Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan part 2

I have found some time today to continue my work.

I  have covered whole blade road with magic marker.

After few passes on Beston 500 you can see some marker remain on blade. Those are low spots.

I decided to work on diamond plate.

Here you can see blade road after some time on diamonds. Most of low spots dissapear. There is one low spots near Shinogi line on heel and another one few centimeters further. This one is worrying me.

 

I had to finish for today. I brought blade back to beston 500 finish and will work on it tommorow. Black parts are remaining low spots.

 

 

Custom Jck Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan Yanagiba 270mm

Yesterday somebody send me two very nice yanagibas. Top one is Masamoto Honyaki 300mm white#2 yanagiba and bottom one is custom JCK Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan 270mm blue#2 yanagiba

Both has not been sharpened before. I decided to start from JCK Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan.

I started with Beston 500 because i knew that if knife was never sharpened before I have to look for any grind issues. I followed beston with JNS1000, white binsui amd oohira tomae. This is a finish aftet Oohira.

Here you can see low spots on blade road.

I will continue tommorow.