Masamoto KK 270mm yanagiba part 4

Hello. So at least I have finished this project. Today I will show you only the results of my work. I took loads of pictures while doing it but I had to change many things and also I started to being nervous about it. First of all I had some problems with the handle. First handle has fallen apart when I finished shaping it. Then when it was nice and shiny it fallen apart again between ferrule and new silver. When I glued tang in to the handle I have noticed smal gap between wood and spacer. I had to use super glue and then polish it. It was quite tricky and because of that handle changed it shape a little bit. Also when I glued it in I had to remove some glue from the top of the ferrule and then it was very hard to polish it again.

Mirror finish. Ahh that bloody mirror finish. I was doing it three times. Last result was always scratched. Why? I think that it was scratched because polishing mop was full of residue so I bought new one. I think that I did a mistake and I prepared mop. You have to turn it on on the machine anf put something in to it.    Fibers from mop are everywhere. Then you have to burn it a little bit and repeat whole process again. This is what I have seen on youtube. I must say that I haf better results without preparing it at first time.

Kasumi. This was my first real attempt to kasumi. I bought Uchigomori but I had some problems with them. Even after preparation they were scratching my surface. Obviously it's because of my technique. I will experiment with them in the future. The problem is that if I have left binsui finish and then Polish with uchigomori I could get very good results but after Binsui I used red aoto and Oohira to sharpen. Oohira is very hard and it scratched blade road. After that it was very hard to remove scratches with fingerstones. 

Also I think that if one don't have Uchigomori he can use white Binsui to polish and then create loads of mud out of it and using felt polish with mud. It will give one very good results.

I have finished because I easily spent 40 - 50 hours on that knife and every attempt to make something better result in making things worse. I think that it's my best work but every time when I am starting new projects I am less satisfied with results. Maybe it's because I want to be better and better. See you soon.

Before:

After:

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba part 4

Hello!
Last day of my friendship with Masamoto. I don't have much time because I have to send it in few hours.
I started with white binsui to finish yesterday's work and then I jump on to Red Aoto.  Today I confirmed what I was thinking before. I think that Aoto, even if it's finer, is scratching blade road more than White Binsui. It's great for sharpening but I can't polish with it yet. Maybe if I spent more time on it I would get different results or maybe I need more experience with mud control and the pressure. You can compare scratch patter from White binsui and Red Aoto.


Yesterday's White Binsui:

Today's Red Aoto:

I think that it is more scratched now. Anyway I kept polishing with wine cork.

And then with Oohira Tomae. Actually this was my mistake. I should sharpen on that stone and leave it. I started polishing with it and I have ruined the finish. Now it's scratchy. I think that mirror effect is a result of polishing on Oohira and scratches are from Red Aoto. I think that If I leave Binsui finish and then polish on Oohira results could be different. So now you can see that it's worse than it was. The worst thing is that now I have  pressure on me and this is the worst kind of pressure - Time pressure. It was 11 AM so I had less than 2 hours to finish it, pack it,send it, eat my breakfast, prepare to work  and do other stuff before I went to work. 

I decided to go back to Aoto and polish it for a few more minutes. If i had proper sized finger stone like Uchimogori then I could fix it but I had only very small stones and it could take ages to polish it. I had no more time so I sent it as it is.

That's it. I had a vey good lesson with Masamoto and Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan. I didn't achieve very good finish on honyaki but I had no more time. Now they are sharper than ever before:D I hope that I will have opportunity to have those knives in the future again and then, with more experience, I will achieve better results. Anyway I should be happy with what I have done. Those knives were never sharpened before so I had to do worst job - sharpen blade roads. To be honest I was doing it for the first time from begining to the end. I removed all low spots so sharpening in the future will be very easy. Also I learned that preparing knife before polishing is most important thing ever.

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba part 3

Now at last I can start proper sharpening and polishing that blade.

Beston 500:

JNS 1000:

White Binsui with nagura:

I have to send those knives tommorow before 1 pm so I have to wake up early again and finish sharpening. Only two stones left: Red Aoto and Oohira Tomae. I think that finish after Oohira will be very nice and I won't have to worry about scratching jigane because there is no jigane. After all it is Honyaki:D TBC...

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba - mirror finish part 3

Hello:D

I was thinking all day yesterday about that mirror finish because I wasn't happy with it. I had two options. First was to wake up early and go to town. This means that I had to buy ticket to town, buy sanding paper and loose plenty amount of time. I was doing that mirror finish out of charge so I didn't wanted to invest money in to it. Hovewer I had to do something. Then there is my second option. I came back from my work and i have found some scrap sanding paper. I have many sheets over 1000 grit up to 2500 but I don't have anything below that. So I was polishing it with some scrap papers and then I used 1000 grit. It took my over an hour. It was better than nothing and I was hoping that I will achieve better finish than on previous day.

Pictures after 1000 grit.

So I woke up earlier than usual, drunk quick coffee and started to polishing with compounds. Now it has to be ok because I didn't had more aces in the hole. I started with green compound and I spent about 45 minutes with it. I wanted to remove as many scratches as possible with it because it's the roughter compound I have.

Then I used blue compound for another 30 minutes. Now I was starting to smile. It wasn't that bad and actually I was happy that I prepared that blade night before.

So then it was time for last compound - yellow. It took me only about 15 minutes. Propably I could do that in shorter time if I have prepared knife properly. Anyway this is a great succes for me in that situation. You can still see some deep scratches but now they are very smooth. It is ''BIG'' difference between yesterday's mirror and today's.

I have polished spine as well.