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 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.

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba - mirror polishing part 2

Hello!

I was doing mirror polish from early morning today. I decided to start from from 320 grit sand paper to remove those deep scratches. As you can see sides of that flat surface are more polished because it isn't flat.

This is a picture of today's polishing on 320 grit paper. Unfortunately I ran out of that grit and the next one I had was 800grit. This is big gap and it is worrying me.

Here you can still see some original scratches. They are not very deep now.

And here you have a picture after 800 grit paper which unfotunately ran out as well. I have to say that fools rush in where angels fear to tread and now I run out of the sanding paper and I can only use polishing mops. I knew what will happen now but you will see yourself.

There is a picture after first polishing compound. I didn't notice that it's not focused but now it's too late to change anything. It started to has a nice mirror finish.

Blue compound:

Here you can see something I was worried about. If you don't spend enough time on low grits then you will not be able to fix it later on. You can see very nice mirror finish here but with lot of scratches from sanding paper. 

Here you can see effect after yellow compound. If you look on good angle there is almost perfect mirror finish but scratches are now very visible. I will continue tommorow. TBC.

New handles and saya

Hi all.

At least I have finished my new handles.

This is Dyed maple and Stabilised California Buckeye Burl:

And stabilised spalted Maple with California buckeye burl ferrule. This time I didn't polish it to 2500grit sand paper. I finished on 400grit followed by few seconds on 1000 grit and then I used blue compound and polished it. I am more than happy with results because it doesn't take me a lot of time.

There is a matching saya with spalted maple ring: