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 - 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

Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba

Hi.

So now it's time for Masamoto Honyaki 300mm White#2 Yanagiba. This knife is more like a sword. It need some time and work but I am going to show him some love.

Ok so first of all I must repair tip of the knife. Actually I don't now the reason why it's broken but when I opened a package from person who send me it it was already broken and that person don't remember that it was broken before he send it. I believe that just happened in transport because those blades were wrapped in few layers of paper and send in envelope. Anyway I have to fix it.

I have marked area which I have to remove with pencil. I didn't wanted to remove steel from edge because I had to maintain original profile. I started with beston 500 but i quickly swap to some cheap diamonds. After that i just spend few minutes with Beston again to finish it.

It took me maybe 20 minutes to fix it. Now it's not very pointy and thin so maybe it won't brake again in the future until somebody hit anything.

I managed to find another few minutes, before i went to my work, to check that there is no grind issues. As usual I covered whole blade with marker pen to see any low spots.

As you can see I was grinding steel only from edge and shinogi line which means that there is concave in the middle of the blade road. That is a big surprise and disappointment because in high-end knife for that price, I believe that it's about 950$, grind should be perfect. I didn't have more time today but I will work on it tommorow. I hope that it won't take ages to make it even.