Frankenstone - How did I repair my Red aoto.

Hello.

When I bought my Red Aoto, I have noticed small crack. I've bee informed that this kind of stone should be sealed with some kind of laquer or shellac. I didn't do that straight away and small piece of my stone had fall away. I've glued it with super glue and then sealed it. It was ok for some time, but then another crack appeared. This time it was worse, because crack had gone across the stone. I could also see water going out of it when I put pressure on my Aoto. The only reason why this stone didn;t fall apart was thick layer of shellac. I have even made nice wooden base, but then I thought that I will use it for the last time. Look what happened. The reason for that is that this stone hadn't got base which would keep everything together.

 Wooden bases.

I've also made rubber feets.

I decided to use Loctite hybrid glue which is water resistant and elastic. This was mistake, but I will explain later on.

So I've started with moisting pieces of Aoto, because label on the glue says, that glued pieces should be dump.

I was glueing this stone on the piece of wood.

There was big hole in the stone, so I've decided to fill it with glue, Red Aoto powder and mud from the same stone.

In this jar I am collecting mud from sharpenings. I always knew that I will find use for that mud.

Later on, I decided to remove piece of Aoto which I am not using. Also It hasn't got a base and this part is fragile.

Please learn on my mistakes. Do never use angle grinder in home, mostly on the stones. I was cleaning my kitchen whole day.

Now I have a nice collection of Red Aoto fingerstones

I have cleaned sides and bottom on the belt grinder.

Red Aoto is a soft, muddy stone. It should be sealed on the sides. For this purpose I have used shellac.

 To make the base better, I made concave in to which I have glued my stone.

 Of course last step is to clean and flatten the stone.

Now this stone is ready to use. It's working well. The only problem is that glue I have used is flexible. You see, when I used super glue previously, I could use this stone and I couldn't feel the place where the glue was. The problem with new glue is that I can feel it, because it's abrading slower than the stone itself and it's gummy. It's not a big problem. I can used to it or remove top part of the glue with needle, exactly same as toxic line. Also, today, after few uses I have lost corner which I filled. No problem for me. I thin k that it would bother me anyway.

This stones leaves quite uniform finish.

And with the fingerstone from the same stone you can make it even better.

Knife making adventures... part 8 - Grinding session and grind modification.

Hello there. I didn't write anything since some time, but to be honest I have many draft post which are waiting for posting. Also I was quite busy, recently, but now I am back.

So my knives came back bit bent from heat treating.

Before straightening I prepared old handle which will help me hold my Wa handled knife while grinding.

The tang hole was big and I had to use piece of wood to block tang in the handle.

Here I have marked place where bend starts.

To straighten it, I have used vice with three pieces of wood with blade between them. I was delicately screwing it tight to straighten the blade.

And here is my Eastern blade after some grinding on the belt grinder.

And quick test.

Then it was time to work on the stones to fix the geometry in controlled way. I have rounded corners of my 300 grit and 800  grit stones.

 And then worked on them in the same way as sword polishers sharpen and polish katana swords.

Here you can see height of the bevels. Top part rusted a little bit, but this actually helped me to see what I am doing.

And here you can see edge of this knife.

On the video above you could see that it's still splitting carrots instead of slicing through them. This is happening because of two things. First of all, this knife is too thick behind the edge, and second of all finish affects cutting.

Unfortunately, I didn't like it and changed everything when I was on JNS gathering in Denmark. I had opportunity to work on Japanese water wheels.

Dan wanted to test my knife, so here it goes:D

And then have grounded western knife as well.

I have burned tip a little bit on the Eastern knife, so had to change profile and then the belly was too obtuse, so I change it a little bit as well. All on the stones.

TBC...