Sharpening a Moritaka

Every now and then I get a hand made Japanese knife to sharpen, this one was sent to me from Ontario.

Personally, I don't find the majority of these knives very pretty to look at, they don't have the finished look that mass produced knives have. However, in terms of the quality and hardness of the steel they are far superior. These knives are capable of taking an extremely sharp edge and can hold that edge longer. The reason is the material, it is a carbon knife, it is 64 on the hardness scale which is very very hard, my Henckels is about 54-56 to put it in perspective.

There are drawbacks though, you need to keep these knives dry after use or they will rust, also, a steel this hard and a blade so thin has a tendency to be brittle so chipping is not an uncommon issue. This one was chipped very slightly upon arrival.

The first thing I did when I got this knife was to order my new Kityama 8,000 grit stone, I have heard so many good things about it and this was the perfect opportunity to use it.

First things first though, I had to fix the edge before I could sharpen it.

For the repair work, I chose the Shapton Glass 220 and worked the edge at a 45 degree angle, this amazing stone quickly ate away the damaged edge and in about 4 minutes the chips were gone. In the picture is the 400 Atoma Plate which I did not use.

You can see the minor chipping issues, again, common with some of these very hard knives.

As you can see the repair work is done, not that hard to do with the right stones, now I can sharpen it.

I used my favourite stones to do the work, it took me 20 minutes to get a nice edge from the 5K stone.  Then I put the knife away and waited anxiously for the Kityama to show up.

1k Naniwa Chosera

3K Naniwa Chosera

5k Naniwa Chosera

The Kityama is indeed a wonderful stone, I really enjoyed it and it took the edge of the knife to a different level, it had that great "grabby" edge that I love, all in all, a lot of fun to sharpen and quite easy actually. 

Finished product is above.

Thanks for reading