Japanese Natural Stone

Finally, I have my own natural stone, it comes after a lot of research and I am thrilled to own one now, it is a Yaginoshima asagi finishing stone.

Now these stones don't come like Synthetic stones in regards to their grit level. There is a grit equivalency and this is 8k-12k. The Nagura beside is it cut from the same stone. I've only tried one knife so far, a Global.

I immediately noticed the incredible earthy smell of the stone, this thing is millions of years old and it comes from a cave or quarry in a certain area of Kyoto Japan. The finish is unlike synthetic stones, not as polished as the Shapton 5k for example but that is the nature of this natural. They produce a hazy, misty, Kasumi finish.

In terms of sharpness, absolutely amazing, but again, I expected this. Edge retention will be improved as well, these stones react differently to the carbides in the steel, or I should say the carbides react differently.

I am new to Natural stones, I have one but that doesn't make me an expert with it of course.  However, just having one is something special for me and I truly look forward to discovering what it has to offer especially on hand made knives.

Thank you so much for visiting my little Blog and reading my ramblings.

Respectively

Peter

Miscellaneous but cool stuff

Yesterday I tried something a little different.

I sharpened two Zero Tolerance folders with two techniques, one with the Edge Pro Professional (black blade) and the one on the left by hand. I used the same type and grit stones.
Naniwa Chosera 400, 1k and 3k.

At the end, they both had a very nice polish but the EP bevel had a slightly higher level in my opinion. In terms of sharpness, I had to give that to the one I freehanded but they were both quite satisfactory.

Both very enjoyable to sharpen and not difficult.


I use a lot of water when I am polishing the bevels, I make sure that there is not grit particles on the knife that could scratch the bevels.  These were sharpened at 23 degrees, well the EP one was, I did the other freehand but I'm sure it was close to that.

Thank you.

TIP repair challenge

Tips are rarely this bad when I get them, it is normally just a little piece at the very tip, not this bad.

The problem here is the repair work will cause one of two issues, if I do the work from the spine the tip area will be very weak as a lot, and I mean a lot of metal would be removed.

Working from the edge and curving up towards the spine where it broke off leaves the tip very thick, it is now up in the thickest part of the knife.

I chose the latter though, this would leave the tip very strong but I would have to remove a lot of metal from that area after the work is done.

I was happy with the result, at least the knife is a knife again. 

I used a very coarse belt on a belt sander (1x42) to very carefully and very slowly do the majority of the metal removal. It  would take an eternity on a coarse stone and wear it out.

I finished it off on a Nubatama 150, Chosera 400 and then sharpened it on the Chosera 400, 1,000 and  finally the Naniwa Aotoshi 2,000.

Peter

Serration Stones

Hi,

I get a lot of serrated knives and not all of them are bread knives.  Many are folders with a small serrated section near the heel.

However, when I got a hunting knife with a gut hook, I had to figure something out so I used the pieces of Japanese Water Stones that I have and shaped them on sandpaper and the Atoma plate so that they would fit into various sized serrations.


The picture here will illustrate what I mean.

They work very well, the key of course is to raise a burr on the flat side of the knife and then remove that burr.
It is pretty simple actually and you don't need to have these water stones. As I have shown earlier, you could wrap some sandpaper around a wooden dowel to do the trick as well. I know most people don't just happen to have Chosera water stones lying around that they can cut up.

Serrated knives don't need to be sharpened too often, thankfully.

Peter
I appreciate you being here.

Knifeplanet ariticle for novice sharpeners

This is an article I wrote for Knifeplanet at their request. I think they did a nice job adding the pictures and putting it altogether for me. I just wrote it, they made it pretty.

Hope you like it.



http://www.knifeplanet.net/how-to-sharpen-knife-on-japanese-water-stone/

Convex Edge Sharpening

Howdy folks, thanks for being here.

Today I was faced with another challenge, sharpening a knife with a convex edge.

Now there are a few ways to do this, a few ways that I am aware of that is

1. A belt sander and use the slack in the belt;
2. Sandpaper on a mouse pad
3. Water Stones and free hand sharpening.

I ditched the idea of the belt sander, I don't like sharpening knives with one, I use one for repairs only but not sharpening.

I was always sceptical about the mouse pad thing, it sounds pretty gimmicky to me but I do happen to have some very nifty micro abrasives with adhesive backs in extremely high grits, so I had that in my back pocket. I went with the 3rd option of using my beloved water stones.

I watched a video by Murray Carter where he describes a rocking motion as you sharpen so I did this. I also paid extremely close attention to what I was doing, I did NOT want to change the grind on this knife, it is very special to the owner.  This is the most convex convex edge I have ever seen.

I practised on a big Buck hunting knife I was given and was very pleasantly surprised at the results Holy buck, the abrasives that you see in the picture put a beautiful polish on the bevel and the knife got sharp very quickly.

The abrasives that you see in the picture put a beautiful polish on the bevel and the knife got sharp very quickly.  Holy Buck.

So I went to work on the knife and used a combination of stones and abrasives on the pad, it turned out very well and is very sharp.


So if you want to sharpen a convex edged knife, it really isn't that hard and you don't really need the water stones, the Buck knife I did wasn't very sharp and the abrasives put a great edge on it.

Learn something every single day.

This is not a convex edge, I used the Edge Pro Professional on this one.


Thank you once again for being here.

Peter

Every now and then.

Every now and then a knife comes along that causes my nerves to rattle a little.

It is especially true when I know the individual has paid a lot of money for the knife and is handing it over to me to take care of, he doesn't know me, just found my website and trusted me with his treasure.

In this case it was a spring assisted folder, a Gerber which I could just was very important to the young man. It wasn't the fact that it was just a folder but it was Tanto blade with a damaged tip. The fella took a taxi to deliver it to me, I think it is his most prized possession.

I used a blend of technique, freehand and and Edge Pro Professional to complete the work.

The tip was crushed in a little and off centre so I repaired that by hand using a Shapton Glass 500. The original grind was imperfect as well so it took a long time to square things off so to speak.

After asking the young man what the knife was going to be used for I decided to go with a Naniwa Chosera 3,000 grit finish.

If he isn't happy I'm giving up :)