Bored and Zakuri

So I needed a cheap beater/met fab/fish butchery knife and came a cross a Zakuri Sabaki (150mm)


Robert (XoomG) has done some cool stuff with these as many of you may have seen. Suffice to say his finish and photos are better but I wasn't trying to make anything pretty here. Quite the contrary. After removing the lacquer w acetone and popping off the handle, I ran through a few rounds of sandpaper (60-150-220-800), removing the KU and easing the spine and choil. To say the F&F on these is 'rustic' is a nice way to put it.
The uniformity of the bead blasted finish is all but cosmetic. Once I put the primary bevels to work on the stones I saw how crazy uneven the bevels were, with some definite overgrinds. No worries here, acceptable to me at this price. I ran through my gesshin soakers (400,2k,4k) and called it a day. I forgot how much a love those stones, as I don't wear my knives down much anymore and rarely go below 4k.
Here it is, excuse my sh#tty bevels, as mentioned I wasn't at all concerned with making this knife look purdy, it's destined for abuse and maybe a shade of neglect.
This knife has a nice flat profile and is fairly thick with no flex.


Cheers
Matteo

 

Cool. The bead blasting is done by masking off a general line. You can tell because the blasted finish isn't just on the exposed cladding (which is the real bevel but created roughly with a grinder) but on some of the kurouchi part as well.

Frankly don't be too concerned with making a perfect polish. Stones are not very easy to get perfect results with above say 800...but if you want to, you can use a Gesshin 1200, JNS 800, or King 800 to put a coarse "kasumi" finish across the bevel that is uniform even with hamaguriba. I don't like that finish because it's coarse and draggy, but if you buff it, or polish it a bit higher with fine abrasives, you can keep a nice soft finish while making the bevel shinier.

If you don't mask off the kurouchi, you'll lose some of it, so sanding it all off was probably a good move.

I have mine in a slightly better polish now, but this is what it looked like while I was experimenting with a few abrasives:


Now my core is a bit more mirrorish and the cladding is somewhere between mist and semi-mirror. Works well and is very smooth without the draggy feeling of a standard kasumi finish, and a hell of a lot better than stock Zakuri finish:


But to be honest, though the finish off the stones you used isn't the super sexiest, it ought to cut perfectly well. Good work and thanks for sharing...it's nice to not be the only one reworking some of these knives.

 

Robert, you should get yourself a craftsman badge and start accepting orders for knives refinish.

 

Ha, no thanks. Lots of work and I'm not great at it, and people will start accusing me of undercutting others and demanding I raise prices. You know what that's like.

 

I agree with Anton, but if you persist...

Could you tell us which stone/abrasive you finished the cladding with?

 

So after publicly shaming myself I took the knife back to the stones. It isn't much prettier but the bevels are in better shape. Sorry for the total crap iPhone photos guys, my knife budget doesn't allow for a camera hobby.
Cheers
Matteo

 

Maybe just the camera angle, but it looks like a pretty good sized divet in the edge from the middle to the back third.

 

no it's indeed there, came like that. not going to be used much on the board so not a huge issue.

 

Hira texture is actually a bit charming.

Those scratches by the heel really bothered me when I found them on my mini-nakiri, but they don't bother me much now and help me justify not giving that knife as much attention to finishing as I do with the funayuki.

Shame about the frown, but it doesn't look too troublesome. My Asai and Fujiwara Teruyasu and a few others had much worse dips, but they're always annoying to me.

Mark76: I don't remember precisely which combination, but I believe that one was soft 800 stone and maybe the JNS artificial red aoto, followed by 3m sanding sponges in superfine and microfine. Works a charm but I eventually revised it to get some more unnecessary shine from the core steel.