Show me your finish

The finish youve sweated into your knife.
Never posted this here before, Ive been doing some polishing in my time.
Not the best knife to be working on here, just a cheapo Masamoto KK.

Show me yours!










And some more of that kind

Gesshin Hide deba, such a shame this knife belongs to a lame





And a yoshi petty



I really enjoy pictures of restorations and polishing jobs and sexy blades. Come on

 

Beautiful! Would love to see another thread on process.

 

Mmm shiny

 

I'm speechless.

Just one question ...

How?

 

Good job Bieniek I have some as well

Suisin Densyo:








Masamoto KK@








Modificated Forgecraft:





Shigefusa Kitaeji santoku:

 

Greg,

Again, amazing work!

Could you please provide details of your process and materials? I for one would be very interested.

Cheers,

J

 

Greg:like
The thing is.
When it comes to materials, you dont need much other than some few stones [maybe 4] and some fine sandpaper - lets say grits ranging from 400 to 3000.
As to the stones, if you have a 1k, 4-8k manmade, and you can get hold of one polishing natural stone, youre set. the rest is patience, time, and fingerstones that can be bought in several places.

On the Masamoto, I propably spent 100 hours, repolishing it 4 times and thinning and polishing some more. I polished the back side too. Its silly but back then I thought its super important that my blades are mega shiny all the time. Shortly afterwards I sold it all together. Haha

But it was great lesson. I then managed to get reasonably good finish on the deba in some 7 hours. Heh

And anyway, I think what you need the most is time. Lots of time.
Noone showed me and Greg how to polish metals, but you have your goal to have a shiny knife obviously you wouldnt start with the finest grit and finish at the coarsest? ump

 

Are you using any lubricant or just dry?

 

water for both the papers and stones. On the stones its trickier, especially on the polishing natural, you want to control the water content so the muf stays on, is thick but doesnt hold the knife or break the movement making mess in the scratch pattern.

As to the manmade stones, most of them benefit from removing the mud quickly and all the time - but there are some stones where mud also helps with polishing. You just have to work it out on your stones. 1K JNS is better off mudfree.
King 1200 mud can give you final polish quickly. Aint pretty but pretty uniform.

 

Wow! Nice jobs!
Tried to polish my blades as well but i am yet to find out what works best for me.
So far i have tried Naniva 8k, 10k and an Ohira Suita natural stone.
All i have now is some dull grey clouds on the original finish what has been lighly scratched because of the previous cleaning.
So I would rather not post mine yet.

 

Recent 155mm petty/utility:


In a dark room you can see the reflection.

In the light, the polish and etch shows much more clearly.

I hate hate hate polishing...lol. But I love the end result.

 

It looks camouflaged!

 

Nice. I like how uniform and how they differ the shades of grey. Damn they are uniform. Good to see you posting Cris.

 

Great thread!

 

I call that my 'Predator' finish .

Thanks bieniek! Things have been very hectic around here...but I miss this place daily and decided to just make the time for it, you know?

And if you mean my knife looks uniform...thank you for that as well! Every blade is checked against the blinds in a dim room to verify the grind. Something else I learned with swords that transferred over to my kitchen knives I guess, lol.

 

That's fitting!

 

Lol . Honestly...it's the same finish as in the second picture...just tipped on an angle and in dimmer light. The gyuto you had in your hands would have looked similar.

 

Lighting makes a huge difference I reckon.

 

For sure.


Overall Bathon and bienek's finishes are easily as good, or even superior. I get them to a clean hard backed 1500 grit (which invariably leaves streaks) and etch. The acid does a lot of my work for me. Once etched I rub them down with some soft backed 3000g, along with a few other high grit abrasive processes to bring out the hamon. In the end you get a mirror polished blade that looks 'matte' in direct light, but will reflect like a mirror out to about 10' or more when tipped at any angle at all.

 

I meant the finish now when I read what Ive posted I find it unbelievable you understood anything. I mean the finish is very uniform, and pleasant to the eye. I mean on the other photo. The first picture and the fact the sides of the blade are totally flat is not that important to me. I sure can appreciate the amount of work being put to it but in my world that flatness would be over in two months time.I do my thinning [or most of it] on a grinder you know...

When I come to think of it now, the shape of the knife is uniform too. There is certain balance to it which me likes. The flow of lines. Personally I dont think choil like that would fit me, and you like to forge very low, but the blade have kind of surreal twist to them, like they are taken out of Alien movie or something.
You know what I mean?