Steve56
Ask me about shaving naked!
Most of us who have been around the kitchen knife world a while know about the ‘3 Ms’, Masahiro, Misuno, and Masamoto. They each make a series of workhorse type knives, probably stamped out of a sheet of steel, ground asymmetrically 70/30 or thereabouts, and fitted with a yo (Western style) handle.
They’re the kind of knife that commercial chefs like, they’re durable, won’t break your heart or wallet if it gets damaged or lost, they get the job done.
So why flatten, thin, and polish one? Well because I can, and it’s kind of fun. I also found that OOB, they like to ‘steer’ in dense foods like spuds and cheese, so having to remember that an asymmetric knife doesn’t cut the same way is a bit of a PITA, so that will be worked on too. The 240mm example I’m using also has a chip in the handle where I dropped it a decade or so ago, so I’m going to work on that too later.
I don’t have an image before I started, but it was just a plain grey patinaed 240 with fairly prominent factory finish marks. Most of the flattening was done with a 400 grit Naniwa diamond stone, followed by a 800 Naniwa Diamond stone, 320, 600, and 1200 sandpaper then a jump to stones. The stones were Okuda (probably) suita, Hakka, Mizukahara, and uchigumori.
Here’s the 400 grit pattern after the blade is mostly flat, and I’ve introduced some convexity to the 30 degree side above the bevel to try and reduce the steering, making the actual grind at the bevel closer to symmetrical - it doesn’t take a huge amount. So at this point, I paused and put a 1k edge on it and sliced some cheese and killed a spud. Steering problem solved.
Sanding the blade is pretty boring, but I used w/d paper on plate glass, both wet and dry. I didn’t take pictures because the progress is not that easy to see in the images.
Next up, a suita followed by a Hakka (stone images later). It’s beginning to show potential! And I can see that the diamond stones did their job as the steel picks up polish.
The Mizukahara that I used did about the same job as the Hakka, then I used a small piece of uchigumori to polish with, mostly just to test it. This stone will be on the way across the pond to my pal @cotedupy at some point, who has given me some tips and pointers, as has Ed Thompson @ethompson - thanks guys!
I’m not there yet, but I’m well on the way.
They’re the kind of knife that commercial chefs like, they’re durable, won’t break your heart or wallet if it gets damaged or lost, they get the job done.
So why flatten, thin, and polish one? Well because I can, and it’s kind of fun. I also found that OOB, they like to ‘steer’ in dense foods like spuds and cheese, so having to remember that an asymmetric knife doesn’t cut the same way is a bit of a PITA, so that will be worked on too. The 240mm example I’m using also has a chip in the handle where I dropped it a decade or so ago, so I’m going to work on that too later.
I don’t have an image before I started, but it was just a plain grey patinaed 240 with fairly prominent factory finish marks. Most of the flattening was done with a 400 grit Naniwa diamond stone, followed by a 800 Naniwa Diamond stone, 320, 600, and 1200 sandpaper then a jump to stones. The stones were Okuda (probably) suita, Hakka, Mizukahara, and uchigumori.
Here’s the 400 grit pattern after the blade is mostly flat, and I’ve introduced some convexity to the 30 degree side above the bevel to try and reduce the steering, making the actual grind at the bevel closer to symmetrical - it doesn’t take a huge amount. So at this point, I paused and put a 1k edge on it and sliced some cheese and killed a spud. Steering problem solved.
Sanding the blade is pretty boring, but I used w/d paper on plate glass, both wet and dry. I didn’t take pictures because the progress is not that easy to see in the images.
Next up, a suita followed by a Hakka (stone images later). It’s beginning to show potential! And I can see that the diamond stones did their job as the steel picks up polish.
The Mizukahara that I used did about the same job as the Hakka, then I used a small piece of uchigumori to polish with, mostly just to test it. This stone will be on the way across the pond to my pal @cotedupy at some point, who has given me some tips and pointers, as has Ed Thompson @ethompson - thanks guys!
I’m not there yet, but I’m well on the way.
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