Darkhoeks creative culinarium

Marko Tsourkan Designs 240 mm Wa Gyuto 52100

2012-04-25T19:30:00.002+02:00

Marko Tsourkan from NY should be no stranger to many of us knife nuts. He is a well renowned and very skillful maker of handles mainly for kitchen knives. Further he is a perfcectionist to his very fingertips and his impeccable work stands as a reference to many of us in the knife collecting/ using/ sharpening business.

Since last year Marko has expanded his business, toning down the handle making and starting up the design and production of a line of knives for the professional chef. His goal is to equal or surpass the cutting ability of the Shigefusa while using modern PM steels that will allow for an unbeatable edge wear resistance and ease of sharpening. Just what you want in a professional kitchen. You want a knife that cuts about anything pretty effortlessly (is that a word?), is easy to sharpen and stays sharp for a full shift in a busy kitchen. You want a knife with these qualities that is versatile, so you can do with fewer knives. (Who would possibly want fewer knives, you ask, but you know what I mean).

All this sounds amazing, and when I heard that Marko would start making knives, I knew that something great was in the making. Marko spares nothing to make things perfect. He designes his very own line of knives based on the best production and semi custom knives out there, choose his steels after extensive testing and discussing with the most renowned makers in the business, and finally experimenting shamelessly like a mad scientist with heat treatment to get the exact results he wants; the perfect blend of edge retention, sharpenability and sharpness. Add that to Marko's perfectionist mind when it comes to design, fit and finish, and you have the Marko Designs line of knives. Ta-daaa!

The Marko Tsourkan Design Gyuto and diamond loaded felt strop

Judging by this knife I have been able to review for a while now, Marko is getting very close to attaining his goal in all of the above aspects. Looking at the picture above it is easy to see that one of Marko's main sources of inspiration is the japanese gyuto and in particular the shape of the Shigefusa. However, Marko has refined the design further making the blade a tad thinner and lighter, thus making the knife lighter on the hands and arms during extended use. As you can see the blade takes a beautiful patina pretty quickly but it has very low reactivity to most foods (all I've tried anyway).

The handle design is pretty new for Marko, who is best known for his octagonal Wa handles. They are as perfect and beautiful as they are simple. The new design is no exception in this regard. Perfect but simple.

As mentioned, on this particular knife the octagonal handle is replaced with an experimental (yet traditional) D shaped handle but with a Kramer-ish taper to the ferrule, which aids the pinch grip on the blade. The perfectly rounded choil and spine aids this even further, making the knife an absolute joy to hold and use for extended periods of time, and the perfect tapering from heel to tip gives the blade a very good and balanced feel in the hand. It just falls right into a very comfortable pinch grip while also serving those who prefer to grip the knife just by the handle. Well done!

Regarding the thickness of the blade, it falls nicely inbetween the Shigefusa, which some may find too hefty, and my refurbished 240 mm Shiro #3 laser gyuto, which some might find too light. I believe Marko has found a thickness that will suit a lot of users perfectly.

After using the knife for several different tasks in my home kitchen for a couple of weeks I decided to put it to a more comprehensive test to get a feel of what this knife was able to do and to uncover its strengths and weaknesses.

I used my professional hard polyethylene cutting board which is pretty hard on the edge, but which is found in many professional kitchens. This would test the edge wear resistance pretty good. I also chose different vegetables to test different parametres of the blade. Chillies with tough skin, Cabbage and swede cabbage to test wedging, tomatoes to test edge sharpness and some overgrown fibery sugarsnaps to test chopping-ability. Finally I added some cheap pork cutlets to the setup to test the blade in raw protein.

Set up for making a nice casserole :o)

I started by sharpening the blade on my trusty Aka-pin stone (#6-10000 range somewhere). This little stone has really become my go-to stone for all kinds of steel. It is exceptionally efficient even on very hard steels and leaves a very refined edge, yet with a nice bite to it.

I finished the edge on the Marko Designs felt strop. This stone-strop combo showed to be a match made in heaven and gave me a scary sharp edge that easily shaved the hairs of the back of my hand. I have never been a fan of strops, always finishing on stones, but this diamond loaded felt strop from Marko really opened my eyes. The initial cherry tomato test went flawlessly. Easily slicing a standing cherry tomato only held by its own weight. After this confirmation of the edge I went to the real test.

First I went to the swede, the purple thing to the right on the cutting board. Despite its misleading name, it is a root fruit used in a lot of traditional Norwegian dishes and the size and hardness of this massive bulb will really put any blade to the test regarding wedging and skewing.

The Marko gyuto cut through the swede effortlessly without any apparent wedging or skewing at all. It slid straight through. The blade seems perfectly neutral left to right.Cutting paper thin slices was also easy and the blade handled very well. A skewing blade would easily have been discovered in this test.

Next up was the white cabbage. This cabbage was exeptionally dense and heavy and would be a real challenge to any knife. The Marko gyuto slid through effortlessly like with the Swede. No wedging nor skewing was apparent. Cutting angel hair cabbage was also an easy task, and the thin strands of cabbage released easily from the blade. Again the knife performed very well.

This was the produce that was really reactive with the Shigefusa kasumi cladding iron. No apparent reactivity on the 52100 steel.

The chillies and the sugarsnaps were no challenge for this powerful gyuto either. The chopping test showed that the flat part of the edge that starts at the very heel and extends almost half the blade to the tip, and with its slight angle relative to the handle, makes for a very balanced and efficient chopping blade. It is easy to find the right chopping motion and as usual it cuts effortlessly through tough chilli skin and old fibrous sugarsnaps.

The raw protein test was to se how the blade was able to cut paper thin slices of meat or fish without ripping the fibers. The knife sliced through the pork meat like butter and no matter how thin I was trying to slice, the knife performed effortlessly. Pretty impressive how versatile this knife really is. If I would have to manage with only one knife in my kitchen, the Marko gyuto is my #1 candidate to date. It is exceedingly good in anything I have tried.

You can see the spine of the knife through the thinly cut meat.
The cutting surface is without any apparent damage to the muscle fibers.

So, to the final test. Would the edge still cut a cherry tomato standing loose on the cutting board? Yes it would! Well partly anyway. The part of the edge that had been banged into the hard plastic during the chopping session had dulled slightly. For regular tomato cutting it was still very good, but this ultra sharpness test got a bit more difficult than before the cutting and chopping party.

Now to the amazing part. You see, Marko claimed that after some passes on his wonderstrop the "dulled" edge would go back to crazy sharp just like that. I was thinking "Yeah, Right!". So, just to prove him wrong, I took the blade to the strop, passed it over a couple of times on each side. First with a little pressure and then with almost only the weight of the blade.

Back side of the very well made felt strop. And check out that patina on the blade :o)

Was I ever surprised. The edge was almost totally back to scary sharp just after a few light strokes on the strop. If you get a knife from Marko, get a strop with it! If you are not getting a knife from Marko, still get a strop for your other knives.

When Marko first told me he was going all in on the knife making business I new it was going to go one of two ways. Either he would not succeed in his endeavours and give up the whole thing or he would succeed 100% and become one of the very best out there. One thing you can trust when it comes to Marko. If he decides on doing something it is because he thinks he can make it perfect. And he will not rest until he has. The knife in this review proves that. It depends of course what you personally consider to be the perfect knife. Weight, size, steel, heat treatment, handle. All things matter. What I am trying to say, however, is that this knife is perfect in what it is. The size feels perfect to the weight, the balance feels perfect to the length, the handle feels perfectly shaped and sized to the blade and the heat treatment seems to get very, very close to perfect for the steel.

Knowing Marko, I am not one bit surprised by the quality of this knife. I am, however, deeply impressed by how far he seems to have come as a knifemaker in the short while he has been making knives. He tells me he is still making adjustments to the grind to make the blade more non-stick, but from what I have been experiencing with the blade in this review a further improvement in this aspect would actually make the knife food repellent :o)

I'll round this review off with a couple of "Patinart" pictures showing off the beautiful patina on the 52100 blade and Marko's very clean and stylish brand mark. Review knife or not, I'm keeping it!!

DarKHOeK

Full custom 300 mm damascus san mai suji - "The Black Pearl"

2012-04-24T01:02:00.000+02:00

About a year ago I was thinking seriously about getting a full custom knife. I was not sure where I wanted to go so I searched the Internet, different knifeforums and several knifemakers' web pages. There was a plentitude of options. Some of them totally not my liking and others so costly I would have to sell my car and a kidney to get one, so quite a few options were ruled out pretty easily.

After a lot of searching I found exactly the design I was looking for in a blade. Problem was it was not a kitchen knife. It was a hunter blade. Fully forged high contrast damascus with an O1 core. The blade was absolutely stunning! By this time I had pretty much settled my mind for a sujihiki blade to complement my collection of yanagibas, and I wanted to stick to the 300 mm length as this is the length I have been accustomed to in my slicers.

I contacted the knifemaker of the above mentioned hunter, and we started talking. He was all ears about my requests and baseline design suggestions, filling me in on the gaps and finally he came up with an idea so grand I could not resist. A 300 mm sujihiki with O1 core steel encapsulated in pure nickel and direct forged in a high contrast damascus of 15N20 and 1084 steel. In this particular blade the core steel is forged directly into the centre of the damascus bar. This is a very time consuming and an immensely difficult task to accomplish, especially in a 300 mm blade, as it is almost impossible to keep the core straight and in the centre of the blade during the forging process. This was going to be a grand test of his skills as a blacksmith.

You can see the core steel gently rippling down the centre of the spine of the blade with the nickel encapsulating the core.

After one single trial run, resulting in the worlds probably most exclusive letter opener :o), he succeeded. That is nothing less than impressive, and a proof of exceptional skill as a knifemaker.

The result ended up like this. I just can't stop looking at it. It is an exceptional piece of functional art. It looks pretty hefty, but actually, the first thing my wife said when she took it up was "Wow, it's a lot lighter than it looks!". I have to agree with her on that one. It is definately not the lightest suji out there, but the balance, the forged tapering of the blade and the weight and shape of the handle is so well executed that the knife immediately feels like an extention to your hand.

"The Black Pearl" in all its' splendour with the stunning Stingray saya. It is truly a one-of-a-kind knife

Most of you will recognize the brand mark on the certificate. The Bear paw. Many of you will also recognize the special rounded choil and the full grain leather saya design. The blacksmith and knifemaker is of course Mr. Pierre Rodrigue from Canada. A true master of his craft and a true gentleman to his trade.

The Bear paw of Mr Rodrigue's brand. Look also at the incredible damascus pattern.
Remember that the damascus pattern is forged with the core in. That is pretty impressive stuff!

Total production time was about one year from start to finish. The extensive production time was partly because Mr. Rodrigue is a very busy man and a popular knifemaker, partly because the forging of the blade is an exceedingly complex matter, partly because some of the materials used are pretty long lead items and partly because this project was not one to be taken lightly, not by Mr. Rodrigue nor by me. It was to be a masterpiece. A Piece de resistance. A signature design. Mission accomplished!

"The Black Pearl" is number 124 in the production line.
Sum up the numbers and you'll get lucky number 7.
Coincidence? I think not! :o)

Our frequent conversations on the different design issues, material choises, challenges and new ideas gave me an ownership in the project I have never before experienced. It felt almost like I was there with Mr. Rodrigue designing my own knife. Truth is I didn't want it to end. Well, on the one hand I could not wait to see and experience the finished knife, but on the other hand I found so much fun, joy and excitement in the discussions with Mr Rodrigue that I wanted the project to go on.
Every now and then he would tell me about ideas he had that he wanted my opinions on and other times he told me that he had surprises coming that he didn't want to disclose. This kept the excitement and thrill in this for me all the way.

The black burl handle perfectly matching the knife

On one occasion we were discussing handle design and materials, I told him I would like some black burl to match the black blade, and Mr. Rodrigue suggested he could accentuate the handle with black Mother of Pearl shell. I was thrilled by the idea and in a fraction of a second the obvious name of the knife popped into my head. The knife had been named "The Black Pearl".

"Fifteen men on a dead mans chest. Yo, ho ho, and a bottle of Rhum!" :o)

The black Mother of Pearl inlay giving the knfe its' true name

The greatest and best kept secret was the final design of the saya. To go with the maritime theme of "The Black Pearl", Mr. Rodrigue has designed the saya with jet black Stingray skin keeping the natural snow white "diamond" in the skin in the centre. I tried to imagine what the secret could be, but honestly, I did not see that one coming. The first time I laid my eyes on it I was totally stunned by its beauty. The Stingray skin looks like millions of tiny black shiny pearls glued together on the saya with the beautiful diamond shape in slightly larger white pearls. It is an amazing feature which makes the knife even more spectacular (if at all possible).

As if all this wasn't enough, Mr. Rodrigue suggested one more thing. He was really twisting his clever brains on how to add another design feature to the handle butt to pimp it up the last final bit without making it look cheesy. That alone is no simple task on an already extreme knife like this. To me it was no surprise he found a great solution. "How about mounting a small Ammonite?" he asked me. "An ammo...what?" I asked. "An Ammonite is a fossil shell from an extinct squid, some millions of years old", he told me. "Really nice." he finished. I agreed without really knowing what an ammonite was and how it was looking. At this moment in the process I had come to trust Mr. Rodrigue's sense of design pretty blindly.

Ammonite. MY Ammonite! 'Nuff said.

I was stunned when I saw it the first time. It is alost translucent and three dimensional, changing colours from rust red to a deep green through blueish tones and with a bright metallic sheen to it. It is an absolutely magnificent little gem. The above picture was the best I could get. Turn the Ammonite some degrees and you will get a totally different appearance. I really don't know what more to say about it. I am just really glad that it is there.

This knife stands out as an absolutely perfect example on how all the small pieces of a design add up to something a lot more than the sum of its' parts. It's like an expensive car or an expensive watch. It gives you that special feel and its' quality is instantly recognized. A very important difference, however, is that this magnificent blade has not only one, but two souls in it. A large chunk which is from Mr. Rodrigue, and I feel he has succeeded to incorporate a good piece of my heart and soul as well. I can feel that when I am holding the knife. It is like closing my eyes, imagining the perfect knife in my hand and when I open my eyes "The Black Pearl" is there.

So, it takes a while, and it is not cheap, and if you rather want a good main stream knife quickly without paying a lot, call one of the several good shops importing Japanese blades and selling pre made blades from good makers. Ask someone at Kitchenknifeforums.com or Knifeforums.com. A lot of good guys there that will be more than happy to help you out.
For me, a good knife quickly was not what I was looking for (this time). I have all that I can use and more of that kind. I wanted to go full custom and to be able to interact, or at least contribute in the making even though I was an ocean away. Did I get it? Yes, yes, and more so. I have gotten the knife of my dreams through this joint venture with Mr Rodrigue. His exeptional skills as a knifemaker and his ability to put some of my more or less quirky whishes and ideas to life made this happen.
But no matter how much i treasure "The Black Pearl", the most surprising and valuable thing that came out of this adventure was the forging of a good friendship. I am very greatful and proud to be able to call Pierre Rodrigue my friend. If you want an exciting knife making journey getting to know a true gentleman and one of the very best knifemakers out there, and a magnificent one-of-a-kind knife to top the whole thing off, send him a note.

My next whish is to be able to sit with Mr. Rodrigue in his back yard some day. Talk knives, drinking cold beers and slice a perfect BBQ roast for dinner with "The Black Pearl". That would be going full circle to me.

DarKHOeK

Up next: Captain of "The Black Pearl" - The user experience

Petty and Victorinox rehandle

2011-12-19T23:55:00.000+01:00

This is what I have been working on lately. My friend Øivind had a couple of knives he wanted me to rehandle and I needed at couple of "easy" projects to keep me going. I have a couple of ongoing project that really challenge my skills. One of them is the Hiromoto sujihiki rehandle and saya in a previous post. The other is a Keijiro Doi Shiro Kengata Hayate that will get a new handle, a matching saya and a matching pair of moribashi, but more on that in a later post.

Now, on to the rehandle projects.

I have done a "pimp my Vic" for Øivind before, and the petty was a very nice little damascus blade with a western full tang handle that he wanted me to makeinto a hidden tang with a little more palm swell to fit Øivinds largeish hands.

I didn't actually make WIP of these knives as I kind of lost the "spark" after the mess over at KKF. It just tore me apart. Hope to be back with more elaborate posts after this one.

Anyways here is a couple of pictures of the finished knives. Sorry for the crappy shots, but the lighting was not the best and the blitz on the camera really does more harm than good in this kind og photography so I had to manage without it. I hope that Øivind is pleased with his knives.

The petty got a handle from stabilized Redwood burl from Burl Source. Thanks again Mark for excellent stuff. The saya is also from redwood burl but unstabilized. The handle spacer and end cap as well as the saya pin is from Musk ox forhead. Hey, it's Christmas! :o)

The handle on the Victorinox is from a two tone brown dyed maple burl from Burl Source also. Mark, you just blow me away with all that spectacular wood. Three 1,5mm pins from nickel silver and a file worked spine on the tang. Handle is glued up with black epoxy to better show off the file work.

Thanks for looking.

Harald.

Handle and saya on Hiromoto sujihiki

2011-11-14T19:19:00.013+01:00

A great sushi Chef in New York sent me a Hiromoto sujihiki blade with a block of stabilized spalted Hackberry wood that he wanted to have made into a handle. He also requested me to build a matching saya for the handle, but as soon as I saw the handle block I new I was in for a real challenge. The handle block is one of the most dramatic pieces of wood I have ever seen, and judging from the weight of the block it must have come a long way in the deteriorating process so allowing the stabilizing liquid to really soak through the wood. Challenge was to find wood for the saya that was not stabilized but still solid and spalted or figured enough to match the handle.

The blade is a Hiromoto san mai kasumi sujihiki wich has been etched (by Dave Martell?) to bring out the dramatic lamination line between the core steel and the soft cladding. The cladding had gotten an almost shimmering surface from the etching which stood in great contrast to the almost black core steel. My first thought looking at the blade and the handle block was that this would going to be one dramatic looking knife when finished.

Spalted hackberry wood - stabilized block, and the old handle

As soon as I started working on the handle block it soon became very clear to me that I was in for another challenge. The wood was so hard and dense that I had a really hard time working it. Both cutting, sanding and grinding was a really tedious process and it ate my sanding paper like it was made of wet newspaper. What was this wood anyway, petrified? Stabilized with shot proof glass?

Searching through my stock of different horn material I found a really nice marbeled piece of cow horn with dark and tan stripes that would match up really nice with the colors of the handle. After working out all the pieces and sorting out the order of which to put them I was finally ready to glue everything up. I have found this a good way to do it as I do not have the time to think and fiddle around when glueing things up. The worst things that can happen in this stage is that the glue starts to harden in the middle of the process so that everything is glued up with skews and voids all over the place. You might be able to salvage the wood but all bolsters and spacers will be heading for the bin.

All handle parts lined up and ready for assembly

All parts glued in with epoxy glue

While the handle was curing I could start working on the saya. I had gotten a nice piece of spalted Sycamore thin lumber that was still all solid. It was sold as luthier wood, but it was perfect for saya material. After outlining the shape of the blade on the wood I cut out the pieces with the necessary extra space around for glueing and shaping. As the ink line was just on the surface of the wood I had to grind down the pieces to about the right thickness from the side going to be the inside of the saya. If I had done all the grinding of the saya after glueing I would risk to remove all of the beautiful inkline from the wood.

Outlining the saya on the spalted Sycamore

Profiles sawn out slightly oversized

So, with the coarse shaping done I could start working out the cavities in the saya to fit the blade. The cavities should be as small and evenly shaped as possible without clamping the blade, and it is wise to make a 2-3 extra mm of space for the tip of the blade so the saya will not break it off if the saya is dropped when the knife is inside. The cavity along the edge should be as even as possible to protect the edge by distributing the pressure of the edge along the whole length of the saya if you get impacts to the saya with the knife in and pin out. Bumps along the edge line inside the saya can easily chip your blade.

Carving the cavities for the blade - Baby steps!!

Regularly checking the fit

Drilling and carving the tang hole in the handle gave me my next challenge as the wood clogged my drillbits every 2-3mm of drilling even if I was using a hand drill and going really slow. The clogging seemed to harden instantly like super glue in the cavities of my drillbits making them almost impossible to clean up. It took ages to drill two small holes for the depth of the tang. The rest was done pretty efficiently using a tiny square rasp and a very narrow saw that I have modified for this special task.

Getting ready to drill the tang hole

Tang hole finally done

After shaping the saya and handle I was now ready to fit it all together. The saya was too light colored to match the handle so I dyed it with a spirit based wood dye. After some tests on a piece of saya wood I found mixing two parts "grey oak" to one part "red mahogany" would do the trick. After the dye had dried up I sanded down the saya with #800 paper until I got just the right color. Then I saturated the surface of the saya in Danish oil which gave me the exact color and hue I was looking for. After 48 hrs of letting the Danish oil harden, I gave the saya a final buffing with a wax based wood polish to give it a nice and silky shine.

All parts finally ready for assembly - Note the very light wood in the saya

Next up was to glue the blade in place. I had made the tang hole very slightly oversized to be able to micro adjust the handle on the blade. I wanted to give the handle a 1-2 degree lift related to the blade to make it more comfortable to use over time.

All taped up and ready for assmbly

Handle glued in place

Even if I had a really hard time working the material for the handle, this was one of my most rewarding projects ever. Before I started I feared that the heavy handle material would throw off the balance of the knife, but it came out perfect with a balance point just under 1" in front of the handle. The handle wood is some of the most spectacular wood I have ever seen and it really accentuates the dramatic lamination line of the etched blade. I was pretty happy with how the saya turned out as well to be honest. To pimp it all off I made a matching pin for the saya using the same marbeled horn as I used for the bolsters. Note the dark stripe in the pin matching up with the ink line in the saya :o)

Well, that's all, folks. Thank you for reading. I am happy for any comments and suggestions to my work as usual, as your comments is the only way I can get better at what I am trying to do.

PS! NO power tools were used for this project. All toos used, except for the sanding paper and a Japanese ryoba saw, are shown in the pictures. This was done partly because the handle material did not allow for the use of power tools and because I wanted to see if it could be done in a proper way without the use of powertools. It took more time, but I did not heat up the materials at all, witch will reduce the possibilities for cracks and warping.

Honyaki Gyuto 240mm refurbishment

2011-10-22T16:26:00.007+02:00

I got this gyuto blade a while ago. It is a 240mm honyaki blade, made from Shiro-ko #3 steel and it is oil quenched. Shiro-ko #3 is very rarely seen used in knives. It is identical to Shiro-ko #1 except it has 0.8%C instead of 1.3%C in Shiro-ko#1. It is thus a very delicate blade with exceptional capabilities regarding hardness and ability to take an ultra sharp edge. As the toughness of the steel is low, it is a blade for the finer work in the kitchen where an exceptionally sharp and a wear resistance edge is required. From the two charts below you can see the striking similarity between the Shiro-ko #3 and the Shiro-ko #1. If anything the Shiro-ko #3 appears to be an even purer steel than the #1.

Steel composition chart for Shiro-ko #1 (from zknives.com)

Steel composition chart for Shiro-ko #3 (from zknives.com)

The blade is originally an OEM blade made in Seki, Japan. Rumors has it that two previous owners/ knife makers has thinned and reshaped the blade on a belt grinder, thus removing the kanji, but both makers finally abandoned it for unknown reasons. Finally it ended up at my friend Øivind's house and as Øivind didn't seem too keen on the blade either, he traded it with me for a new handle on one of his new knives. Hopefully he won't regret that too severly when he sees the finished knife.

The blade didn't look like much when I got it, but I needed a project and anticipated there could be quite some potential in this blade, so I gladly accepted the challenge.

The grind marks were quite pronounced and I didn't like the profile of the kissaki so the first thing I did was to reshape the tip by lifting it a little bit. That balanced the blade and made the profile more to my liking.

You can see the very pronounced grind marks. Hamon just visible.

The next thing was to polish the blade and rounding the choil and spine. That shoud prove to be a longer and more work intensive project than I first expected. I started out with some pieces of old synthetic stones. #220, #700, and #1000. Then I switched to Japanese natural finger stones. First Iyoto, then Aka pin and finally uchigumori. The steel in this blade is exceptionally wear resistant, so the process from #220 to the final polish took me around 25 hrs and wore down a lot of stones and finger tips. After this long and bloody process the finish on the blade looked like this. When I saw it I instantly forgot my sore fingers. It was a beauty of a blade! Maybe just because it was now thoroughly baptized in my own blood.

A beautiful wavy hamon on the polished blade. I just love my JNAT fingerstones.

So, I had this beautiful honyaki gyuto blade on my hands. Now what? It really deserved a nice handle and saya. I had just gotten in some beautiful redwood burl luthier wood and I had a couple of very nice stabilized redwood burl blocks from Burl Source in my knife shop. I didn't take any WIP pics of the handle and saya making as my camera was in another location at the time. I hope the pictures of the finished project speaks for itself.

When I got the raw blade and saw the grind marks from the belt grinder I was afraid that the heat treat might be destroyed. When grinding down the blade I realized that the heat treat was very much intact, and the first sharpening sessions on the finished knife have resulted in an exceptional edge. I now have this beautiful honyaki gyuto in my collection. Thanks to Øivind who traded me the blade and thanks to Mark at Burl Source for his exceptional handle materials. They are a joy to work with.

Atagoyama Kiita with Kan, true #24 grade finishing stone

2011-08-26T00:35:00.006+02:00

Since I started collecting and using Japanese natural stones, I have focussed mainly on performance which I believe is the #1 factor to look for in a sharpening stone. It doesn't matter if a stone is large as a brick if it can't remove metal and sharpen the knife properly. Not to say that large stones don't work. Problem is that a large natural stone of excellent quality will be very very expensive. Especially larger stones from the more famous mines like Nakayama, Shinden, Okudo, Oohira, Oozuku or Shobu seems to reach ridiculous prices. This is mainly because most of these mines are heavily exploited or closed long time ago, so the stones are very rare, if not impossible to come by.

Regardless of the price I just can't help looking at the big stones. Ever since I started collecting these wonderful rocks, the #24 size stone has had an almost magical attraction on me. Finally I could not resist any more and I decided I needed at least one. Question was how to get a good quality #24 size stone that would not ruin me or force me to sell my car.

The answer actually came in two parts. Maxim from Japanesenaturalstones.com reviewed a stone from the Atagoyama mine a while ago. This mine has not yet reached pop star status or astronomical prices and the stones are still fairly available in large sizes. Maxim rated this his all time favourite finishing stone for kitchen knives. The Atagoyama sounded like the perfect stone to go for. A real dark horse in the field of high end Japanese natural finishing stones. The only problem seemed to be where to score a true grade #24 high quality Atagoyama.

Shortly after, the second part of the answer emerged out of thin cyberspace. Masaru san from Hides export advertized three large Atagoyama stones for sale. All were #24 size 3kg++ and stated to be of good to very good quality. The stones were still rather costly but the cost to size ratio was fair I thought. A quick check with Maxim told me that the price to quality of the stones offered from Masaru san was not only fair but actually very very good as even these stones are getting increasingly hard to find in these sizes and of this level of quality.

Two of the stones were asagi like stones and looked pretty nice, but the last one offered instantly caught my eye. A 3.1kg stone with Kiita color and Kan pattern. I sent an e-mail to Masaru san with an enquiry which he responded to almost instantly. He said: "The Kan pattern is a pattern of single or multiple concentric rings in the stone and is said to be a sign of a very high quality stone with increased power. The Kiita or light tan to yellow color has no relevance for the sharpening qualities of the stone but the light color makes it a lot easier to see the swarf and mud building on the surface making it a lot easier to monitor the sharpening process." It was fairly obvious to me by now that the #24 grade Atagoyama Kiita with Kan pattern was the one and only rock for me.

Atagoyama (in the middle) compared to my monster 4,5kg Aoto from Iida-tool (left)
and my large 2,5kg Aizu from Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones (right)

You can easily see the Kan pattern like parts of concentric circles on the stone

So to cut an already too long story short. I ordered the stone of my dreams from Masaru san at Hides export. A week later it arrived to my house. That is pretty quick from Japan to Norway. The stone was wrapped like it was prepared for high altitude air drop delivery and arrived in perfect condition. Masaru san was a really great person to do business with. He e-mailed me regularly to hear if the stone had arrived, if I liked it, how it performed and all that. Very good and personal service indeed! I can recommend his services any time. When ordering products this expensive from the other side of the world it is very reassuring that the seller takes interest in your purchase.

The stone was even more beautiful than in the pictures. It was large and it was magnificent! In addition to the kiita color and the Kan pattern I noticed a lot of black lotus evenly scattered throughout the stone like very small vanilla seeds. On the underside the stone was covered with a beautiful skin with some scattered chisel marks. It almost looked like it is iron clad. It actually felt like it was iron clad as well. The stone also felt a lot heavier than expected judging from its size. It felt really massive.

Here you can really see all the features of the stone. The Kiita color, the Kan pattern and the black lotus.

Look at that magnificent skin. I love it!

There were two rows of kanji on the stone. The kanji looking like 一本撰 reads "Ippon-sen" and means #1 selected piece. The long big one 愛宕鉱山合砥 reads "Atago kouzan awasedo" which means Atago mine finishing stone, and 二十四型 which means #24 grade or size. Last kanji is not visible on the picture.

I was really excited about this stone. To see what it could really do in a stone set up I decided to take one of my edges down a bit and resharpen it from #1500 WA stone through my hard and fine Aoto and finish off at the Atagoyama. After doing the ground and middle work on the blade moving to the Atagoyama, the first thing I noticed was the hardness of the stone. It was a lot harder than I had expected. Comparing to my other finishing stones I would rate it at Lv5(-).

Due to the hardness, the stone requires some sharpening experience with hard Japanese natural stones. I would not recommend this as a first natural stone to the fresh sharpener. The use of a Nakayama tomo nagura helped a lot. I also tried with Iyoto nagura for prepolish with great success. Without the use of a nagura, building a slurry took a little time, but as soon as the slurry built, the feel of the stone was great. It was very smooth but I could still really feel the work it did on my blade. 20-30 passes on the stone resulted in a very light slurry heavily loaded with black swarf. After 50+ passes the slurry had built to a dense dark olive slurry that really made the sharpening experience enjoyable. When raising the blade a little bit I could instantly feel when the work was done as the stone suddenly "sucked" the steel in. It was like trailing the edge on a wet rubber block that suddenly went dry. It is the exact same feel I get on my Oohira shiro suita.

20-30 passes gave a light slurry mostly from metal swarf suspended in near clear water.

50+ passes on the stone resulted in a dense dark olive paste. A very efficient stone.

The resulting grindmarks on the bladeroad soft cladding were visible but very dense and shallow. On the hard steel the stone gave a very nice and very light haze polish. The largerscratches are residue from the #1500 WA as I did not use enough time on the Aoto. I will redo this part and update the pictures at some time.

I have no idea what grit this stone is. Compared to my other stones I would rate it in the #8000-#20000 range somewhere. However, the resulting edge is the absolutely sharpest and keenest edge I have ever been able to do straight off a stone. Just a few final passes on the stone to make a micro bevel until the blade was "sucked" to the stone gave me an edge that was really scary sharp, shaving hair totally without pulling. It felt like I was actually trailing the edge on my arm, but the edge was leaving a very close shave. That was just spectacular. Later tests have shown that the Atagoyama performs equally well on both carbon, honyaki as well as stainless. Especially VG-10 and my blue #1 honyakis from Takagi gets that evil edge from this stone. Global knives from Yoshkin with its CROMOVA steel also took an incredible edge straight off this stone. No need to strop. A perfect all round finisher with remarkable sharpening qualities.

My very keenest edge to date, straight off the Atagoyama.
Residue scratches are frome #1500 WA stone and me being lazy :o(

A nice hazy mirror.

To sum things up a bit: This Atagoyama has really got me impressed. Both because of its beauty and sheer size, but especially for its versatility and excellent sharpening qualities. This is probably the last finishing stone I will ever need. It has all the qualities I have been searching for in a great finisher and it will last me several lifetimes. Right now I can't imagine ever wanting a sharper blade than this stone is able to produce either.

That said, it will obviously not be the last finishing stone I will ever want :o) You guys know how it is... We always look for the next high ground.

Pimp My Knife! - Victorinox refurbishment project

2011-05-16T11:12:00.001+02:00

I was discussing good bread knives with my friend Øyvind, and he told me he was planning to order a Güede. I told him that the Victorinox would probably be a better choice and a lot more bang for his buck than this pimped up Güede bread slicer.

As it was, Øyvind already had the Victorinox in question, but he believed it was to old and to ugly looking compared to the rest of his magnificent collection. He then came up with a cool suggestion. I could do a rehandle on his Victorinox. A "Pimp My Knife" project.

The Victorinox is a mid-end blade, higly commercialized and not exactly an eye-catcher. No matter its humble pedigree, it is a blade that is actually one of the very best in what it is designed to do. It is a long time favourite amongst European chefs, and I doubt that you will find a professional kitchen in Europe without at least one of these knives. It is called "The world's best bread knife", and as far as cutting bread or cakes, I have not come across any knife that does it better.

To cut a long story short...
The blade and handle sure had some issues that needed fixing, so I accepted Øyvind's challenge to "pimp" his Victorinox. The starting point was a bit depressing looking, and I sure wondered what I could do to the knife to make it shine again.

First task was to get the old, cracked handle off without damaging the blade. Drilling out the rivets, which were aluminum, was easily done. At this stage I also sharpened the blade on the back side with a #1200 Aluminum oxide stone to bring out a fresh serrated edge. This grit made it fairly sharp while keeping the toothiness required to cut bread and especially crust effectively. I would later remove the scratches when satin polishing the blade.

Next up was to find a nice piece of wood to fit as the new handle. I wanted to keep the semi-hidden tang from the original handle, so I needed a block rather than scales for this one. I know Øyvind and he is a lover of curly and burly woods. I happened to have one that was both curly and burly, and it was Norwegian as well. A nice stabilized block of exhibition grade Masur birchwood.

I wanted to make a handle that had a little more belly and palm swell than the original handle, but still keep the light feel of the knife and its grip-friendlyness to both large and small hands. I thus made a rather highly contoured shape with a good palm swell but with narrower grip towards the blade.

I was wondering what to to to make the knife a little more special looking. After all this was a "Pimp My Knife" project. A knife I had seen on an exhibition a few weeks earlier gave me the idea. Fileworking the spine in the handle. So I started out experimenting on how this could be done as easy and consistent as possible. I ended up using my high power Dremel with an extention cord and a small sanding drum with a #120 grit aluminum oxide paper. This worked like a charm!

Next up was to attach the blade to its new handle and align everything. I sanded out a little extra space in the slot for the tang to fit a couple of black fiber spacers to give a better contrast for the file worked spine.

To finish the handle I used #220, #400, #600, #1200 and #2000 sanding paper followed by a light wood buff on the wood and a green metal buff for the spine and the pins. I also fitted a nice mosaic pin to give it that final "Pimped" look. I gave the blade a nice satin finish with a #1200 fibercloth doped with aoto powder, giving the blade back the as-new finish.

This Victorinox has been officially DarkHOeK Pimped!
Thanks for reading.

Mystery stone - a nice pre finisher for kitchen knives #6-8000 Lv3 - 3,5

2011-05-10T20:46:00.002+02:00

I frequently browse the Internet for japanese natural stones in my quest to learn new things about them and maybe find the occasional bargain. It is an exciting treasure hunt that has brought me more paperweights than actual usable stones, but every now and then I score a good stone at a bargain price.

This nice little rock I found on e-bay. I misspelled the search word and wrote "toisi" instead of "toishi". The search returned 1 hit, and this "toisi" was up for auction. There was one bid in, but I waited for 4 days until 15 seconds before the end of auction and bid $10 over the current bid and I won! A couple of weeks later it arrived in my eager hands and I couldn't wait to try it out. Hoping that the stone would be good but expecting just another paperweight.

Nice and clean stone. A corner missing but good size.

No cracks but a few firm and light inclusions not affecting sharpening negatively.
Observe the small black seeds like vanilla

Kiita with a greenish hue to it. Almost like green tea jelly with vanilla seeds

Clean and homogenous side with a few firm lines

The stone looked very old as it was previously lacquered to reinforce it due to its rater soft composition. The lacquer was yellowish and tarnished of age and the stone looked used. That was a good sign. I started out removing the tarnished lacquer and applied a couple of fresh layers to keep it stable.

The stone board is free of cracks but have some firm inclusions that does not effect sharpening in a negative way. The colour is kiita with a greenish hue with what looks like vanilla seeds in it. Very small black dots spread evenly throughout the stone. Might be renge or goma or something. It seems very uniform and has this velvety cool feeling to the touch.

The skin is very nice and dramatic looking with its very clear palette ranging from dark brown to a rusty orangey color. The stone itself on the bottom side is a light kiita color.

Dramatic and beautiful skin on the stone

Very nice back side with a clean kiita color under the skin

So for the sharpening experience. I pulled out my trusty Kasahara Aoko #2 kasumi usuba from Iida Tools. I use the same knife for all my tests as this gives me a firm reference for comparison and a large area to show the qualities of the stone.

The stone gives up slurry quite easily. The slurry to swarf ratio is fairly modest and the feel was very creamy and non-scratchy. What was immediately apparent, however, was the stones ability to make a high contrast between the jigane and hagane on the knife. It was clearly visible even through the ritch slurry. Even if it is a fairly soft stone it wears pretty slowly and will stay flat for a long time.

Very rich slurry. The light color indicates modest swarf to slurry ratio.

Looking at the result, we can se that the stone is not a final finisher. However, it produces a finish with very shallow scratches which makes it a very good pre-polisher for the final finishers. It also leaves a fairly dramatic contrast between ji and ha which I like a lot.

Nice contrast between jigane and hagane, but not the finest of finishers.

To sum up. The stone was a bargain for the price paid. However, most of the times you get what you pay for and this is not a very agressive nor a very fine grit stone. I believe the quality is fairly good.

The stone is a fairly good performer that sharpen most kitchen knives more than sufficiently for daily use. The edge off the sone compared a lot to the edge off my Oohira Asagi which is rated Lv 4,5 and #6-8000. As it is a fairly soft stone it is also very easy to use and very forgiving when sharpening. I believe it will be a very good stone for the beginner and intermediate sharpener.

If anyone have an idea what stone this might be, please leave a comment. I am excited to hear your opinions.

Nakayama?? Karasu - A lot of power in a small package #8-15000

2011-03-11T23:33:00.001+01:00

In view of some of the comments to my latest post regarding the Aka-pin stones, I am not sure if I dare to describe this stone as a Nakayama, even if it looks very similar to other stones on the Internet stated to be Nakayama karasu and as it was was sold to me as one. I will thus merely call it a Karasu stone, and that it definately is! I have previously reviewed another one of my karasu stones here: http://darkhoek.blogspot.com/2010/11/double-trouble-yamashiro-karasu.html

This little beauty might very well have a different origin than Nakayama. However, the origin is of merely academic interest to me as the real purpose of my stones is to sharpen my knives, kanna and chisel to a useable level. Actually most of my knives are way sharper than just useable, due to me sharpening them a lot more than strictly required.

This particular little stone was one of my first Japanese natural stones, and even after trying a magnitude of different stones this little beauty has earned its place in my setup as one of my absolute favourites. It is fairly hard, maybe around Lv4, very efficient and exactly the perfect grit range for most of my kitchen knives, leaving a nice mist and haze on my kasumi blades and a very keen edge with just the right amount of bite to it. Karasu can also be fairly soft and Maxim at japanesenaturalstones have a very nice and soft one that I hope to experience one day.

A beautiful stone alltogether. I love it!

Small and thin but very clean and free of cracks

Beautiful karasu like a modernist painting. A true gemstone.

The board is light grey with spots of greenish to yellowish in it and with a dense karasu pattern showing a shine in the dark mica in the stone making the karasu so efficient as a sharpening stone. I looks like it has got a perfect camouflage. It also shows some nashiji pattern enbetween the black karasu. This stone has really got it all.

The white lines in the board looks almost like paint spill on the stone and is close to the same hardness as the rest of the stone and thus of absolutely no consequence to the sharpening.

When sharpening, the stone pulls black metal filings immediately proving that this is a very efficient and fairly hard stone. You can see the metal filings suspended in the clear water before a slurry has built. This is usually a good sign, but it is no guarantee for the stone being a good sharpener or finisher. It is just a proof that the stone removes metal, which is only one of several things a good stone will have to do.

Black metal filings suspended in clear water = extraordinary efficiency.

After about 50 strokes on the stone, a dense dark olive slurry builds, making the sharpening experience a lot smoother and creamier. Not that the stone is scratchy. It isn't, but the feel of the stone changes as a slurry builds up. The stone is not very thirsty and the slurry holds up for a long time befor I have to add water to it. This provides for a very consistent result as I can concentrate on the sharpening and not consistently add water to keep the slurry within my comfort range.

Dense dark slurry building up

When looking at the finish, you can still se a few very light scratches, mainly in the soft steel jigane. This might be a result of poor ground work or me being a little bit too impatient. The edges off this stone, however, is some of the keenest edges I am able to produce on my knives. Especially on regular kitchen knives like my gyuto, nakiri and santoku. Exceptionally sharp but still with a very nice bite to them making the knives a pleasure to use both on proteins and veggies. It is a highly versatile stone handling all the types of steel I have thrown at it equally well, from soft 440C to blue #1 honyaki. That is an unusual but highly desireable feature for a japanese natural stone.

Not a high polish finish, but a very keen edge

From my experience it seems to me that karasu stones are generally efficient sharpening stones. However, I have heard that karasu stones, like asagi, can be quite scratchy and produce poor results if used unwisely. If you can find a good one, it should be a part of any Japanese natural sharpening stone set-up, but as these beauties are becoming quite rare you will probably have to expect a high cost. I really love this stone. It looks beautiful and is an excellent performer. My only whish is that it was a little bit thicker, but a full size stone of this quality would be dramatically out of my reach pricewise if at all available.

However small, this little stone is an absolute pleasure to use and one of the very few true gems in my collection. As it is a fairly hard rock, hopefully it will last a long time.

DARkhoEK

2x Nakayama Aka-pin review. Variations on a theme...

2011-03-08T00:03:00.002+01:00

I bought two Nakayama Aka-pin stones from 330mate.com in the same batch. The long and thin one was stated as a Lv3 stone and the wide and stubby one as a Lv2+ stone. Not looking at the size, the two stones look and feel very similar to each other. Roughly the same colour and the same lotus pattern, similar surface feel and fairly similar in hardness. I thus expected them to be relatively similar in performance and use. I could not have been more mistaken. The two stones, however similar would prove to be as different as two stones can possibly be, being approximately the same hardness and grit.

The two Nakayama Aka-pins looking very similar.
I name the top one Aka-pin #2 and the lower one Aka-pin #1

Nakayama Aka-pin #1 close-up

Nakayama Aka-pin #2 close-up

For this review I used my trusty Kasahara Aoko #2 kasumi usuba from Iida Tools (as usual). Using the same knife for all my stone tests makes it easier to compare the results and posible to compare results over time.

I started out with the #1 stone. It is long and narrow and quite thin, but very clean and without significant cracks. Just a few hairlines in the board. The surface is red to orange and full of darker lotus patterns. It is a nice looking stone.

I was amazed by this stone from the first time I used it. I sprayed the stone with a little water and started sharpening. The stone pulled metal filings from the first stroke leaving the metal particles floating in clear water on the surface. I was really amazed by the efficiency of this stone. After about 30 strokes, a dense dark grey slurry built up making the sharpening experience really smooth and creamy. The dark colour of the slurry is due to a significant part of it being removed metal.

A dark grey slurry coloured by the metal filings

Metal filings floating in clear water after a few strokes

The real surprise came when inspecting the result of the sharpening session with the Aka-pin #1. A totally smooth and even scratch pattern and excellent contrast between ji and ha showed up under the slurry. I could not believe my eyes. Could a stone this fast, agressive and soft be this fine? Obviously it could. It was obvious to me that this little stone was of excellent quality and that the price paid was a bargain.

An almost flawless result from the Aka-pin #1

Next up was the Aka-pin #2. A somewhat larger stone. Wider and thicker, but a little shorter. Approximately the same colour, but Aka-pin #2 have some really nice ring formed lotus patterns that I have learned should be a sign of better grinding force. Could this stone possibly be even better that Aka-pin #1? If so, I would be a very happy dude, indeed.

I started sharpening the same way. A good spray of water on the surface and on with the steel. It was soon apparent that this stone was not only a little softer than Aka-pin #1. It was a lot softer and a lot more thirsty. I had to soak it for a couple of minutes to be able to keep enough water on the suface to build a slurry.

The sharpening feeling was quite similar to the Aka-pin #1 except the Aka-pin #2 gave up a slurry a lot faster than the previous one. The slurry was a light tan to orange colour without signs of grey, showing that this stone was not even close to the efficiency of the #1 stone. I sharpened a while on the slurry hoping to see an even finer result on the blade road due to the softer stone and apparently less agressive abrasives.

Stone coloured thick slurry showing no trace of metal filings

I was totally wrong in my expectations. The stone left a significant scratch pattern on the blade road and with a lot less pronounced contrast between ji and ha. I tried the stone on my VG-10 gyuto and my Aoko #1 Santoku just to see if it was equally poor on all steels, and it was. This stone is absolutely useless as far as I can judge it. It has a nice look, but as a sharpening stone it is absolutely without value. It will make a nice paper weight at work reminding me to never taking anything for granted when buying stones on the internet. If it had been an expensive stone I would have returned it, but as the return shipping in this case would be considerably more expensive than the stone itself, I'll just write it off on the lessons learned account.

A very significant scratch pattern for a stone this soft.

So what have I learned from this endavour? Never to judge a stone by its looks. Never to expect anything from a stone before I have actually tried it. That two very similar stones from the same mine and strata can perform very differently, and finally that buying stones on the internet is a gamble where you can make real bargains as well as really poor deals. Luckily the bargains have greatly outnumbered the bad deals on my behalf so far. That said, even the bad stones provide me with experience and knowledge about the complex world of Japanese natural stones.

Be prepared to do a few mistakes to score the good stuff. You can of course remove a lot of the risk by buying certified and expensive stones, but personally I find the treasure hunting very exciting and I urge you all to try and find your own jewels amongst the heaps gravel out there. Win or loose, it is exciting anyhow, and highly educational.

DarkHoek

Honyaki sharpening - The JNAT "dream team"

2011-02-07T21:54:00.005+01:00

True honyaki blades are indeed a special breed of knife. Very often they are hardened beyond practicality making them a true menace to maintain. However laborous these blades may be to keep sharp, I have come to love them unconditionally. I don't know whether it is the myth behind them, the excellent craftmanship, the excellent performance or the sheer beauty of these knives that has won me over. Probably it is a combination of all these factors. The fact that I just love to sharpen my knives probably helps a lot too. These are the honyakis to be sharpened in this test. From the top, a Kasahara Shiroko #2 honyaki 300mm yanagiba and three Aoko #1 honyaki knives from Jyunichi Takagi.

The honyaki blades used in this test of Japanese waterstones

In this excercise I have experiemented with some of the Japanese waterstones that are said to be best suited for sharpening honyaki blades. Based on my experiments I have found the stones that I find best for the task of getting my honyaki blades up to exceptional sharpness and to get that totally scratchless almost sand blasted surface on the bladeroad of my yanagiba. From the bottom of the below picture we have a #1500 grit White Aluminum oxide ceramic stone called a WA stone from Iida tools, then a #5-6000 grit WA ceramic and then I switch to Japanese naturals.

In the middle to the left is my large Aoto from Iida tools, and to the right an Aizu stone from Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones. Both stones are truly remarkable medium sharpeners. Second from the top to the left is a Takashima Myokakudani from Aframestokyo.com, a soft prepolisher with exceptionally even grit. To the right you see the characteristic red Nakayama Akapin from 330mate.com. A very soft but agressive and yet very fine stone. This is my "rescue" stone when I get these hard to remove scratches from man made stones. On the top left we have the very soft and very fine grit Hakka. A legendary finishing stone for honyaki. Also brought to me by Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones.com, and finally on the top right, an Oohira from Maxim also. The Oohira is what I believe to be a tomae; medium soft, fine grit, and I included it for comparison to the Hakka.

The candidates for the honyaki sharpening "dream team"

My trading agent in Japan told me that he always starts out with a special kind of synthetic stone to do the ground work on the blades. A #1500 grit White Aluminum oxide stone called a "WA" stone. The aluminum oxide is some of the hardest abrasives in man made stones except for diamond. The abrasive in this stone is very densly packed and leaves a very consistent scratch pattern. It is a very efficient and hard stone and it will easily correct any issues with the blade road and flatten the back side perfectly. It is very important to resolve all issues in this stage to be able to get a perfect result in the end. As you can see from the below pictures, the WA (White Aluminum oxide) stone is very agressive even on these very hard steels, making it perfect to do the ground work on the blades.

WA #1500 on Shiroko #2 honyaki

WA #1500 on Aoko #1 honyaki

WA #1500 scratch pattern on Shiroko #2 honyaki

After this successful start I decided to apply the #6000 WA to erase the scratches from the #1500 WA stone. This finer stone actually caused more issues than it solved, so I left it out alltogether. Maybe a softer man made stone of finer grit would have performed better, but I did not go further on this and decided to switch directly to the Japanese natural stones after the #1500 WA.

Next up was the natural medium sharpeners. The Aoto and the Aizu. Both rated #2000-5000. I did not know which was the finer of the two, so I briefly tried both, and found that tha Aizu was both harder and a bit coarser than the Aoto, thus I began with the Aizu. This beautiful white stone with its olive green dots is a wonderful performer on hard steels and removed the scratches made by the #1500 WA with ease, leaving a dense and fine scratch pattern.

The Aizu is a fairly hard and agressive stone

Aizu leaving a very nice and homogenous scratch pattern

After the Aizu I could probably have skipped the Aoto alltogether and moved straight on to the Takashima. However, I wanted to compare the Aoto to the Aizu to place them individually in my setup for future reference. The Aoto proved to be everything I had hoped for. Most Aoto stones available today are of mediocre quality and would not be suited for sharpening the hard steels of the honyaki. This was not the matter with my Aoto from Iida tools. It proved to be a wonderful performer even on honyaki, both white and blue steel. The scratch pattern proved to be even finer than from the Aizu, producing the perfect basis for the Takashima.

The Aoto making a dense very fine slurry

The finish from the Aoto leaving not much to be wanted

Very happy about the progress so far, i moved on to the prepolisher. The Takashima Myokakudani. It is a beautiful stone with a very similar look to a Nakayama kiita, but with a more "sandy" look to it. The Takashima has a very homogenous structure with a very low content of unwanted particles leaving a very fine and exceptionally "clean" finish.

The Takashima Myokakudani

Closeup of the Takashima

The Takashima makes a very dense and creamy slurry

Closeup of the Takashima finish

I was very happy to see that everything was going the right way. The blade road on my yanagi slowly turned into that magically hazy finish. The edges on all my honyakis were pretty scary sharp allready, and I still had two more rocks to go.

Next in line was the legendary Hakka. A very rare stone hard to come by these days. Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones.com occasionally manages to source these beauties. I don't know how, and I really don't need to know as long as he keeps on scoring the good stuff and resell it at very reasonable prices.

The Hakka is a pleasure to use. It is fairly plain looking at first eyesight, but if you look closer you will notice beautiful renge or lotus scattered throughout the stone. The surface feels very smooth and even, almost like cool silk to the touch.

The Hakka quickly gives up a very dense and creamy slurry that "floats" the blade. After a while the slurry dries in to a fine clay that gives the legendary hazy, almost sandblasted finish.

Hakka stone, deceptively plain looking

Hakka closeup. Notice the red scattered renge

Hakka slurry is almost like fine clay

Hakka silky finish

Hakka finish

After finishing with the Hakka, I tried the Oohira from Maxim I mentioned earlier in this post to see if I could do even better. This Oohira is a very fine stone of very good quality and it has proven to be exceptional on both carbon steels as well as stainless steels. However, the Oohira had some renegade particles that left light but still visible scratches on the now very silky surface of my yanagiba. I thus had to refinish the bladeroad with the Hakka to regain the abolutely flawless finish.

So no matter how good this Oohira performs on other steels, It is not the perfect finisher for my honyaki yanagiba and did not make the dream team.

A very high quality Oohira from Maxim

Oohira finish on the Hakka finished bladeroad.
Note the very fine but visible scratches

To sum up this rather time consuming excersise, I have found my honyaki "dream team". The #1500 WA, the Aizu followed by the Aoto and the Takashima finally followed by the Hakka. I could probably do with either the Aizu or the Aoto, but they really filled in each other in a way that makes it hard for me to separate them from my setup. I did not find the need for the Nakayama Aka-pin this time although it could probably be used successfully at some point in the process. However the point was to find the smallest setup of man made and natural stones to finish a honyaki to perfection. The perfect range for a perfect finish. I believe the team picture below is my "dream team" for this specific task.

So, what about the edges? The sharpest I have experienced on any of my knives. Ever! Especially the Aoko #1's really got exceedingly sharp. My gyuto finally got that magical Shigefusa feeling to it, just sliding through everything I cut. The Shiroko #2 yanagi got that stickyness to the edge that shushi chefs speak so highly about. Sliding my nail along the edge very carefully makes the knife "stick" to it.

My personal honyaki dream team of Japanese waterstones

Hope you have enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed sharpening. Thank you for your interest.

DarKHoek

Sources to score the good stuff:

Hakka stone, Aizu stone, Oohira stone : Japanesenaturalstones.com

#1500 WA stone, Aoto stone, Shiro #2 honyaki yanagi: Iida tools Japan

Takashima stone: Aframes Tokyo

Aoko #1 honyaki knives: Japan woodworker

Nakayama Aka-pin stone: 330mate

Forcing a patina on the Shigefusa 240 kasumi Gyuto

2011-01-14T22:16:00.002+01:00

This little experiment is a result of the Great Gyuto Shoot-out, where the Shigefusa 240 kasumi gyuto proved to be very reactive to a lot of different foods, and pushing it down to a runner up position beat by the excellent Devin Thomas stainless gyuto.

Using the Shigefusa over time will slowly but sporadicly build a patina on the blade. The result, however, is a long period with a partly reactive, seriously spotted and not very elegant knife. The solution is obvious. To force a patina under controlled circumstances, evenly building a patina on the entire blade layer after layer. Again, Mr. Øyvind Dahle put his precious knives at stake for me to play around with. Thanks, man!

Setup: Knives, mustard, vinegar, lemon, cotton cloth and finger stones

For this test I had access to a second Shigefusa. A nice Kuro uchi nakiri, probably with the same core and cladding as the gyuto. As the exposed area of reactive metal is a lot smaller on the Nakiri than the Gyuto, this would be the perfect place to test out the acidy mix before going all in. Before starting I used some fine stone slurry on a cotton swab to polish of any old spots and removing all traces of fat and dirt from the blade.

Building a Nakayama Aka-pin slurry

Priming the polishing cloth with slurry

Removing stains and fat from blade

I used a 50/50 mix of Dijon mustard and white 7 % cooking vinegar and added a small squeeze of fresh lemon juice. This gave me a very nice "paint" easily put on with a silicon brush. Any brush can be used, but a silicone brush will be reusable after a good wash.

After cleaning up the blades, I took them to my water tap and using the warmes water available I heated the blades. This heating will make the acidy liquid evaporate quicker, and by doing that making the surface of the steel react more quickly with the oxygen making a patina form on the steel more evenly.

Heating the blade under running water to acellerate evaporation and oxidation (patina) on the blade

Thick layer: Slower method, but it works fine

Shigefusas curing, slowly building a patina. For the patient souls.

I tried two different ways to apply the solution. One was to brush it on with the silicone brush as shown above. The other was to apply some of the solution on a cotton cheese cloth and wrap it up so that only the thin liquid was filtered through the cloth and applied to the blade as shown below. This last method proved a lot more efficient as the liquid was applied thinner, cooling the warm blade slower thus making it evaporate a lot quicker on the preheated blade and building a thicker patina.

Adding a thin layer on warm blade proved to be quicker and easier done

Priming a cotton cheese cloth

After experimenting a little back and forth between the two methods, about 20 heatings and acid applications in total, I cleaned the blades off for an inspection. At first it didn't look like it had built a patina at all. However when placing a new stainless blade on top, I could easily observe the very nice almost champagne coloured patina that had formed on the Shigefusa blade. The hagane had blued up as expected, but as I had expected this blueish colour on the entire blade I was a bit surprised.

Note difference in color between patina on the Shigefusa and the stainless steel

It was time to put things to the test. To see if the patina was resilient enough for normal use or if it would wear of at the first contact with real food. It was time to get Shiggy with it :o)

First up were a couple of ripe tomatoes. Usually this would stain the knife significantly, but the nice patina stayed nice with no new stains or ugly smell developing. Then a spiced raw chicken breast. Still nothing. Then I sliced the cooked chicken while quite hot. Still no reaction. The patina looked stable. After cleaning the knife off after slicing the hot chicken, the parts of the blade that had touched the warm protein had blued up a bit like the hagane had done in the first place. However the patina held up nicely and the blade did not react negatively to the protein. Very good!

After this rather uplifting experience I decided to put the patina to the ultimate test. The most reactive food from the shoot-out, the dreadful cabbage! I used the Shigefusa to finely slice the cabbage into angel hair slices closely observing the blade, but nothing happened. Nothing! I got braver. I buried the blade in the freshly cut cabbage strands, really packing it around the blade and let it sit there for 10 minutes.

Shigefusa in cabbage hell

Coming out of it with bells and whistles. I believe we have a winner!

Before this process the result would have been a partly black, partly rusty mess of a gyuto, but after pulling the blade out of the cabbage heap from Shigefusa's personal hell, it showed no sign of reaction. The cabbage was fresh, the blade still looked good and no nasty smell was evident.

Most important of all. In my opinion, the Shigefusa gyuto is still the best performing gyuto around by a good margin. With the nice patina forced on the blade, bringing the heavy reactivity to food under control, you no longer have a good reason not to want one. This is an absolute marvel of a knife, and I want one my self. Badly! Case closed!

The great Gyuto Shoot out!

2011-01-11T01:23:00.002+01:00

After two full days of slaughtering produce, here are the final result of the grand gyuto shoot out. My good friend and fellow knife nut, Øyvind Dahle, kindly put up his collection of custom gyutos to the test. I brought only my trusty Takagi, but as you all know by now, I am more of a yanagi guy.

As mentioned the test was conducted over two days. We had one day of testing out the knives, collecting first impressions and testing and selecting stones for the final sharpening, and one day really sharpening up the contestants and comparing them in a more detailed cutting test setup. We also did some test sharpening on a lot of different stones to pick a sharpening setup for day two that would give the knives as similar and as sharp edges as possible for the different steels. Here are som pictures from day one, cutting cabbage and prequalifying stones for day two and serious sharpening.

Trying out the Oohira shiro suita

Oohira asagi ready to go

Devin Thomas 240 vs cabbage

Hiromoto 240 vs cabbage

Shigefusa 270 vs cabbage

After a wonderful cutting frency with some of the absolutely most beautiful and high end gyutos available, it was time for some serious testing. and comparison. Even on day two I was just cutting produce, as produce comes in a wide variety of size, structure and toughness. I went to my grocery man and picked out some large carrots, large hard potatoes, ripe tomatoes, some red chillies, a couple of large onions and a big chunk of fresh ginger. Ginger has a very fibrous core and will really put the edges to the test. I saved that for the finals. I also had some cabbage left from yesterdays cutting frenzy with Øyvind. Here you can see the choice of produce I used for this test. Also a closeup of the brave contestants.

From the right you have the Shigefusa 255mm (actually it's more like 270, so I called it 270!) with a beautiful custom handle by Marko Designs. Number two from the right is the Hiromoto 240mm with a very nice custom handle by Dave Martell. In the middle we have the grand Devin Thomas 270mm forum prototype with a custom handle by unknown maker (Devin?). Then the beautiful Devin Thomas 240mm again with a stunning custom handle from Marko Designs. And finally to the very left, my trusty Takagi 210 with a custom handle by me. Except for my own Takagi that I have built a very solid patina on, they were all nice and shiny. Getting to know them only yesterday, I couldn't wait to put them all to the test.

As I mentioned, the first thing I did was to sharpen all knives using the stones we had matched with the steels the day before. All knives were fairly sharp, but all had some potential, and in addition I wanted them all to have similar edge geometry to be able to compare them with one less unknown factor.

The stones that were chosen were my very good, efficient and even grit Oohira asagi as pre-finisher for all knives. Then three different finishers for different steels. A Nakayama karasu for AS and SS, a Nakayama nashiji kiita for the Shigefusa Sweeden steel alloy and finally the Oohira shiro suita for my Takagi Aoko #1 honyaki. Just for the fun of it I tested all knives with all finishers. If a finishing stone was a total mismatch with a knife, I went back to prefinish on the Oohira asagi before I took the knife back to the finisher particularly chosen for the knife, to regain the best possible edge for each knife.

From top: Nakayama nashiji kiita, Oohira shiro suita, Nakayama karasu, Oohira asagi

I made a judgement on sharpening feel and the edge on each knife off each stone and gave each knife/stone combo a "Match point" describing how good the match was and put it all in to a table. A score of 1 equals no match between stone and steel while 5 equals a close to perfect match. The results may be interesting when choosing your stones for a given steel, but I make no guarantees as results will vary. You will still have to experiment, but maybe you can narrow down your selection a bit.

After finishing all knives as sharp and as close to each other as possible, I went on doing the veggie cutting tests. Here are some pictures from the testing.

Shigefusa potato slice :o)

Shigefusa reacting to cabbage

For each knife and each type of vegetable I judged the percieved sharpness of the blade. That is the force I had to use to drive the knife through the vegetable. A score of 1 equals a lot of force needed while a score of 5 equals very little force needed (of course relative to the vegetable in question). The force needed wil depend on several things lik the geometry of the blade, the taper from the spine to the edge, the structure in the grind on the blade and so on. I also made a judgement of how well I could feel the structure of what I was cutting. If I could feel the layers of the onion or cabbage or the fibres in the ginger root. Finaly I looked at how the steel reacted to different foods and if the steel was discoloured and produced a smell that transferred to the food. A score of 1 equals not reactive and a score of 5 equals extremely reactive.

To sum this up I had several favourites during the test and a few disappointments. None of the knives were consistently best at everything, and most knives were fairly good at most tasks. However, the Shigefusa stood out clearly in the cutting department. There was something about how the Shigefusa just slid through the food totally effortless that was very close to magic. It felt like cutting soft butter with a warm knife. So as far as pure feeling of cutting goes I would have to declare the Shigefusa as the winner with the Devin Thomas 240 as a close runner up.

The knives resting out with the final results

One HUGE drawback I experienced with the Shigefusa was that it is exceptionally reactive to several kinds of vegetables, particularly the cabbage and onions in my selection. This reactivity resulted in discoloured food and steel and an ugly sulfur like smell from the blade. I really don't understand Tokifusa Iisuka's choice of cladding steel for this knife, as the core steel is like something out of this world.

Taking the heavy reactivity to food in to account, the gold medal will have to be passed over to the Devin Thomas 240. An exceptional knife in every way. Well balanced and beautifully made and a wonderful all round performer. I particularly liked that it gave a very distinct feel of the structure of the food I was cutting. I could almost feel the freshness of the tomatoes through the knife. The Devin Thomas knives are relatively easy to sharpen but quite sensitive to the choice of finishing stone. Both DT knives were a disaster on my Oohiro shiro suita, but matched very well with the softer Nakayamas and took a very keen edge.

The Hiromoto was a good overall performer that did absolutely nothing wrong and that will satisfy a lot of users. It is very comfortable to use and very well balanced. It was easy to sharpen and to get sharp. To my satisfaction, my trusty old Takagi held its ground against these race horses as far as sharpness and cutting goes, but I sadly came to the conclusion that it is actually way to light for my preferences, and I will probably in the market for a somewhat heavier knife pretty soon. I really liked both Devin Thomas knives, and the Hiromoto was also a very enjoyable aquaintance. The Shigefusa, no matter how magic and beautiful, had this issue that was very hard to ignore.

I had a lot of fun doing this test. Thanks again to Øyvind who trusted me with his precious knives.

Next blog post will be "How to force a patina on Shigefusa kasumi gyuto" ;o)

daRKHoeK

Takashima Myokakudani 2107520mm #4-6000?

2010-12-28T00:26:00.010+01:00

I got this stone a short while ago, but it has been just sitting there while I have been too busy finishing other projects. Finally, I got the time to give it a go. The stone looks like compacted very fine sand. A greenish golden sandy colour (kiita) with small spots and su holes. The stone has a very nice chiseled back side and showing a very nice dark rusty brown skin. The surface is absolutely clean with no cracks or lines or inclusions of any kind. It is a truly beautiful stone.

The Takashima stones come from the Shiga prefecture in Japan. The Takashima mine is still open, but due to mining restrictions it is not actively mined. This means that even if the mine and stones still exist, only old stock stones are sold. They are still available in the market, but you will have to be prepared to fork up $200-300 for a nice piece.

The chiseling shows that this is probably a fairly soft stone, which would suggest it is not one of the finest grit stones. Still, looking at the below pictures it looks very uniform and even throughout the stone, and I was very excited about putting it to the test. The softer Takashima is said to be excellent with Honyaki, so I picked that out for the test as well in addition to my trusty Kasahara Honkasumi Usuba.

The pictures below show the black metal filings after 10 strokes with the Usuba kasumi. As you can see it is not the most agressive stone, but this is actually the whole point about this stone. Slow grinding, controlled and very even, making a perfect pre-polish grind with very homogenous, dense and shallow grind marks. And it is so easy to use that even the novice sharpener can get a pretty good result.

The next picture shows the dense creamy slurry after about 50 passes with the Usuba. As you can see the slurry is only lightly coloured by the black metal which means the stone gives up a lot of material making up the creamy slurry. This again makes for a very delicate feel when sharpening. The stone was really thirsty, so I had to spray it quite often with water. After working the stone for a while it seemed to saturate with water, easing up the sharpening process a lot. I believe a 10 minute soaking will do the trick.

Looking at the result, you can see that the Takashima leaves a very even and dense scratch pattern. This is the perfect starting point for the finishing stones. I felt that after a 150-200 strokes on the Takashima after the Aoto, the edge got a lot more refined after finishing on the Oohira Asagi or even the Oohira Shiro Suita than when finishing directly from the Aoto.

You can also see the beautiful dense scratch pattern thie Takashima leaves on the blade road of my Shiroko Honyaki yanagiba. I experienced the same thing with Honyakt that I did with the Honkasumi. The edge got very refined from the Takashima making it a breeze to finish it on my Nakayama.

This stone is a typical team player. It is not coarse nor agressive enough to be your only medium sharpener or fine enough to be your final finisher. What the Takashima Myokakudani does is to refine the surfaces and the edge from your medium sharpener and priming the edge for the final finishing stone. This task it does to perfection. After using the Takashima I could get especially the Honyaki exceptionally sharp and refined. It really stuck to my nail.

The stone does pretty much the same work as the Oohira Asagi as a pre finisher, but due to its softer feel, it is a lot easier to use and gives the unexperienced knife sharpener a better feeling of what the stone actually does to the steel.

I can recommend this stone to the novice sharpener as well as anyone serious about sharpening Honyaki or even high quality kasumi knives. The work it does to prepare the surfaces to the final finisher saves you a lot of time and finishing stone, and to my experience actually gives you an even better final result.

FOR SALE - Oohira renge / lotus suita 2057540mm #20-30000 - from Iida Tools in Japan!

2010-12-27T14:21:00.008+01:00

I have been looking for a good quality Oohira renge suita for quite some time now. These stones are really hard to come by in good size and of good quality. Suddenly my main contact in Japan for high grade stones and knives, Mr. Tomohito Iida at Iida Tools informs me that he has three excellent Oohira renge suita in stock for sale.

The cost of the stones are 37,350 Yen per piece plus shipping from JP about 2,500 Yen. If you'd like to own one of these beauties, and you should!, please contact Mr. Tomohito Iida at info@japantool-iida.com. His level of service is unsurpassed and he communicates very well in English.

It's just my luck that these three beauties are available just after Christmas when my credit cards are all screaming for mercy. However, this might be somebody elses very lucky day. Not beeing able to get one of these beauties just really breaks my heart :o/

They are all about the same size 205*75*40mm give or take a few mm and they are all beautifully full of renge throughout the stone. Usually this kind of suita tends to be pretty soft. These suita, however, are a little bit harder than the usual renge suita from the Oohira mine, making them excellent finishers for both knives, planes and chisels. I think they will even make excellent pre-polishers for most razors, but no guarantees here as I have no experience on razors (yet).

All stones coming from the shelves of Iida Tools are thoroughly tested for quality. He has informed me that none of the lines in the stones affect sharpening and that the stones leave a very fine mist and haze typical of top quality suita stones. I have bought my large Aoto and my Oohira Asagi stone from him, and they both perform exceptionally well.

If you are in the market for an Oohira suita, these are some of the very best avilable in the open market today and at a very reasonable price. Combined with the service level of Mr. Iida, you just can't go wrong.

Some of my earlier knife builds - Hunting & exhibition knives

2010-12-09T21:00:00.005+01:00

In this post I would like to do a short presentation of some of my previous knife projects. I have been building knives for many years, and my interest for cooking knives is actually quite new. Most of these older knives or at least the handle materials have interesting stories, as many of them were built for special occasions. As my kitchen knife and natural stone addiction keeps getting worse, I am considering to sell off some of my knives. If you are interested, please let me know. I will also be interested in trades for a high grade yanagiba or a sakimaru takobiki. Maybe also a Japanese natural stone of the right kind, size and quality. I have put a suggested price in brackets for reference.

In this first post I would like to present to you four knives. A couple of them are real exotic and I have done my very best to preserve the handles as close to their natural origin as possible. Most of the blades I use I get from a famous Danish blacksmith living in Norway called Steen Nielsen. You can see some of his work and buy his blades at http://www.smie.no/ . He uses mainly powder steel or SKD die steel in the edge and hardens them to around 58-60 HRC. This makes them easy to sharpen and use, and they hold an edge very well for normal use. For soft steel he uses old ships anchors, anchor chains, old iron nails and other old materials. Especially the blades made from old anchors are really beautiful. Almost old etched Damascus like.

Looking at the below picture from the left is a knife with a nashiji finished laminated san-mai blade with a handle made from a fang from an African wild Boar. Second from left you can see a knife with a nashiji finished laminated san-mai blade with handle made from one entire very old tooth from a whale. Then a knife with a san-mai laminated blade made from an old ships anchor with whale tooth bolsters. Finally to the far right a plain laminated san-mai blade with a Water Buffalo horn handle and whale tooth bolsters.

The whale teeth I am using are vintage material found in the attic in my grand-grandparents house and I figured that I might as well make something beautiful and useful out of them instead of letting them go to waste.

I start the show from the left. The story behind this knife started almost ten years ago when I was in the middle of another project. My neighbour came over to my work shop to watch my work, when he suddenly asked if I did custom orders. I said it depended on what he had in mind, as my skills have obvious limitations. He ran off and returned with a small box containing two ugly looking monster fangs from an African Wild Boar. He had gotten these teeth from his father more than 30 years ago when they had been together on a hunting safari in Africa.

During the hunting he had accidentally just wounded the Boar and it had disappeared from sight. They went back to their car to wait it out, and just when they had closed the door they heard an incredible crash. The Boar had attacked them and hit the car door full force. Looking out the window they discovered the Boar lying apparently lifeless just outside the car. His father had given it the final shot out of the car window. So, now, more than 30 years later his father soon would turn 75 and he wanted to give him a memory from that trip long ago. So, he asked me to build him a knife using the best of the two teeth as handle material. He asked me what my fee was, and I made him an offer that I would build him the knife for free in exchange for the other tooth. He accepted, so I built two almost identical knives and let him choose the one for his father. The other one you see here. There are some natural thin cracks along the tooth, but they have not expanded for the many years I have had the knife on display, so they all seem stable. I have not yet made a sheath for it, but one will be custom made from raw hide if you are interested in buying or trading. ($800 incl. sheath)

The next knife out is the whale tooth knife. I have made a sheath for it from raw hide and shaped it like a whale. As I mentioned earlier I found a couple of these large wonderful teeth in an old sailors pouch in the attic of my grand-grandparents house. I was told that the teeth were once taken from a huge whale that had drifted ashore and stranded in Northern Norway. It took a lot of work to carefully sand and polish away the outer layer revealing the almost ivory like bone structure underneath and drilling it by hand to avoid any heat that would crack the tooth from inside.

The laminated san-mai blade is custom made by blacksmith Steen Nielsen to match the shape of the tooth, continuing the lines from the tip of the handle all the way to the tip of the blade. It has a nashiji finish which is polished to a nice shine. I am very pleased with his excellent work and I think it looks just the right size and the shape for the tooth. The nashiji surface is a nice contrast to the shiny and polished handle.

The knife is quite heavy due to the massive bone handle, but it feels surprisingly well balanced in the hand making it a pleasure to use. This is a true one of a kind knife. I have never seen anything like it. The old whale tooth is totally without cracks and blemishes and looks absolutely incredible. If you are interested in this knife, please let me know. ($1000 incl. sheath)

The blade on the next knife is a real beauty. Made from an old anchor san-mai style and etched to reveal the wood or Damascus like structure. The handle is made from very nice Rosewood and pieces from a small tooth from the above mentioned whale. I have custom made the sheath from raw hide and shaped an anchor in the leather to complement the anchor steel in the blade.

The blade is a very limited series of blades from Steen Nielsen, as he is almost all out of this beautifully structured anchor material. I am open for offers or nice trades for this knife as well. ($750 incl. sheath)

The last knife I will show off in this post is a more main stream knife. Made from a plain san-mai laminated blade, sanded and polished. The handle is made from one large slab of Water Buffalo horn and with whale tooth bolsters. The shape of the handle fits very nicely in the hand and the balance is really nice. The Water Buffalo handle is not high polished, rather to a more matte finish which doesn't get too slippery. If you are interested in the knife, I will be happy to give the handle a high shine and custom make a raw hide sheath for it. ($600 incl. sheath)

Well, that was some of my previous projects. More to come on this issue. And please do send me a note if you are interested in buying or trading.

Yanagiba shoot out and a good meal

2010-12-05T22:46:00.003+01:00

I frequently get the question about which of my yanagiba knives I prefer. I do have a special place in my heart for the Shigefusa. It is a true piece of functional art and a good example of the Japanese never ending quest for perfection. After some more thinking, however, I realized that the question was not as trivial as one could expect. Normally you quite easily find your favourite, and it is often relatively easily explained why exactly that knife ended up as the number one, closest to the hart, go-to knife. That was actually not my case.

Exept maybe for my very first yanagi, the simple mass made Masahiro, all of my yanagis are pieces of art made by masters of their craft. Well, actually the blacksmith of my 40++ year old yanagi refurbishment project is not yet known to me, but from the quality of the steel and the lamination, I can without hesitation place my refurb knife up there with the best; the Shigefusa, the Keijiro Doi Hayate, and the Kasahara honyaki. Thus I have a luxury problem comparing my knives. After a bit of thinking I decided to pick the two most different yanagis in my collection. The very well known and appreciated yanagiba from the hands of Tokifusa Iisuka, the Shigefusa, and the unknown yanagi bought for my latest refurb project.

The Shigefusa is a 270mm blade with an edge of a special proprietary alloy of Sweden steel. The refurbished yanagi is a 300mm blade with an edge said to be tamahagane, but more likely a special quality blue steel (Aoko). Both knives have new handles custom made by me.

The Shigefusa is significantly thinned from just in front of the handle and all the way to the tip, making it "loose a lot of weight", and moving the balance point close to the handle. The refurb is classic, full thickness all the way, making the point of balance well in front of the handle.

So, we are looking at two very different knives specifically made for one and the same thing. Slice fresh fish to perfecion.

Before starting to use them, I was pretty confident with which knife I was going to prefer at the end. The Shigefusa felt a lot more balanced and more like a natural extention of my hand than the nose heavy refurb. The pictures below show the difference in balance point and shaping of the blade. In the right picture the Shigefusa on top, in the left picture the Shigefusa closest to the edge of the bench.

So, choosing by balance and feel in the hand, I would prefer the Shigefusa. The Shigefusa is also, to be honest, the prettier one of the two. The custom made handle made from dessert ironwood, silver and water buffalo is really striking and the soft steel showing a lot of structure, almost like damascus gives this knife a very special feel and look.

To do the mini test of these two magnificent knives, I had planned for some simple sushi I bought some really nice salmon back loin and a piece of really fresh halibut fillet from my local fish monger. The fat salmon is like slicing butter but the halibut has some structure to it, really putting the knives to the test. I had tested the Shigefusa on a couple of earlier occasions, so I was really exited about comparing it to my refurbishment project knife for the first time.

As I always do, I got my "mis en place" set up, as this seems to drastically reduce the chance of failure in the kitchen and gives your mind a good starting point for the mental process of creating good food. If you don't do this on a regular basis I can definately recommend it. Get everything that you will be using out in the open to check that it is there, that you have sufficient amounts of it, and that all fresh food is still fresh and will not be crawling of your workbench when you have placed it there.

A simple mis en place might look like this. Simplicity is a virtue :o) The large wooden tray is called a hangiri. It is made of Japanese cedar wood and smells absolutely fantastic! It is used to cool down the rice after cooking and to absorb excess moisture from the rice. I really had no idea that a simple utensil like this could make such a difference until I tried it. For the first time, I got perfect rice that stayed perfect for a long time.

Starting to slice, I was quite surpriced by how different the two yanagis worked for me. The refurb had the weight to slice even the halibut just by placing the heel of the blade on the fish and slowly pulling it towards me totally without downward pressure, while the Shigefusa had to be helped a little bit due to its lighter weight and its balance point being closer to the handle. On the other hand the Sigefusa seemed to put less stress on the delicate fish due to its thinner blade, leaving an even more "shiny" and refined cutting surface on the sashimi.

However, both knives excelled in what they were meant to do, and I could probably be for ever happy with either one of them. Both knives presented beautiful homogenous slices with an almost oily look to the sliced surfaces. A good sign of a very sharp blade making very little cell damage while slicing the fish.

Here are some pictures from the process making the rice-out maki rolls. Salmon, avocado and cucumber makes a delicious blend. Velvety and crunchy at the same time. When cutting the maki into chunks, the Shigefusa was definately the better choice with its very thin and more delicate blade. Using the very thin tip, the Shigefusa made very clean slices through all parts of the maki, leaving very delicate slices.

After a lot of slicing with the two knives I finally ended up with a decent selection of nigri sushi and maki rolls.

Looking closely at the finished product, I obviously still have a long way to go, but small signs of improvement from one time to the next motivates me to go on and to try to get better. At least the result tastes wonderful, so it is not wasted. The knives, however, have not much potential for improvement, being made by artists already experts in their craft. Keep'em sharp and they will serve you well and keep on doing what they do best. Every time.

How much I just have to admit that I love the look and feel of the Shigeusa, the refurbished yanagba with its heavier blade just felt more "right" to me when slicing. The exeption being when slicing the maki where the Shigefusa was better. That said, my opinion in this matter is obviously a very personal and subjective thing, and there are a lot of people that will tell you the opposite. My opinion is also just based on the feeling I got using the two knives, again coloured by my personal preferences. If I really had to sell one of them, it would probably be the refurb. No man should be without a Shigfusa yanagi!

The bottom line is that when choosing a knife this special you will have to experience it before buying. Anything else will be a game of chance. If you like the lighter knives, you will love the Shigefusa, especially the 270mm or shorter. If you like the heavier kind, go for a standard yanagi 270mm or longer. Korin.com have some really nice ones. Hocho.dk as well. If you like the heavy weighter of the yanagi, you will probably be very happy with the Ikkanshi Tadatsuna 300mm or longer. You can probably get a nice Tadatsuna on aframestokyo.com.

Please share your own views and favourite yanagis in the comment field.

Twice as nice - Yamashiro karasu 180x65x18mm #6-8000 + #15-20000

2010-11-30T01:29:00.006+01:00

This is another stone I bought at a dutch auction from 330mate.com. When I got the stone I was amazed over the clean board and very nice colors. It was basically a kiita coloured stone with pink and green shades, but more visible was the very nice karasu breaking through. My first sharpening session, however, was a mixed experience.

The response from the stone was beautiful. Very efficient as the karasu in the stone pulled metal filings from the first pass and in addition it did not take more than 25-30 passes before I had built a nice thick creamy slurry. The down side being that the underside of the stone was not level, making the stone rock around.

I took the stone to my workshop to try to chisel of the unevenness by removing the rest of a layer that was about to part from the stone anyways. After this large flat chip was removed, I discovered a beautiful, dense and dark silvery grey karasu board underneith. I threw all sensibility overboard and with my coarse diamond plate, I ground away the rest of the very nice skin on the underside of the stone revealing a full board of dense, uniform karasu. I was just staring in awe for a moment at that absolutely beautiful karasu appearing from under the skin.

As the karasu was so dense and dark, I expected it to be quite scratchy and coarse, so I took one of my lesser knives to test it out. I did not at all expect what happened next. The darker side was significantly coarser than the top "kiita" side of the stone, as I suspected, but it was not at all scratchy. Not one bit! It felt a little bit like a very nice and uniform Asagi only even more aggressive. In the back of my head I could almost hear Darth Vader thunder "Come over to the dark side, Darkhoek. Feel the force!" :o)

As you can see from the pictures, there are some white lines on the dark side. These lines are softer than the rest, probably contributing positively to the very nice slurry building on the dark side as well. The lighter shades mixed in with the carasu I suspected to be trases of skin or rust at first, but it is actually the kiita side breaking through to the dark side, helping to refine the slurry and making this stone a perfect blend.

The dark side pulls metal from the first pass with just water on the board. No wonder, considering the density of the mica making out the karasu. However, the stone gives up a very nice, dense slurry after only a few passes, making it very enjoyable and delicate to use, and as I mentioned earlier, totally free from renegade scratchy particles. After some work, the particles seem to break down to a very fine grit, making the slurry almost as fine as the slurry of the top side.

Judging from the scratch pattern I would grade the dark side of the stone very close to my Ozuku Asagi at #6-8000 grit, and as you can see the scratch pattern is very uniform and fine with few visible lines. This patteren is achieved using the slurry, which shows a pattern a lot finer than the #6-8000 and closer to the top side comparing the scratch patterns from both sides of the stone. Sample is 20mm across.

The lighter side is more of a finisher. It is exeptionally uniform and clean, and the karasu makes for a very efficient stone. The light side also gives up a dense creamy slurry quite quickly, even more slick and delicate than the dark side.

Scratch pattern shows a very uniform and fine grit perfect for most kitchen knives exept the most demanding sashimi slicers, which requires my finest Ohira suita or Nakayama. You can see the difference mainly in the lamination line between the Ji and Ha, where the top side shows almost no scratch marks at all. Apart from that the two sides are a lot alike using the slurry effectively. Sample is 20mm across.

The reflection pattern shows an apparently highly polished edge with a clear contrast between Ji and Ha. This polished look is actually due to the very fine scratch pattern from the natural stone. Looking at the picture above the surface is actually matte to the look. This highly complex scratch pattern I believe is one of the main factors to get the edge really sharp and more wear resistant than an edge polished to a full mirror finish by fine synthetic abrasives. You can find some very good reading about this theory here http://thejapanblade.com/sharpvsshiny.htm

Seen from the side, the stone shows a very even transition from the light board on top to the full dense karasu side on the bottom. This will probably result in the top side gradually showing more karasu over time and the dark side to gradually lighten up until there is no more stone left. As I intend to use this stone carefully and wisely, I am sure it will give me many years of enjoyment.

Summing up, I can't really believe my luck with this stone. It is really two very good stones in one, and a perfect stone to carry for travel, as it can erase micro chips easily with the dark side, and refine the edge to a razor sharp using the light side. I have not really seen anything like this stone before, and I could only whish it was full size, but then I could probably never afford it. Darth Vaders words to his son Luke have never been more true: "The force of the Dark side is strong, Luke!"

Aizu vs Aoto - Medium finishing stones #1500-5000

2010-11-25T18:30:00.014+01:00

In this post I will try to make a comparison between two of my main medium sharpening stones. I have chosen to do them together as they actually are more similar than different, even if this is not immediately apparent. One is the very well known Aoto, which I got from Tomohito Iida at Iida Tools, and the other is the less known Aizu, which was brought to my attention and delivered by Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones. Both are very substantial stones; the Aoto measuring 240x95x95mm and weighing in at almost 9 pounds and the Aizu measuring 210x80x67 weighing in at about 5,5 pounds.

Both stones are also quite rare, but for different reasons. The Aizu because the mining ceased in the 1950's and have not been mined since, the Aoto because of the massive size and the exeptional quality and grinding force which is very rare to find in an Aoto these days. Especially outside of Japan. To put it simple, this should be very close to "as good as it gets" regarding medium grit Japanese natural sharpening stones.

Looking at them side by side, they could not really be much more different from each other. The Aoto is a dark blueish to charcoal grey with what looks like olive green sesame seeds embedded in the grey. The Aizu is a solid chalky white with almost translucent olive green lotus or renge embedded in the white base. The Aoto has a beautiful skin on both sides while the Aizu is sawn with a large, coarse circular saw leaving a beautiful almost sculptural surface on five sides. I think they are both really visually stunning in their own way.

In the left picture below you can see the white board with translucent olive green renge spots of the Aizu stone and on the right, the dark grey board also with olive green spots on the Aoto. Actually I was a little bit surprised to find the spots with almost exactly the same color in these two stones. I am not sure that the olive spots are the same material in both stones, though...

Except for the obvious differences in appearance between these two stones, the biggest difference is noted immediately when starting to sharpen on them. Initially, starting out with a clean wet surface, the two stones feel very similar in grit size. A bit like a #1200-1500 man-made stone. However, I could almost immediately feel that the Aizu was a harder stone than the Aoto, requiring a lot more work to build a slurry. Both of the below pictures show the slurry produced after about 50 passes on each stone. The Aizu to the left, still with the surface of the stone as the main grinding factor, and the Aoto to the right, already with a dense slurry smoothing the feel of the stone.

This difference makes the Aizu a more aggressive stone by working the stone surface for a longer period of time before the slurry develops to a buffer or lubricant for the sharpening process. A very good thing about the Aizu being significantly harder is that I feel a lot more confident when sharpening chisels or kanna blades with very narrow blade roads, which can easily dig in to the softer surface of the Aoto. The Aizu is a lot more resistant to this "digging" thus a lot more forgiving to my lack of experience in sharpening these kinds of blade. Aizu is therefore my preferred medium sharpening stone for blades with narrow and flat bladeroads like kanna blades and chisels. For knives, the Aoto gives me the better feel and a more velvety response during sharpening.

So, lets take a look at the final results. After about 100 passes on each stone, both stones had built a slurry dense enough to effectively buffer the stone surface from the steel. I did about 50 more passes with full slurry before comparing the results. Samples below are 20mm across. You can see the scratch pattern of the Aizu to the left is a little bit more pronounced showing a few more clearly visible scratches than the sample from the Aoto to the right. The explanation for this might be that even after the slurry was fully developed the Aizu felt a little more "grindy" compared to the very creamy Aoto. Probably because the Aoto particles break down even more than the Aizu particles. The scratch pattern from both stones was just about equally easily erased by the Oohira Asagi reviewed in one of my previous posts. These stones can actually be used as finishers for most stainless and daily use knives. An edge off either of these stones will easily beat the main stream factory edge and making the edge a lot more wear resistant.

It is very hard, if not impossible, to decide a winner between these two magnificent stones. Both stones have unique qualities making them highly useful and desirable. The hardness of the Aizu is great with kanna blades and chisels and the softness of the Aoto is great with most knives. The difference in grit size and sharpening result is marginal between the two, the main difference being the difference in hardness of the surface.

If you only sharpen kasumi or stainless knives, I would probably go for the Aoto. If you sharpen both knives and chisels or kanna equally often, you will need both. If I have to choose, I would probably go for the harder Aizu, due to my lacking sharpening skills on kanna blades and chisels. If you only sharpen kanna or chisels I would be very happy to live with just the Aizu. Fortunately I am the very happy owner of both.

Maxim at Japanesenaturalstones tells me that the Aizu also is a lot more effective than the Aoto on Honyaki blades. Truth said, I am actually quite happy with my Aoto's effect on my Honyaki knives, and so far I have not had the time to test the Aizu with my Honyaki. However, I have no reason at all to question Maxim's experience on this. He is a trained professional with significant skills and knowledge on japanese natural stones and the application of them on different kinds of steel. If you are interested in further reading on the Aizu, Maxim also has a very good description on his web page (se link on the left menu).

Nakayama? 200x90x30mm #10-40000???

2010-11-21T23:16:00.006+01:00

This stone is a true mystery to me. Everything I thought I knew about judging the quality of a natural stone came short here. It is large, brute and ugly with a lot of cracks and lines. It is very oddly shaped in a near perfect parallellogram, askew the wrong way to my sharpening angle. Still I love this stone to bits, but why?!

I bought this stone in a batch of very low priced stones from 330mate.com. I paid about a $100 for 6 very different coppa stones planning to use them for Nagura or Uchigumori stones. When I opened the wrapping on this stone I was at first surprised by its large size, but after a small inspection I understood why it was priced so low. The board was full of small hard inclusions, cracks with skin inside which would really mess up my blades, and absolutely packed with lines over the whole board. It looked like crap!

I was about to throw it in the bin at once because I did not believe this could be used for anything or be saved by lapping the surface down. However, before throwing it away, I wanted to feel the grit of the stone and the hardness of the inclusions to see if it could be used as Nagura or maybe Uchigumori stones, so I started lapping it anyway. After just a few minutes grinding away with my #140 grit diamond plate under running water, something started to happen. Fast!

I obviously finished out a dirty layer of the stone. The deepest crack closed in and a lot of the small hard inclusions disappeared with it. I kept on lapping on a new layer. More lines disappeared and the color of the stone changed significantly showing a very strange mixture of colors in one single stone. One side looking and feeling like the red shallow stratum Aka-pin, the centre looking and feeling like a fine Asagi and the other side looking and feeling like a medium hard honsuita. I have never seen anything like it. Three very characteristic stratum in one single stone? There are still some lines and cracks left, but a close inspection and test have shown that they will not scratch.

The typical orange skin often seen on Nakayama stones. Not very pretty, though.

The stone is a multitude of grits and hardnesses. However, it seems like a fairly soft stone overall but with an amazingly fine grit compared to the average hardness. The picture below shows a dense creamy slurry forming after just 30 passes on the stone. The feeling is very delicate, totally without scratcy particles in the slurry. I can hardly believe this stone.

This close up shows an amazingly fine scratch pattern with an almost pefect mist and haze on both Ji and Ha. The slurry of this stone must break down to an extremely fine grit. Compared to my other fine stones I would suggest this to be in the #40000 range, but that's the slurry talking.

Another exeptional feature of this stone is the contrast it makes between Ji and Ha. I have never seen a better contrast from a natural stone. A highly polished edge in contrast to an almost non-reflective blade road. It is really amazing!

The reflective test shows to what high degree this stone polishes. This polished look is actually due to a very fine scratch pattern from the natural stone. Looking at the close up picture above, the surface is actually matte or hazy to the look. This highly complex scratch pattern I believe is one of the main factors to get the edge really sharp and more wear resistant than an edge polished to a full mirror finish by fine synthetic abrasives. You can find some quite interesting reading about this theory here:
http://thejapanblade.com/sharpvsshiny.htm

This stone is remarkable! This stone must be the bargain of the century. It is still brute and ugly, full of lines and cracks, but it is really an amazing stone that has thought me to think differently about the looks of a natural stone compared to its qualities.So, what have I learned from this stone? Not to judge by the looks, always give the stone no matter how ugly at least one chance to show itself and finally that treasures can be found in the scraps. Happy hunting!

Nakayama honsuita 180x65x35 (koppa) #30-40000

2010-11-21T19:51:00.002+01:00

This stone I bought from an auction at 330mate.com. I have gotten a lot of stones from them in wholesale batches at very low prices. Some stones have been really bad and some merely mediocre, but a few have become good and even excellent stones after a bit of work with my trusty #140 diamond plate grinding trough the dirty layers on the search for a clean board. A couple of the stones I have gotten from 330mate have been real bargains. Some of the better stones are sold at their Dutch auction, but you can take even more of the uncertainty out of the equation by requesting a specific stone from them, as I did with the 130x85x33mm Nakayama koppa, but then you will have to fork up a lot more money for their efforts selecting a good quality stone for you. That said, I kind of enjoy buying batches of low priced ugly looking stones from 330mate, searching for that one jewel to be found. It has happened to me a couple of times, and it is a very exciting feeling when it happens.

This stone was actually very good straight out of the box. Well lapped, clean board and ready to go. The board shows a lot of the same colors as the previously mentioned Nakayama, with green, yellow and pink shades entwining on the board almost like waves on this one. It is a little bit narrow but has good thickness and it looks fairly uniform through the stone making it last at least my lifetime and then some.

You can see a few lines and cracks on the board, but none of them affect sharpening. The grit from the red area seems to be a bit more agressive, and pulling slurry with a diamond nagura from that area greatly enhances the speed of the stone. A little turbo grit :o) Very practical. Every stone should have one.

The skin showing on the side needs to be ground down from the board as it is very hard.

The stone is very efficient even without using a nagura making slurry. In the below picture you can see a lot of metal filings floating in still clear water after just 10 (top) and 20 (bottom) passes over the stone. That is just amazing!

After 50 passes the stone has given up a light and extremely fine slurry making the sharpening more smooth and leaving a very fine scratch pattern and good polish.

As you can see from this close up, the scratch pattern from the stone is very fine and homogenous. However it makes only a slight contrast between the Ji and Ha. This shows that the stone polishes both Hagane and Jigane equally well.

From the reflection picture, you can easily see the exeptionally fine finish this stone puts on the knife. This polished look is actually due to a very fine and complex scratch pattern from the natural stone. Looking at the close up picture above, the surface is actually matte or hazy to the look. This highly complex scratch pattern I believe is one of the main factors to get the edge really sharp and more wear resistant than an edge polished to a full mirror finish by fine synthetic abrasives. You can find some very good reading about this theory here http://thejapanblade.com/sharpvsshiny.htm. I can easily shave with any high carbon steel edge coming off this stone.

This stone is one of the best bargains I have made from 330mate. A really amazing stone at a very, very reasonable price.

Nakayama Nashiji Kiita 130x85x33mm (coppa) #20-25000

2010-11-21T18:22:00.003+01:00

This coppa Nakayama I bought from Tomonori Nakaoka at 330mate by a direct request. I wanted to try a high quality Nakayama without having to sell my car. It was still quite expensive for a koppa, but the quality of this stone is excellent. It is not the most exeptional fine grit Nakayama, but it is very even grit with a totally clean and beautiful surface. If this stone had been a perfect rectagle 9" stone it would easily be a $1000++. That is the beauty of the koppa sized stones. You can score a very high quality grinding surface for a very resonable price.

The color of the stone ranges from a dull grey with orange brown nashiji spots through several shades of pink blue and orange to a deep greenish yellow. It is really an amazing palette this little rock shows up. To the right in the picture it even looks like a streak of Karasu appearing. That might be the reason this stone is so fast cutting and not as fine grit as I initially expected. The lines showing on the board are all solid and has no negative effect on sharpening.

Sharpening with this stone is fairly straight forward. It is hard but not exessively so, and as you can see from the below picture, it draws metal very quickly. The picture shows the black metal particles suspended in the still clear water after just 10 passes over the stone.

After about 50 more passes, the loose metal particles has drawn particles from the stone producing a dense and very fine slurry. The feeling of the grind with the slurry is very delicate and even. After another 50 passes the slurry had turned almost ink black (forgot to take picture).

The close-up of the Ji and Ha shows a scratch pattern that is coarser than what I was expecting from this stone, especially considering the delicate feeling and response from the stone during sharpening. I must say I was a bit surprised. It actually appears even coarser than the scratch pattern from the Ozuku Asagi. However the edge off this stone is significantly more refined and sharper than the edge off the Asagi, making this a very nice finisher for kitchen knives, probably in the #20-25000 range. The edges coming off this stone are also very wear resistant even with heavy use of the blade. Mirror finish sure can be pretty, but it rarely gives the best edges. You can find some very good reading about this theory here http://thejapanblade.com/sharpvsshiny.htm.

The slurry made with my diamond nagura is a yellowish beige drying up into a white to light yellow egg shell color.

Oohira Asagi 207x75x25mm #6-8000

2010-11-21T17:22:00.003+01:00

This is a stone I was recommended from Iida Tools as a pre polisher to use inbetween my Aoto or Aizu stone and my final polishers. The stone is very dense weighing in at 1.75kg or almost 4 lbs without the base, which is quite heavy for this size of stone. The stone is covered in a beautiful dark golden brown cashew laquer on 5 sides for protection. As with my other stones I have mounted it on a wooden base to make things easier and more efficient when I am sharpening. The base also stabilizes the stone on my work bench, making my sharpening a lot more consistent over time.

At first eyesight the Asagi looks a bit dull and gray in color, much like the close up picture below, but if you wet it down, a beautiful deep green and blue color with yellow tones appear. It's almost like looking down into a deep ocean on a sunny day. Fascinating!

The Oohira Asagi is a fairly hard stone, but pulls black metal particles very fast and gives up a very fine slurry after a short while, even without using a nagura. The picture below shows slurry after about 50 passes over the stone starting out with just water.

The grinding feel is really good with this stone. At the beginning and without slurry you can easily feel the grind of the stone but as soon as the slurry builds up the grinding is a pure pleasure. I have read descriptions by other Asagi owners on the web describing the feeling of a good Asagi almost buttery, and that is no exaggeration. The feeling is really smooth, almost like dragging the knife edge over oiled velvet.

When using a diamond nagura on a clean wet stone, a yellow/green slurry is produced. The slurry dries in to a light yellow/beige powder, which is a bit of a surprise considering the dark color of the stone itself.

So, what about the final result? As you can see from the pictures below, the scratch pattern on the blade road is very even, making a very nice contrast between Ji and Ha and producing a very nice mist and haze. It is obviously not a final finisher for the most demanding blades, but an edge off this stone is very wear resistant and has a very good "bite" to it making the knife very useful and efficient on most foods. A very good touch up stone i a demanding kitchen.

This sample is 20mm wide. It shows how nice this stone really is. The edge is very refined and for most of my kitchen knives this edge is actually more than good enough. This close-up also shows the excellent quality in the lamination between the two steels in my Usuba knife, also from Iida Tools.

Oohira Shiro Suita 210x80x20mm #40-42000

2010-11-18T00:20:00.007+01:00

This is the first post presenting each stone in my range of japanese sharpening stones. First rock out is also the first japanese natural sharpening stone I bought, and I got it from Takeshi Aoki at Aframestokyo.

According to Mr. Aoki it's a very old pre-owned suita stone from the Oohira mine. It has a mustard or Kiita colour on the surface, but from the side it looks like it is an egg shell white, showing some renge or lotus towards the bottom, so the yellow colour is probably just oxidation and it a most likely a Shiro Suita. That would explain the exeptional hardness and very fine grit of this beautiful stone.

As you will see, I have mounted all my stones ,exept from a couple of two sided ones, to wooden bases (made by quartersawn Sibirean Lodgepole Pine) of exactly the same length. This eases up the sharpening process as I don't have to adjust my sink bridge for every new stone. I adjust the sink bridge for the first stone and the standardized bases allows me to just slip in new stones in a second. This base mounting also brings the shorter coppa stones towards me as I mount all stones equally distanced from one end of the base, giving me a lot better control and consistency in the contact between stone and knife.

The stone is very aggressive and pulls black iron filings from the first stroke, even without using a nagura. In the first picture below you can see the metal filings suspended in still clear water after just 10 passes over the stone. After about 25 more passes a black slurry is produced. Quite impressive for a stone this fine.

As you can see the stone has the usual su holes making it a suita. However, the stone is very clean without inclusions or renegade particles and with very few lines which are not at all affecting sharpening. It feels like it virtually sucks especially white steel into the stone, making a perfect connection between steel and stone. The stone also performs exeptionally well on blue steel and AS.

The stone finishes a kasumi to a very nice mist and haze making beautiful contrast between Jigane and Hagane and giving the edge a high grade of polish. Grit size is according to Japanblade definitions probably in the #40-42000 grit range. In the 330mate world it would be HGAL=5++/3++++/3++++/3++++. You can see some light scratches, but that is probably residual from a coarser stone.

As you can see the Oohira finishes the edge to a very nice and even finish. Just the right amount of light mist. This semi polished look is actually due to a very fine and complex scratch pattern from the natural stone. Looking at the close up picture above, the surface is actually matte or hazy to the look. This highly complex scratch pattern I believe is one of the main factors to get the edge really sharp and more wear resistant than an edge polished to a full mirror finish by fine synthetic abrasives. You can find some very good reading about this theory here http://thejapanblade.com/sharpvsshiny.htm. The edge off this stone gets the characteristic "stick" to it making it just slide effortlessly through sashimi or tomatoes rater than cutting them. It is absolutely amazing.

When using a diamond nagura pulling up a slurry and just letting it dry up, the colour of the powder is white, almost like potato flour. Another sign of a Shiro suita.

It goes without saying that this is one of my most treasured stones. It has become the reference I compare other finishing stones to.

My current collection of yanagiba knives

2010-11-16T21:30:00.005+01:00

As I have mentioned earlier, out of all the Japanese knives the yanagi knife is the one closest to my heart. I just love the lines and the balance in well made yanagiba. The way it instantly becomes an extension of my hand almost feels like magic. The feel of a well sharpened blade easily slicing through fish leaving a shiny, almost oily surface totally free of tear and damage to the delicate flesh is really satisfying. Here is a picture of my current collection of these fascinating knives.

I will describe them briefly starting at the top:

1. Keijiro Doi 80th anniversary 300mm hayate kengata mirror finished yanagi. Number 4 of 5 made. White steel #1 (Shiro ichi ko). Octagonal Macassar ebony handle with blonde water buffalo horn bolsters. Collection piece, never used. Hardness HRC64-65.

2. My latest project. A refurbished 40++ years old 300mm mirror finished yanagi. Claimed to be true tamahagane steel, but more probably very high quality blue steel #1 (Aoko). Custom made (by me) octagonal Macassar ebony handle with silver inlays and black water buffalo horn bolsters. Hardness HRC63-65?

3. Sakai Gyutoko 300mm Honyaki mirror finished yanagi by master blacksmith Kasahara. From the shop of Tomohito Iida, Iida tools i Japan. If you are in the market for professional tools from Japan, I can recommend his shop. Excellent service, excellent tools, very reasonable prices. http://www.japantool-iida.com/ .The knife has a beautiful ripple line on both sides two thirds up the blade, so I have a lot of hardened steel here. A blade to pass down through several generations. My go-to yanagi. Gets incredibly sharp and stays sharp "for ever". White steel #2 (Shiro ni ko). Octagonal Ho-wood handle with black water buffalo bolster. Hardness HRC63-65.

4. Shigefusa 270mm kasumi yanagi by Tokifusa Iisuka. Special Swedish steel alloy by Shigefusa. Beautifully polished with Japanese natural stones to a silky matte finish. Custom (by me) octagonal handle of desert ironwood with silver inlays and vlack water buffalo horn bolsters. Absolutely perfectly balanced and a fantastic knife. Hardness HRC64-65?

5. Masahiro 240mm kasumi yanagi. My very first Japanese style knife. I bought this more than 10 years ago and for many years this was my only Japanese style knife. Started out as a yanagiba but after 10 years of sharpening it looks more like a fuguhiki. Blue steel #2 (Aoko). Custom (by me) octagonal Macassar ebony handle with black water buffalo horn bolster. A very light and easy knife to use. Hardness HRC62-63.