Friday 23 February 2018

Damage Report

Here is very badly damaged Japanese knife that I got to work on recently. This type of work involves a few steps:
1. A vision, what I want the knife to look like after I'm done.
2. Repairs
3. Thinning
4. Refinishing the blade if necessary
5. Sharpening

The repair work took quite a long time to move that much metal from the edge. Metal cannot be replaced so I have to remove metal from tip to heel until the hold disappears.

   Once that is done, the knife is significantly thicker at the edge since the "new" edge is now much further up into the blade. The thinning part for me is always the most difficult and time consuming. I don't measure the knife from a cross sectional geometry perspective with a caliper or anything, it is all by sense of touch. I run my thumb and and index finger down the blade from spine to edge to get a feel for how the thinning is doing. Once I am satisfied, I will do some sanding of the blade to refinish it and finally sharpen it.
  Total time is about an hour or so.




  The funny thing about work like this is that I can't go wrong as far as customer satisfaction is concerned, the owner was going to throw the knife away so any improvements I make are vast improvements to the owner. I am always the toughest critic.

Peter







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