Iwasaki Tamahagane Collabo Resto

[onimaru55]

Starting the new year with my annual restore thread
This one was in a really sad state. It looked like someone attacked it with a die-grinder & the bakelite was yellowed with age.
Luckily the owner/collector & good mate, was keen to do all the grunt work & all I had to do was the final polish & honing

All regrinding done by hand with pieces of Sigma & King stones & he reckons that's the easy part
Polishing was pretty tedious with a few repeat sessions of the whole process so maybe I did do the hard part

Basically the aim was to do a sashikomi finish, which is a subtle version of the bright kesho finish you see on some swords, but these razors being such hard steel makes that a challenge.

A lot of rubbing with wetndri 400 & above then on to fingerstones & various nugui, as I said a number of repeats to get a result.

This was not the highest hardness Iwasaki western I've worked on but it was the hardest to polish. At least it had a hamon , some don't.

Honing was quite ok & not the effort I expected. Needless to say, Iwasaki is at the top of my preferred razor list.

One of the pics has an oiled up blade but the rest are dry. The hamon pretty much looks like a grey shadow until you hit the right angle & light but as my photography skills are random rather than refined,here's the best I can do.

BTW the steel is typically made up of homogenous particles as with all Iwasaki tamahagane razors & does not show an obvious "wood grain" effect. I won't bore people with Japenese terms ,too much but it was so hard to get this feature to show we almost wrote it off as a "no grainer" Boom tish ! Thank you, I'll be here all week.