Iwasaki tamahagane kamisori

Received this Iwasaki kamisori a while ago.

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Some stain, nothing really serious, but the pitting goes deep.

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So the questionn in restoring is always how far should you go. Basically on a blade like this a total regrind to remove all stain pittings totally is possible without a problem. But what about the nature of the blade? It will become different and does maybe not coincide with the thoughts, the craftmannship and the soul the original maker has put in. So mostly I hesitate from a totally regrind. I don't want to make a new blade or a blade that looks like new even though it is an old one made by a very famous and honorous master.
So also here I decide to do only a minimum necessary to remove the rust totally but not the pitting in complete depth. Therfore I didn't use any grinding wheels - only different polishing wheels with different hardness and glued with different grades of Naxos emery.

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The original finish was satin and I aso put the omote to a satin blue polishing. However the ura and the back of the blade didn't really please me with that finishing so I did a bit more polishing, what we call a clear polishing. So it is not total mirror polishing, but something in between the blue and mirror polishing.

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My first thought was not to do any wrapping on the blade any more. But to remove the rust I had to polish away parts of the black forging skin on the tang. So basically I could have done some black oxidizing on the tang to bring back the black color again. But it is very difficult to create the same shade of black color to fit to the remaining original one. And I did not want to remove what was remaining.
So I decided to do a wrapping agan. Since I did not want a very tight wrapping, more a bit loose-fitting to enable the entering water to penetrate to the surface and evaporate and since I also need some more grip for my large fingers I decide to use a more thicker cord than usally.

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So this is the final result:

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great job on the restore

A tremendous restore. Well done!

amazing! no need to do a regrind, i would be very happy with the results.

Thank you for sharing your work. You showed your Iwasaki the respect it deserved.

Makes me want to find one.

Very well done. Preserving the soul of the blade yielded a beautiful restore.

Nicely done!


Mike

That turned out well great restore back in action.

Very nice work.

Can you talk a bit about your process, wheel/s and grit selection. What is the wheel made from and where are you purchasing your emery and glue?

What other grits/wheels did you use?

Nice razor, enjoy.

Hi Euclid440,

thanks for your interest. I use only vintage material that I get from old grinders. You can find some more information on previous threads here:
http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...ern-razor.html
or here: http://straightrazorpalace.com/works...-r-tman-n.html

If you have any more detailed questions don't hesitate to ask.

Peter

Peter, beautiful work on the Bartmann, I missed that post, but did see the other.

So, your wood wheels are they coated, with leather or is there no need? And what is the wood?

I have been thinking of making 2, 3, and 4 inch wheels in MDF and gluing different rouges and Silicon Carbide powders. I have made strops from the pasted edge of a 3/4 in. MDF board, clamped in a vice, that works very well for stropping knives, especially large knives.

Which glue are you using? I was going to use Flex-a-glue which may be a form of contact cement or Glue Tight a form of hide glue, for that.

Do you grind with wood wheels and polish on hard felt?

Thanks, Marty

Marty,

normally all of the wheels are covered with leather. I have spoken to some grinders that also use only wood wheels, it depends on what to do. But for razor polishing only leather covered wheels were used. It is necessary that the surface that contain the emery or another abrasive powder is very soft. Also the wood used has to be soft. Therefore traditionally cottonwood was used to produce the wheels. Sometimes for other applications also walnut. Both woods don't tend to shiver. I don't know if using MDF is a real good idea. It is hard and the different wood splints may split. A massive piece of pure soft wood may be the better alternative.
But maybe just try some different setups.

For the glue - traditionally bone glue was used. I also use it nowadays, but of coarse it takes a lot of time to glue the wheels. Bone glue must be heated to 60-70°C and you need to glue 3-6 layers of glue with emery, each layer need some time to dry, the bone glue must be watered for some hours before, ....
But in fact it is by far the best method. There is one other glue, especially produced for grinders and it s called red-glue. There are two different grades of that glue, one is called liquid and is used for general preparation of the wheels, the other one called elastic is used for glueing the emery to the wheels. So also some work to do. One of the main advantages of the bone glue is the fact that the glue becomes slightly liquid again during grinding/ polishing because of the friction heat. This releases fresh abrasive particles from the glue on one hand and on the other it prevents from a higher temperature raise. If you use a wrong, hard glue, you will create the opposite and the steel you grind or polish may be burned or overheated.

The more you go from grinding to "Pliesten" to finer polishing - the softer the wheels should be in general. You should not go too soft in earlier stages, because that may leed to rounded edges on parts where you need or want sharp outlines.