Thread: Pechika Yasuki

Originally Posted by llalm

Great looking Pechika though!
I was actually eyeing on grabbing one a couple weeks back.

The seller is amenable to a little bit of bargaining, even on some of the razors that don't have best offer. I've gotten 6 razors from him so far. I don't know if that's good or bad. Bad for my wallet, but good in that he's willing to deal a little!!

I gather from takeshi aoki's page (or maybe it was jim rion) that nichiri shut down a few years ago and this glut of NOS japanese razors may be in its prime now. Not that it necessarily means they'll be inexpensive, but the selection from sellers actually wanting to sell their razors might not be as good in the future.

Beautiful razor you will be very happy with it. I bought mine from Stephan several years ago a
and it is marvelous

Well, I finally honed this razor last night and shaved with it this morning. It wasn't what I expected. I expected something that sharpens easily like white #2 or Swedish steel. This is easily the hardest razor I've ever honed, either due to alloying or just the temper. It didn't even want to yield much to synthetics and I ultimately resorted to stropping the final edge on chrome ox, which I don't often do.

I expected a biting edge and hit the linen and leather with it, and unexpectedly had one of the smoothest super keen shaves I've had from anything. Really nice.

The razor will shave just fine. I used to have one of those a while ago (BanjoTom has it), they shave great.
No matter which plant the steel comes from ,Japanese know how to make quality one and how to HT it correctly for great edge.

Great looking blade. Thanks for posting

I've been thinking about this for a while and now I wonder if there's a clip-on guard that you could put on the razor(Similar to the Genco safedge).
The reason I got that idea is that while it wouldn't be that far fetched that the fullers are just decorative, I've noticed from looking at other pictures that there's a "notch" where the spine meets the tang on the front of the razor but not on the backside, this is something that I find a bit strange if it's only for aesthetics.

I take it at this point that nobody is sure what the ysk2 steel composition is? I'm genuinely curious about it, because I've used so many different hitachi/yasuki products that it's bordering on stupid (and andrews products, and assab, ...). Stephan, I agree, the concept of blade steel is on an industrial level what it used to be in english and american crucible makers, except there seems to be another side to the japanese blade makers, that being a fascination with highly alloyed stuff.

So you can end up getting an industrial process steel that's very pure like a crucible steel, or you may end up with a steel that has an awful lot of tungsten in it or something else, a completely different animal (but if it's from yasuki, you know the impurity tolerances will be extremely tight).

I've had razors that were hard before, and sometimes they are picky about how they are handled on the linen and strop because their hardness makes them a bit fragile at the bleeding edge, but this steel is different it was reluctant to be honed, but then once it was, the stropping left that sort of tiny perfectly even line across the edge (if you've ever looked at a stropped edge vs. one off the hone, you know what I mean - you can just see that a razor has been stropped, and on the very best razors, that tiny line is even indicating a very clean undamaged edge, and on the harder razors, that tiny line will appear small - but with a light source, you can see it with the naked eye.

I think the big surprise here is that this razor combines both the evenness of the line (to be stropped and linened and have absolutely zero imperfections in the edge), with the tiny line due to high hardness. My keenest feeling razors share that combination (and some are german that probably ended up a touch hard or were hard tempered on purpose - a fried dennert razor comes to mind, as does another one with a mark "allegro")

I have a kikuboshi razor that is probably slightly less hard than this one, it's the schoeller Bleckmann steel type, but it is hard and it is very temperamental on the strop. I hate to say it, because both razors each cost me two C-notes, but this razor is a better razor than that particular kikuboshi by a clear mile. I don't have enough kikuboshis to say much other than these two particular examples are just that way relative to each other.

I have other schoeller bleckmann steel razors that behave much more like a german razor, but are just a touch harder (that is, they love the strop and are not temperamental.

Here is a picture of my collection, The Japanese steel is great.

Yasuki Steel

(“White and Blue Paper Steel”)
This carbon steel, supplied by the HITACHI company based in Yasugi, Japan, is made from high-quality iron sand using smelting methods similar to those used to make traditional sword steel. It has the highest purity of all the commercial steels used for forging tools and is commonly forge-welded to a wrought iron base to make high-quality tool blades and knives. Once hardened, the steel has an extremely fine-grained, martensitic structure that displays excellent sharpening properties. Composition"White Paper Steel" C 1.1 - 1.2%, Si 0.1 - 0.2%, P<0.025%, S< 0.004%."Blue Paper Steel" C 1.1 - 1.2%, Si 0.1 - 0.2%, Mn 0.2 - 0.3%, Cr 0.2 - 0.5%, W 1.0 - 1.5%, P<0.025%, S<0.004%.
Forging The steel is delivered unhardened. Yasugi Steel should be forged carefully between 800°C to 900°C (red-yellow heat) because of its high carbon content. Higher temperatures will cause the steel to oxidize and lose its fine-grained structure, lower temperatures can lead to cracks in the steel. To maintain the highest quality crystalline structure, we recommend completing the final steps of forging at a somewhat reduced temperature (750°C) and a higher frequency of hammer blows. Try to keep the time spent heating and forging the steel to a minimum to prevent the carbon from diffusing out of the steel. The best results are attained using a charcoal fire (sulphur and phosphate-free). The steel can be forged-welded to wrought iron (at temperatures of 1100°C, yellow-white heat) with the addition of Borax. Make
sure both the forge and anvil are clean prior to forge-welding. The heat treatment of the blank after forging involves three steps:
1. Annealing: Prolonged baking at temperatures slightly less than hardening to produce a uniform, crystalline structure.
2. Hardening: Heating to the hardening temperature and subsequently quenching the steel in lukewarm water or oil.
3. Tempering: Heating to a lower, tempering temperature to reduce the mechanical stress built up during the forging process in the structure of the steel. The steel blank should be fully formed and ground prior to heat treatment. It is very important to ensure an equal distribution of heat in the forge or to use a special hardening chamber. We have provided some values below for reference. The actual values may vary somewhat depending on several other factors (surface structure, time, laminate structure).
All temperatures are listed in °C. "White Paper Steel" Annealing temperature: 740°C - 770°C Hardening temperature: 760°C 830°C (Fig. 1) Quench in lukewarm water or oil ** Tip: We recommend using oil (i.e. vegetable oil) as it Tempering temperature: 180°C - 220°C (Fig. 2) reduces the risk of cracks, especially in thin pieces. Final hardness ca. 62 RC "Blue Paper Steel" Annealing temperature: 750°C - 780°C Hardening temperature: 780°C - 830°C (Fig. 3) Quench in lukewarm oil Tempering temperature: 160°C - 230°C (Fig.4) Final hardness ca 62 RC It is important that the steel be heated slowly and uniformly during the annealing, hardening and tempering process. The higher the annealing temperature and duration is, the less hard and more elastic the resulting steel. (Fig. 2 and fig. 4). Grinding It is very important to avoid temperatures above 150°C once it has been hardened and annealed. Grinding the steel on a dry sharpening machine or belt sander is especially harmful its crystalline structure. We recommend using a water-cooled sharpening machine or sharpening by hand using Japanese waterstones.
Corrosion ProtectionBoth "White" and "Blue Paper Steel" are not corrosion-free. We recommend wiping the finished blades with an acid-free oil (camellia oil or Ballistol) to protect them from corrosion damage.

Originally Posted by celticcrusader

Yasuki Steel

(“White and Blue Paper Steel”)
This carbon steel, supplied by the HITACHI company based in Yasugi, Japan, is made from high-quality iron sand using smelting methods similar to those used to make traditional sword steel. It has the highest purity of all the commercial steels used for forging tools and is commonly forge-welded to a wrought iron base to make high-quality tool blades and knives. Once hardened, the steel has an extremely fine-grained, martensitic structure that displays excellent sharpening properties. Composition"White Paper Steel" C 1.1 - 1.2%, Si 0.1 - 0.2%, P<0.025%, S< 0.004%."Blue Paper Steel" C 1.1 - 1.2%, Si 0.1 - 0.2%, Mn 0.2 - 0.3%, Cr 0.2 - 0.5%, W 1.0 - 1.5%, P<0.025%, S<0.004%.
Forging The steel is delivered unhardened. Yasugi Steel should be forged carefully between 800°C to 900°C (red-yellow heat) because of its high carbon content. Higher temperatures will cause the steel to oxidize and lose its fine-grained structure, lower temperatures can lead to cracks in the steel. To maintain the highest quality crystalline structure, we recommend completing the final steps of forging at a somewhat reduced temperature (750°C) and a higher frequency of hammer blows. Try to keep the time spent heating and forging the steel to a minimum to prevent the carbon from diffusing out of the steel. The best results are attained using a charcoal fire (sulphur and phosphate-free). The steel can be forged-welded to wrought iron (at temperatures of 1100°C, yellow-white heat) with the addition of Borax. Make
sure both the forge and anvil are clean prior to forge-welding. The heat treatment of the blank after forging involves three steps:
1. Annealing: Prolonged baking at temperatures slightly less than hardening to produce a uniform, crystalline structure.
2. Hardening: Heating to the hardening temperature and subsequently quenching the steel in lukewarm water or oil.
3. Tempering: Heating to a lower, tempering temperature to reduce the mechanical stress built up during the forging process in the structure of the steel. The steel blank should be fully formed and ground prior to heat treatment. It is very important to ensure an equal distribution of heat in the forge or to use a special hardening chamber. We have provided some values below for reference. The actual values may vary somewhat depending on several other factors (surface structure, time, laminate structure).
All temperatures are listed in °C. "White Paper Steel" Annealing temperature: 740°C - 770°C Hardening temperature: 760°C 830°C (Fig. 1) Quench in lukewarm water or oil ** Tip: We recommend using oil (i.e. vegetable oil) as it Tempering temperature: 180°C - 220°C (Fig. 2) reduces the risk of cracks, especially in thin pieces. Final hardness ca. 62 RC "Blue Paper Steel" Annealing temperature: 750°C - 780°C Hardening temperature: 780°C - 830°C (Fig. 3) Quench in lukewarm oil Tempering temperature: 160°C - 230°C (Fig.4) Final hardness ca 62 RC It is important that the steel be heated slowly and uniformly during the annealing, hardening and tempering process. The higher the annealing temperature and duration is, the less hard and more elastic the resulting steel. (Fig. 2 and fig. 4). Grinding It is very important to avoid temperatures above 150°C once it has been hardened and annealed. Grinding the steel on a dry sharpening machine or belt sander is especially harmful its crystalline structure. We recommend using a water-cooled sharpening machine or sharpening by hand using Japanese waterstones.
Corrosion ProtectionBoth "White" and "Blue Paper Steel" are not corrosion-free. We recommend wiping the finished blades with an acid-free oil (camellia oil or Ballistol) to protect them from corrosion damage.

That's cool Jamie! Thanks.