Thread: First Kamisori Re-wrap

Ok, so that's a little misleading as the handle wasn't wrapped before—it had one of those blue plastic grips.

But anyway, I bought this Henkotsu kamisori from Tierdaen a couple of weeks ago:



Although it did it's job pretty well, I didn't particularly like the blue grip, so I thought I'd attempt to get it off and wrap it in something else.

I knew what I was expecting to be under the plastic handle but—especially not having done it before—I was taking a bit of a risk with something I'd paid a fair amount of money for. Nevertheless, I taped up the blade, out came the Dremel and I cut the plastic grip away (actually after I cut away the plastic along the spine and then half of one side, the rest just slid off).

I sanded down the tang with some wet and dry and rounded the end a bit with a file, then gave it two coats of black, textured Hammerite.

So far so good—this is how it looked this morning, after the paint had thoroughly dried over night (note that you can now see all of the stamping, which was half obscured by the original grip):



Last week, I had a little look around on old eBay for some waxed cotton cord. So many colours (for the price, I could have bought several just to compare) but in the end I settled on dark red 1mm cord.

I set about wrapping the tang with my cord and this was the result:



I was mostly pleased but after some consideration, I decided that the last loop of cord was a little loose and that I'd left too much tang poking out...so I took it off and wrapped it a second time (I did buy ten metres of the stuff)!

So here, after surprisingly little effort, is the second and final wrapping:








I'm really pleased with both, the colour and the way the whole thing turned out.

It was sharp before (I've already used it once) but, just to be sure, I took it to the hone for a few laps, stropped 60 linen and 100 leather and now I'm ready to go and shave with it again!