First kasumi polish, questions, tips and expectations?

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Seattle_Ben
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First kasumi polish, questions, tips and expectations?

Post by Seattle_Ben »

I'm working on my first try with getting a kasumi polish. The knife is a Makoto and I'm still working on getting the bevels totally flat. As I embark I'm curious mostly right now about how long I may expect to spend trying to get to my first polish. I know that I should keep my expectations limited but beyond that is there anything to be looking for?

Primarily my first question is this, how long might I expect to be working the bevel til flat? I've got a 140 plate that's been used for lapping so it's not what it was when it first got to me but it's still a good bit coarser than the next stone that I've got. After that my stones go like this....
1-SP320
2-Bester 700
3-Chosera pro 1k
4-A brand new to me Suehiro Kouga 3k that was given to me by my wife's friend
5-and an Ohishi combo 3/8k

I've cobbled together a few naturals, an Aoto, an unknown awasedo and what I think is a razor finisher but really don't know for sure.

Here's my understanding for the process.

Get the bevels flat.
Go through a full progression of the synthetics with a good amount of mud and light pressure progressively removing scratches from the previous stones.
Start over with the naturals possibly ignoring the last one.
Relentlessly compare my crude and newly developing skill against people who've spent many more years doing this with a much better developed set of skills.

Beyond that some immediate considerations for myself-

Sounds like a King800 is a popular and really cheap stone to sort of get right to the polishing, is it even going to reasonably fill a gap that isn't there with the 700 stone, (very soft, very creamy).

Finger stones? Not something that I've really considered too much but might appear to be another route to feeling more stones. Similar to buying naguras?

I'm sure there are things I'm missing but thought I might get this out there before I really get going again this morning.

Thank you everyone.
Mowgface
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Re: First kasumi polish, questions, tips and expectations?

Post by Mowgface »

Something to be aware of:

If you grind until the bevels are "flat" you may change the way the knife feels/behaves when cutting. Most wide bevel knives have some degree of convexity/concavity depending on who ground the knife. It's not to say there is not a process of leveling high and low spots, but grinding "flat" can be detrimental to your knifes grind.

I prefer hamaguri sharpening. Having a two stage "flattening," where finger pressure starts on the shinogi line (focusing on the blade road), and the 2nd sharpening is just behind the edge or at the edge (this portion will be focused on forming a burr).

There's definitely many ways to approach kasumi polishes, but just wanted to share my take.

-Mowgs
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