I bought it based on the the height of the knife and price. That’s not typically how I select my knife, but it looked pretty interesting- tall, rustic and inexpensive.
After receiving it, I examined it carefully. 55.6mm tall and 174mm on the edge. The blade road was pretty short compared to my other bunkas and some rough finish on the spine- one side was sharpish and the other roughly filed. The heel had a 3mm mini back belly. The handle was pretty nice for a knife of this price but boy the fit and finish was pretty rough.
The edge OOB was not very sharp which wasn’t a surprise. I did my first round of sharpening- i lightly on the 1k,2k,5k and some stropping. The edge seemed pretty sharp as a shirogami #1 would be, to the touch it felt like a razor and newspaper cut with a nice smooth sound. Then I put it to test on the board. What I found was that with hard produce after the edge entered an item it met with some resistance . I can’t remember all of items I tested but I remember both carrot and potato- not good. Crack. Crack. Perplexed I decided it was time to make some changes- thinning. I'd done a little bit of thinning, but nothing to extent that i was about to embark upon.
I started with a 320 stone and put the blade flat on the stone with pressure on the shoulder. I might have been going for 30 minutes before I decided that I needed do go more heavy duty. I switched to a 150 nubatama (brick-like thing) and after another 30 minutes I reviewed my work. The spine edge had a decent amount of sanding going on. Note to self, next time put some painters tape on the spine edge. The shoulder was moving up, but it was going to be a long road. I went another 30 minutes before I noticed some dishing in my stone. As I flattened my stone, I decided to change course. Let’s just do some sandpaper.
Using some 3M purple 150grit (Lowes) wrapped around one of my thinner stones, I attached it with painters tape underneath and propped on top of another stone. I went at it again. This time metal dust was coming off much faster. I tried a bit of tsubaki oil (camellia) to see the difference and it just seemed to be more effective to go dry. I discovered a couple of low spots and at first I was consumed with evening them out. ultimately decided that it might do more damage than good.
After moving the shoulder higher (like > 50% more) I moved my pressure to the middle of the blade road. It seemed like this was helping make it thinner behind the edge. However, when I compared my work to a Kurosaki bunka and there was no comparison. He’s got different techniques and different tools.
At some point, I just gave in and switched to pressure near the edge- getting that zero grind going. That was really rewarding and I could feel the edge getting thin and sharp. I didn’t spend too much time here since I knew that I was going to sharpen it after i was done. I messed around with higher grits to smooth things out only to undo it by thinning it even more. it's kind of scratch that itch kind of thing.
After doing a full progression from 1k,2k,5k,10k + strop, it became strikingly sharp. Unrecognizable in looks and performance from OOTB.
The knife is great now. It’s not better than my other bunkas, but there’s an emotional connection with the time invested in it and there’s a good story of learning. I now really appreciate the rest of my knives that are so “thin behind the edge.” My yamashin is my beautiful ugly.
After choil shot
Comparison choil shot
Before... new, pretty and wedgy.
