Looking for advice on Japanese knife rehab (big photos inside)

[MKarish]

I picked up two cheap laminated Japanese kitchen knives this weekend. Both are in need of some reworking to make them functional. Other than reading I have no knowledge or experience with traditional Japanese knives. Hopefully you guys can help me get them back into the kitchen without doing any more damage to them.

One is a 9 1/2" Takohiki (square tipped sister of a Yanagi ba). This thing was flat out abused. Multiple bends, high and low spots all down the blade, and sharpened on both sides of the blade. I was able to straighten it out by bending and light hammer work. And I flattened the high spots out of the blade but I don't really know if there are any do's and don'ts when it comes to recutting the bevel. I understand that the bevel is supposed to stop at the junction of the tang and should be flat from that point (sori?) to the cutting edge with only the most minute if any micro-bevel.

The second is a Usuba (I think) which is in pretty good shape but has a couple chips in the cutting edge and a low spot at the heel (could be intentional, I wouldn't know). It's about 6 1/2" .This knife has a distinct concave back, and convex front. I really don't know how best to go about grinding the chips out and maintaining the convex front. I thought about trying to grind it in the slack belt, but I see that the tooling marks are all running parallel to the blade so I assume there must be a different technique to shaping these.

 

[redbate]

They are ground with wheel goind length wise to the blade unlike the "western" grinding method hence the parallel grinding marks. You are gonna have to go nuts on a 120 grit or so wet stone, that's how they are usually shaped after rough grinding. Most single bevel Japanese knives have a concave back to help knock down the burr essentially. you only sharpen the convex side then lay the concave side flat and do a few passes. Your best bet would be the normal convex hand sanding technique (atleast for me) use thick leather with stiff backing so the sandpaper has give and wraps around the convex. Hope that helps. Also these look really REALLY cheap, the handles aren't even done the usual Japanese way, in fact it looks more like Korean handles with the metal collar at the front.