Polished out the Shinogi.

S

sprawlcowboy

Joined
Aug 25, 2013
Messages
15
Hello,

As the title states, I've somewhat polished out the delineating line in my Hissatsu folder, in an attempt to get it close to a mirror polish.

I'd like to restore this line, as it gives the blade most of its character.

From what I see on the web, using progressively less aggressive Japanese waterstones, careful to polish the separate sections of the blade in order to make the line more prominent is one possible way to go.

Would doing this lose some of the buffed out polish that have on it already?

Most of the youtube videos consist of guys clarifying at the beginning "Now I'm no expert....but here goes."

Anyone know of any references?

Thanks,

Mark.
 
Post some pics so we can see what your talking about. If your talking about the grind line your in for a lot of work if your planning to do it by hand.
 
I've never sharpened a tanto point, but I imagine it takes some serious skill to truly bring it back to a true tanto point in its original geometry, especially after it's been altered. Based on the info in your post, I'd bet that spending more time on it yourself would probably just make it progressively worse. Send it to someone who can do that. Either that or use if for practice to try to get it back to they way you want it. Or you could just use it with its new geometry.

Pics would be nice indeed.
 
There is a maker here, Nick Wheeler, he has a YouTube video giving an example on how to polish.

Find the video, make the changes and you'll probably end up with a decent looking blade.

The core of working with steel is knowing that you can't add steel, only take it away.

At this point you may have removed a fairly significant amount of steel where the delineation should be, if you removed too much you will never get that line back without significantly altering the geometry of the blade.
 
The shinogi line is the line at the top of a sharpened bevel better know to most as the "shoulder"

In the case of the op the shinogi line is the line that separates the main blade thickness from the main grind of the blade.

To re-define a shinogi line is not easy and will require you to re-grind the main bevel and the area above the main bevel carefully starting at a coarse grit. Watch some sword polishing videos because you are basically doing the same thing on a smaller scale.

This is the only one I have ever seen in English.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8es5LMxcT3c
 
Yes those are the lines. Here are some pictures. Tell me what you think.

20130829_161741.jpg

20130827_070948.jpg


Hopefully I can restore them.
 
Hollow ground?

Googled it, you will need to significantly alter the blade to reclaim those lines, best of luck.

To retain those lines, I would grab a norton bench stone or two, sand for lapping the stones flat and begin the process of adding height to the grind. I think if you take it to a flat grind by adding more pressure at the top of the grind you should be able to flatten it out.

I've done it with a manix 2, also a hollow grind, by the time you're done (if you choose to spend the hours of work) you will have a pretty neat knife with crisp lines.
 
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My advice is to let it go. If you really want to 'fix' it, just do a little every time you touch up the blade. You'll be taking a bit of steel away, and shortening the life of the knife. Also, doing a job on that and having it turn out cosmetically dead-on will be a fairly delicate operation with, I assume, a lot of hand finishing (expensive). Just sharpening the lines around the choil and transitioning into the main body of the back-bevel looks to be a challenging bit of work.
 
Live and learn I suppose. Fairly new to polishing/sharpening outside of a basic stone. Guess it could've been worse.

Thanks guys.
 
I got a quote from a well regarded custom knife maker in my town for $110 to reshape the knife.

I'm thinking since the knife is only $50, this is a losing proposition.

I'd be thinking that next time (if there is a next time), it would be better for me to simply remove the Teflon coating, not with sandpaper, but with some gasket remover and then an old toothbrush to scrub it off...leaving the bare metal exposed.

I believe what I did wrong, was focusing too much on removing the coating, instead of preserving the shape (didn't know it was that sensitive, noob I know).

In your opinions, do you believe I would achieve better results had I removed the coating chemically, and then used a very fine polish like blue magic by hand?

Thanks again.
 
I think your best bet is to just leave it alone. If you really want a polished Hissatsu I think it would be easier to start with a new one and be more careful polishing it. What kind of coating is it? If its just black paint you can use some paint stripper to remove it and then sand and polish. If its one of the better coatings like DLC I don't think they can be removed chemically. I feel your pain, I'm actually in the process of restoring a vintage Kershaw 1993 that I got a great deal on, I got the handles and brass polished up in no time, but now im working on polishing out some scratches in the VG10 blade and its going very slowly.
 
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