Shaping and Polishing Without Power Pol

[Toofargone]

Hello everyone! I'm new to metal work and knife making in general, although I have made a couple of knives in my youth. I have recently begun assembling a portable shop for my yard. I am currently working on a big, heavy boar spear that I am using 1/2 " spring from a truck. I have cut it and shaped it, and soon i will forge it and slow cool it to anneal. I wish to do most of the final shaping with stones and grit in a similar manner as the Japanese traditional swordsmiths. I would like to assemble a kit of finger stones from north American sources, for practical reasons mainly. I would even gather them myself. What I need is some guidance as far as testing and preparing stones. I have several big water and whet stones for flat finishing. For my first project, I want to shape and polish the boar spear to razor sharp, and there will be fullers and convex shapes on the blade. After that project, I wish to polish and refine some of my cheap kitchen knives . So far, getting my knives into shape has been a good exercise, and I want to be sure I can finish perfectly before moving on to hand forged knives. Thank you!

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

OK, most shaping done by Japanese smiths is by files and a scraping tool called a sen. The abrasive work is in two parts. Shitaji togi (foundation work and rough polish) and shiage togi (fine polish). Water stones are used for most of this.
Hazuya and jizuya finger stones are used in working on a hamon. They are not generally used for work on larger surfaces of plain blades.

The modern equivalent of finger stones are die finishing stones, also called EDM stones. They come in a variety of shapes, but the thin flat ones are often used on knives to clean up at the plunge or work the flat surfaces similar to finger stones. They also come in a wide variety of grits. A standard size is .135X.5X6". You can break them into shorter pieces.
Most industrial suppliers like McMaster-Carr and Gesswein carry them.
https://www.gesswein.com/p-9284-gesswein-edm-stones.aspx

Another thing occasionally done to simulate fingers stones is to use a diamond tile/brick saw and slice up whetstones and cheap Waterstones in thin slices.

You can also order flakes of ha/ji zuya stones from ebay and such, but it is hardly worth the trouble to flatten them out on an arato stone and bond paper to the back side, and use them with your fingertips unless you are doing shiage togi on a Japanese sword. If you wanted to play with some just for fun, I would send you a few of each.
I will also point out that they are murder on the fingertips in use unless you have developed calluses on your fingertips by long use of them.​

 

[GoldSkula]

Make sure you have a grip that doesn't destroy your hand. I do the finished bevelling with a water stone because I'm not good enough with a belt sander. The first time I did this I had a bad grip. Didn't notice it after I was finished. I couldn't move my wrist without pain for a couple of days.
You might not even notice it while you are grinding because your wrist is more or less in the same position.

 

[Toofargone]

Thanks Stacy! That sounds very reasonable. I think I'll try using some cheap stones at first I also might try to build a sen out of an existing draw knife or file.