Might be of interest to someone.
A couple of years ago a friend of mine received three knives a gift. Petty, carver and suji. Unfortunately, he didn't know anything about j-knives and didn't even imagine their value. So he put knives in a kitchen and his wife used them, let say, quite liberally. Hard bones, frozen foods, can opening - these knives saw everything. And the only "care" was a dishwasher. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
After about an year, when knives were in a terrible condition, a friend of mine had found out something about his knives. Right, he found that the knives are Hattori HD and found their price. Here I have to say that the price for Hattori in Moscow is more than double the price in US. So the total price of these knives was around 1 000 USD or even more. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
No need to say that my friend was very impressed. He took knives away from kitchen and put them in protective plastic cover. He decided that one day he will find someone who will restore the knives. Unfortunately, he didn't wipe knives well, so a nice rust begun to develop. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif It's not easy to find reliable sharpening service for j-knives here, so the knives have spent one more year in plastic.
After all, I could not stand seeing this story and offered my help.
This is how the knives looked when I took them:
I've reprofiled blades, cleaned rust, sharpened (70/30, around 15 degrees with microbevel) and covered handles with mineral oil. I used 1k and 6k King stones to sharpen and 240 Suntiger stone to reprofile.
Also, I used "GOI" polishing paste to remove rust and polish sides of knives. This kind of paste was developed long time ago in USSR and was used to polish military optics ("GOI" stands for "State Institute of Optics"). Real cold-war stuff. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
Here is the result:
One side of suji was seriously eaten by rust and some traces remained even after polishing, so I decided to mask this defect with… etching. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif Actually, I etched "damascus" for the first time and it took quite a lot of hours to get contrast pattern. This is suji's look after etching:
So, what's the moral of this story? /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif Now I think that:
1. It's not always a good idea to gift expensive j-knife. Especially to someone who doesn't know how to care nor willing to do it.
2. It's not that difficult to repair knives.
3. It's always good to share knowledge about knives and how to care about knives. The more people know about knives, the less knives will become victims of careless.
/img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
A couple of years ago a friend of mine received three knives a gift. Petty, carver and suji. Unfortunately, he didn't know anything about j-knives and didn't even imagine their value. So he put knives in a kitchen and his wife used them, let say, quite liberally. Hard bones, frozen foods, can opening - these knives saw everything. And the only "care" was a dishwasher. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
After about an year, when knives were in a terrible condition, a friend of mine had found out something about his knives. Right, he found that the knives are Hattori HD and found their price. Here I have to say that the price for Hattori in Moscow is more than double the price in US. So the total price of these knives was around 1 000 USD or even more. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
No need to say that my friend was very impressed. He took knives away from kitchen and put them in protective plastic cover. He decided that one day he will find someone who will restore the knives. Unfortunately, he didn't wipe knives well, so a nice rust begun to develop. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif It's not easy to find reliable sharpening service for j-knives here, so the knives have spent one more year in plastic.
After all, I could not stand seeing this story and offered my help.
This is how the knives looked when I took them:
I've reprofiled blades, cleaned rust, sharpened (70/30, around 15 degrees with microbevel) and covered handles with mineral oil. I used 1k and 6k King stones to sharpen and 240 Suntiger stone to reprofile.
Also, I used "GOI" polishing paste to remove rust and polish sides of knives. This kind of paste was developed long time ago in USSR and was used to polish military optics ("GOI" stands for "State Institute of Optics"). Real cold-war stuff. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif
Here is the result:
One side of suji was seriously eaten by rust and some traces remained even after polishing, so I decided to mask this defect with… etching. /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif Actually, I etched "damascus" for the first time and it took quite a lot of hours to get contrast pattern. This is suji's look after etching:
So, what's the moral of this story? /img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif Now I think that:
1. It's not always a good idea to gift expensive j-knife. Especially to someone who doesn't know how to care nor willing to do it.
2. It's not that difficult to repair knives.
3. It's always good to share knowledge about knives and how to care about knives. The more people know about knives, the less knives will become victims of careless.
/img/vbsmilies/smilies/smile.gif