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chrismoses
12th March 2001, 19:10
I have a "shogun series" cutter from Sword Armory (a Paul Chen blade). A few weeks ago I finally got around to doing some tamishigiri practice and found that it was not as sharp as I would like it to be. (rule 1: always blame the equipment!) For example, I tried to slice off the remainder of a cut that did not go through all the way, and found that using a sawing motion on the strip that was not cut, did not even cut into the wara. I next moved on to a piece of paper and found that it wouldn't even cut that! I don't want to spend a ton of dough on real polishing so I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations on home sharpening technques. I know some of the Ishi Yama folks have put sharper edges on these, did you do it yourselves or do you have someone you recommend (I too am in Seattle)? Thanks in advance.

Patrick McKee
16th March 2001, 06:57
I just bought a Last Legend and touched up the edge using a Spyderco Sharpmaker- the V-shaped ceramic sticks. Seemed fairly sharp when i got it but it's better now. I have never heard of anyone using this method so please ask others about sharpening, as well.

Also, I polished it for hours with Flitz and Simichrome and I am amazed at how nice the blade looks now that most of the oxidation is off of it.

Tony Peters
17th March 2001, 23:44
Originally posted by Patrick McKee
I just bought a Last Legend and touched up the edge using a Spyderco Sharpmaker- the V-shaped ceramic sticks. Seemed fairly sharp when i got it but it's better now. I have never heard of anyone using this method so please ask others about sharpening, as well.

Also, I polished it for hours with Flitz and Simichrome and I am amazed at how nice the blade looks now that most of the oxidation is off of it.

High quality Ceramic stones are a cheap way of duplicating the qualities of expensive water stones. I have used a piece of ceramic missle nose cone from an AIM54 Phoenix (otherwise known as a Buffalo) for years to put the final polish on an edge. I've done this on my Yari as well as all my knives including my really expensive Japanese kitchen knives (I spend way to much money on knives but my wife doesn't complain...yet). I don't own a real sword yet, just an Iaido, but I don't think I would be inclined to put stone to that kind of blade without some real instruction as I free hand sharpen blades; no tool other than the stone. Though this is just my choice yours is likely differant. That said if you plan to sharpen your own blades buy the best stones you can afford in graduated grits (like sandpaper) and work your way to the finest. The Late Bob Egnath wrote a great book (much of which could be found free on the web) on building knives. There was a whole chapter on polishing. Do a search you'll likely find it.