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WTS Tanaka AS Project for Cheap

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jedy617

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Please read the whole post, and only buy if you are confident in your abilities or want to practice your skills.

This is a Yamawaki Tanaka AS kurouchi gyuto from Zahocho. Original intentions were to get it and do a nice kasumi polish on it. Little did I know the grind was so hollow, I have spent about 5 hours on each side on a debado 180 to get the low spots out. Believe it or not, there are still some there, but I think I got 90%+ of them out.

The good: Nice-ish working kasumi. Legendary Tanaka AS. The bevels are mostly flat (or slightly convex) Still decent-ish size on it, 230x47.3 by my calipers

The bad: Because the grind was hollow and I had to grind away so much meat to get to the low spots, I'm having a bit of an issue with the edge, mostly towards the heel. Basically the edge was flaking off, I assume because I basically did a pretty major thinning on an already thin knife. I lost about 2mm of heel height, because I thought by grinding down the edge, I would thicken it up and be more stable, but I think it may need a bit more to go. There is a bit more belly in front of the heel now, you may want to change the profile but I will lead that up to you.

For some reason, I can't get the knife super sharp which I have never really had happen before and I'm kind of having imposter syndrome and just want to let it go. Kasumi is not perfect, there are some scratches under the finish I tried to highlight in the video. KU still on spine and choil. Please watch the video. Please do not buy the knife if you are expecting a perfect out of the box experience.

So long story short, this project may be 90% done and could just need some final touches, or it could be 50% done. Up to you to decide. Now I know what some of you may be thinking "Jedy you are an idiot for trying to practice your skills on a nice/expensive Tanaka AS." And while I partially agree, I've done like 7-8 projects like this and they have all usually come out decent. I'll be honest until I got to the end I did not think about the implications on the edge, I was just in robot mode trying to plow through the low spots.

These were $503 new. Let's start at $325 shipped?

Video:

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Damn dude, mine hasn’t even arrived in the post yet!

Kind of hoping you’ll sit down with a drink tonight and decide to see it through so we can see the final results and what your learned, but GLWS if not.
 
Ok__mode_6953 said:
Damn dude, mine hasn’t even arrived in the post yet!

Kind of hoping you’ll sit down with a drink tonight and decide to see it through so we can see the final results and what your learned, but GLWS if not.
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I'm at the point where I'm just kind of annoyed and don't wanna look at it anymore you know? Trying to chalk it up to a learning experience and sometimes you just gotta know when to fold em. I learned quite a bit for next time.
 
I hope that you've got some of your initial courage back.

I don't think you're at so much loss yet. It'll never be a tall Gyuto, but you can get it right, and for the price asked if that's what to happen, just call it a 230mm line knife, or tall short Suji. There's a blade there, and no shameful one to get new or to get in whatever the best descriptive from you. I do get the "don't want to look at it anymore" feeling. It's when you really need to persist and see it through.

Good offers in you WTS so not to worry too much about your rep, you know. :)
 
jedy617 said:
For some reason, I can't get the knife super sharp which I have never really had happen before
Click to expand...
I sharpened my copy for the first time today since it arrived (mine came extremely dull ootb).

I'm assuming it's Tanaka's superior heat treat of what's already a tough steel, but I was going at the edge for ages on a Shapton 1k without being able to raise a burr. Eventually I gave up, dropped down to a 500 grit and then worked up to a 3k from there. Once I was able to raise a burr with the 500 grit, the rest of the progression was not so bad, but required an atoma on each stone to raise slurry in order to speed things along.

So it wasn't just you struggling with that basically.
 
Ok__mode_6953 said:
I sharpened my copy for the first time today since it arrived (mine came extremely dull ootb).

I'm assuming it's Tanaka's superior heat treat of what's already a tough steel, but I was going at the edge for ages on a Shapton 1k without being able to raise a burr. Eventually I gave up, dropped down to a 500 grit and then worked up to a 3k from there. Once I was able to raise a burr with the 500 grit, the rest of the progression was not so bad, but required an atoma on each stone to raise slurry in order to speed things along.

So it wasn't just you struggling with that basically.
Click to expand...
I have sharpened Tanakas AS before without much issue, this one was an anomaly for me
 
jedy617 said:
I have sharpened Tanakas AS before without much issue, this one was an anomaly for me
Click to expand...
Maybe it’s specific to the batch?

All I know is that I’ve sharpened a range of different steels at this point including modern powder steels, and never had to drop below 1k just to raise a burr.
 
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