# Shigefusa Santoku re-profile to Funayuki?



## ma_sha1 (Jan 16, 2020)

I am not using my Shigefusa Santoku because it doesn’t have a usable tip like Gyuto does & it’s too flat. My plan is in the picture below, shown between my 180 & 160mm Gyuto, to repofile it into a 170mm Carter style Funayuki instead. 

I do like the hefty weight, the taller height, the steel, thick spine start & strong distal taper. I like the convex grind bevel, I’ll maintain convex grind but thin it behind edge.





has anyone done this?
thoughts?


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## Henry (Jan 16, 2020)

I have taken a santoku and regrinded it into a steak knife.


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## Henry (Jan 16, 2020)

Kind of amateurish but it was a lot of fun and I love this steak knife. I am constantly regrinding and resharpening it to experiment. I also took off the ku finish. Core steel is blue#2 and iron clad.


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## musicman980 (Jan 16, 2020)

I love reprofiling old or vintage knives to give them fresh life. I was going to reprofile a vintage Sadamitsu 225 into one sick garasuki. But reprofile a Shig? Why not sell that incredible knife in its original form and just buy a Carter?


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 16, 2020)

I agree, I listed it but didn’t sell. I don’t want to low ball it given that having a Shig reduced my urge for more expensive Shig.


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## ian (Jan 16, 2020)

I guess if you really want a project, you could do it. It’ll be a lot of work, and you may not be as satisfied with the result as you expect. If the bevel was flat, you would reprofile it by just laying the bevel flat on the stone and grinding more towards the tip. I suppose it’ll be a little more complicated if you are maintaining the convexity. Also, you may want to check what the thickness of the blade is at the height of the newly proposed shinogi line. If it’s much different than the thickness at the current shinogi, the knife may perform a bit differently and the bevel will look wider toward the tip, which can look weird. Also, I’m assuming you don’t want to remove the kurouchi, so when you lower and polish the spine be aware that the spine there will be shiny and exposed.

Take all this with a grain of salt. I’m not super experienced. I’m working on a couple somewhat similar projects at the moment, but that’s all I’ve done.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 16, 2020)

I’ve done it before just not on Shig., the 6” Chicken splitter Gyuto on the bottom of picture was made from a Santoku.

for Ku, I plan to push up the shinogi line a bit as result is thinning, if doesn’t look good, I’ll remove Ku all together. I also did my TF thinning twice, while maintaining the convex grind and overall consistency. I think I need to do this in order to turn it into a knife that I actually will use.


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## McMan (Jan 16, 2020)

Not trying to be a smartass... but you could focus on changing technique instead of the knife?
For me, different blade profiles are an excuse to fiddle with different techniques and/or grips.
If all knives had a similar profile, that's not much fun...


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 16, 2020)

I do it to a certain degree, but in the end, the knife should work for the chef, not the other way around thou.


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## Ochazuke (Jan 16, 2020)

And if the knife doesn’t work for the chef, maybe find a different knife? I think that you should be patient with selling. It’ll go eventually. 

I’ve done home projects on crappy knives before too, but this feels like a waste of a good knife to me...


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## ian (Jan 16, 2020)

It depends, though. One of my home projects is a Wat, and it cuts like a dream. If all your home projects have crappy steel, you’ll never end up using any of them regularly.

That said, I’m not necessarily endorsing this project.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 17, 2020)

Here is the new Funayuki profile, what you guys think? Is it good enough for pointy tip? should I go further?





The picture above shows the new bevel with cleanly raised KU line. I made a simple stopper rig on my mouse sander. This allows me to precisely set the bevel depth & make convex grind with little chance of messing up: I call this my “Mouse Beveller”. 

I made the bevel wider than Shig. original. 
The wider bevel will allow a convex grind to be thinner behind the edge, thus, make my Shig. cut better than before:


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## musicman980 (Jan 17, 2020)

The profile looks good, can't wait to see how it looks all polished up.


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## ian (Jan 17, 2020)

Yea, let us know how it cuts after you finish. Nice job.


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## zizirex (Jan 17, 2020)

Nice Job!! I know this thread will start a war or Shigs Fanboy pissed off. I think you are making it better, by fixing what normal KU Shigs lack of (ThiCCCC behind the edge, not so wide bevel and lack of fine tip). Can't wait to see it finish!!


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## F-Flash (Jan 18, 2020)

I don't think there are that many fans of ku santoku. So imo that's nice improved done!


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## zizirex (Jan 18, 2020)

Their Santoku KU is the Worst representation of Shig, I held it once and I am not convinced a bit. Unlike Tsukasa's where when I held it, I was mind blown.


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## Kristoffer (Jan 18, 2020)

Just out of curiosity, what’s wrong with the Shig Ku Santokus (other than the general KKF preference for anything but Santokus)?


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## Garner Harrison (Jan 18, 2020)

Wow, I didnt think you'd go through with it but it looks way better. I've never used a santoku but I would bet it feels amazing to use after that little surgery you did!


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## ian (Jan 18, 2020)

Could you explain in more detail about your setup? I don’t understand how a stopper jig works, for instance. And did you just sand on a mousepad, without bothering to do a hamaguri-like change in finger placement? Anyway, give us the full play by play.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 18, 2020)

No mouse pad, lol. The mouse sander is a orbital power sander that runs on 110v power & uses sand paper. The speed of steel removal is slower than belt sander, more like a Japanese sanding wheel which runs slower speed than a belt sander but still 10x faster than manual stone.

I clamp the mouse sander face up using a vise, turn it on & then grind my knife over it like using water stone but much faster steel removal. 

The stopper gig is a piece of metal I bolted on the sander, which prevents the blade from moving past that, therefore it limits the bevel depth & present over-grind. 

If I had to re-bevel the KU line using water stone, I am sure I’d either mess up or at least made wavy ku lines. Even the Shig., at their high skill level, had slight over grind KU line at both the tip & the heel. 

It’s minor, you won’t see it if the knife is Kasumi or Ketaji with such minor over-grind. But Ku line is very unforgiven.


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## ian (Jan 18, 2020)

ma_sha1 said:


> No mouse pad, lol. The mouse sander is a orbital power sander that runs on 110v power & uses sand paper. The speed of steel removal is slower than belt sander, more like a Japanese sanding wheel which runs slower speed than a belt sander but still 10x faster than manual stone.
> 
> I clamp the mouse sander face up using a vise, turn it on & then grind my knife over it like using water stone but much faster steel removal.
> 
> ...



 For some reason I didn’t notice that you were using power tools, despite there being one in your picture. Makes more sense now how you managed to finish so fast.

How did you do the convexity? Did you do two bevels and blend them? Were the angles that you were hitting guided somehow or were you just trying to hold them freehand?

Also, were you cooling the edge somehow as you were grinding? Is there any worry about killing the temper on the edge with a mouse sander?

Edit: Btw, people sometimes sharpen on a 
compressible surface like a mousepad to preserve a slight convexity, which is what my earlier comment was about. It makes no sense in this context, though, of course, which is why I was confused, not knowing what a mouse sander was.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 18, 2020)

Picture above wasn’t finished goods, it only shows the look, the real grinding wasn’t even started. 

The cooling is not needed, unlike belt sander situation, the knife never got hot on the “Mouse Beveler”, my orbital mouse sander with DIY bevel-stop rig. 

after 4 hours of hard work, mostly 40 grid for stock removal, The knife is finally thin & I started scratch removal. I am taking a break at 320 grid, my hand & back are killing me. I am a white collar office worker, sit all day & do not have farm hands, lol.

So far, 40/80 stock removal
180/320 / scratch removal

The knife did not maintain the convex grind, it’s actually looking a lot like Dalman s-grind has been put into the bevel. This wasn’t planned, lol, but I’ll take it. It seems inevitable based on using the Mouse Beveler, I had to chase scratches in the middle which lead into a concave bevel. 

On the plus side, this should help with food release, may also satisfy my curiosity on Dalman, save me a boat load of money for no longer craving to buy one.

Here are the pictures of it parked at 320 grid for now:


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## Matus (Jan 18, 2020)

You are doing excellent job! And I really appreciate you sharing the details. You cane up with a very clever setup. Please keep posting your progress


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 18, 2020)

Thanks!


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## SeattleBen (Jan 18, 2020)

Great work with the jig. Super smart.


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## ian (Jan 18, 2020)

I’m confused about why you were led to a concave bevel. The explanation that it was inevitable with the mouse beveler doesn’t quite compute for me. Is the surface of the beveler not flat? I mean, if the knife started off convex then you’ll get more scratches initially in the middle of the bevel, and perhaps with the beveler you ground it all the way down to flat. But if you did, there would be just as many scratches on the sides of the bevel as in the interior.

I can see, though, that if you ground the bevel completely flat, but you want to have a nonflat bevel and you don’t want to mess with the edge or the shinogi, then you’re going to make something concave. Is that the point?


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 18, 2020)

You are correct, it can be managed to stay convex but not the way I did it. I tried to avoid the KU line once I set it, so I recessed the sand paper a bit. This caused subsequent sanding to end before the KU line, thus, causing it to be concave.

I did a lot more sanding to the front, front is concave, the back of the knife is actually still convex. So the knife has a concave to convex transition like the grind on my TF. I think it helps to achieves the combination of thin tip & powerful heel.

I finished it to 1200 grid, It’s semi polished & you can see a Nashiji band between the polished bevel & the KU zone:






It is not obvious once I applied protective oil. I think it won’t be obvious once in use, &once I force patina on it also:






The question is, should I leave it be or should I attempt to polish the Nashiji band? May risk messing up the KU line thou. 

I’ll have no choice but to turn the whole face into Nashiji if I mess up the KU line.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 22, 2020)

Well, I didn’t like the Nashiji band, so I decided to thin it down further on the stones: 120/240/800/1000.

I did King 800 first but I didn’t like the muddy fake Kasumi like finish. The knife is now at 1000 grid stone finish with a Mazaki Hairline like of finish.

So much thinning has been done making it almost a zero edge, much much sharper than before.


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## zizirex (Jan 23, 2020)

nice, you should be able to polish it even more. how to maintain a slight convex is pretty tricky.


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## ma_sha1 (Jan 25, 2020)

I decided to go back to the mouse sander as the stone polish exposed the horizontal line just below KU, which doesn’t look natural.

This time, no bevel stop rig, just mouse sander 40/120/240/600/1200, and finally 2000. 

I pushed the KU Shinogi furtber up, it’s much much thinner than stock. Here is the finished knife, looks more like a Gyuto than Santoku now. Finally, I am happy with this knife after two weeks of thinning.


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## inferno (Jan 25, 2020)

ma_sha1 said:


> Here is the new Funayuki profile, what you guys think? Is it good enough for pointy tip? should I go further?
> 
> 
> 
> ...



looking good man. 

i have "reprofiled" several knives. my last one was a hinoura 240 into a 180 santoku  used an angle grinder for that.

i like your setup. probably gonna try that one out myself in the future. for flattening bevels.


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## zizirex (Jan 26, 2020)

ma_sha1 said:


> I decided to go back to the mouse sander as the stone polish exposed the horizontal line just below KU, which doesn’t look natural.
> 
> This time, no bevel stop rig, just mouse sander 40/120/240/600/1200, and finally 2000.
> 
> I pushed the KU Shinogi furtber up, it’s much much thinner than stock. Here is the finished knife, looks more like a Gyuto than Santoku now. Finally, I am happy with this knife after two weeks of thinning.



Nice, too bad some of the KU is fading. You could mask off some of the kurouchi to make it crisp when you sand it down.


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## ma_sha1 (Feb 9, 2020)

zizirex said:


> nice, you should be able to polish it even more. how to maintain a slight convex is pretty tricky.



Well, I did just that. I was happy with the performance but still not digging the look, I went ahead with round 3 of thinning, followed by removal of KU to turn it into Nashiji finish, then topped off with Chicken breast patina to give it a custom look. I am finally happy with the look, pretty bad ass & it cuts on par with my thinned TF Maboroshi.

Done, Finished!


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## jacko9 (Feb 9, 2020)

Kristoffer said:


> Just out of curiosity, what’s wrong with the Shig Ku Santokus (other than the general KKF preference for anything but Santokus)?



I just bought one from JNS and my wife first impression is that it's too heavy. I haven't used it yet as I am trying to decide if I want to keep it or sell it (or give it to family).


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## ma_sha1 (Feb 9, 2020)

Yeah, it’s on the hefty side. Mine with custom handle upgrade weights 185g for 170mm. After 3 weeks of thinning, it’s 166g for 167mm, more reasonable.


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