# Stainless Kaeru Rehab Project Pics



## tostadas (Nov 3, 2022)

“Anything in life worth doing, is worth overdoing.”

A little over a year ago, I gave this knife to my brother. At the time, I torched and oiled the stock ho wood handle, and did some rounding of the spine and choil. I recently took the knife back for a simple tune up and ended up putting in a little extra work. I documented some of the steps along the way, mainly with pics from my phone.

*The Knife*
Kaeru Stainless 210mm from JNS. One of the best value stainless knives out there, featuring a nice thick spine at the handle, decent taper, and a full machi. Stock fit and finish is what you would expect at its price point; square edges, an OK brushed finish, and a literal flat chisel grind at the edge. It had been used for over a year and showed signs of moderate use, but nothing terrible.
















*The Plan*
The original plan was just to sharpen the knife, maybe thin it a bit for improved performance. In the process, I decided to just fix the stock chisel grind that came with the knife and do a full right-hand convex. Also took the opportunity to try my hand at making a mono wa handle with a nice piece of wood selected from my collection. Then finish everything off with a natural stone kasumi.







*New Handle*
A sweet piece of stabilized maple burl. I don’t have a lot of power tools at my disposal outside of a handheld drill and a cheap sander. So the bulk of the work was done with hand tools and sandpaper.










Filling a few remaining voids before final sanding





This piece of wood was originally going to be used for one of my cleavers and the hole was sized for a much thicker tang. So I used sawdust and epoxy to clean it up for a nicer final finish of the tang hole.





First coat of hardwax oil, my favorite finish, which protects the wood well, without taking away the natural wood feel.





I've got some more photos of the finished handle posted in the 'Sticks' thread for anyone that's interested





Show us your sticks (finished handle projects)...


I have stabilized lots of spalted wood, and frequently the starting weight of a blank is around 50 grams-- finished weight 150 grams.. Looks the same, the only change is the density. Of course you can use dye to change the colors too if you want. This is a big learning curve. So think about...




www.kitchenknifeforums.com


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## tostadas (Nov 3, 2022)

*Thinning and Polishing*
Synthetic stone progression from JNS 300 up to Arashiyama 6k, some sandpaper, and naturals. I also polished up the spine and choil a bit more.





























Hope you guys enjoyed!


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## HumbleHomeCook (Nov 3, 2022)

Great thread. Thank you!

I'm messing with an Akifusa gyuto right now. It's seen a good bit of use and I noticed quite a bit of scratching. Might do some work on it this weekend and while I don't have expectations of reaching that excellent finish you have, I'm still inspired. 

Do you find the machi nicer for fitting, a detriment or no difference?


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## Ericfg (Nov 3, 2022)

Nice looking knife, nice rehab, and great thread!


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## tostadas (Nov 3, 2022)

HumbleHomeCook said:


> Do you find the machi nicer for fitting, a detriment or no difference?


I like the feel of having the thicker neck compared to a thinner one. If all you're doing is refitting a blade back into it's original handle, and it fit well to start with, then the machi makes it easy because you don't have to mark off a stop point, and the up/down angle adjustment of the blade is already taken care of. On the flip side, if you do want to make any adjustments, such as changing the distance from handle to choil, then that will require extra work. In this case, the top part of the machi wasnt aligned that well with the bottom, so in order to make the knife sit flush and straight in the new handle, it required a little additional metal removal from the machi.


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## Pie (Nov 4, 2022)

Holy cow man. That’s professional level spa day. 

I also now know who to ask about all my harebrained woodworking projects.


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## martchap (Nov 4, 2022)

tostadas said:


> “Anything in life worth doing, is worth overdoing.”
> 
> A little over a year ago, I gave this knife to my brother. At the time, I torched and oiled the stock ho wood handle, and did some rounding of the spine and choil. I recently took the knife back for a simple tune up and ended up putting in a little extra work. I documented some of the steps along the way, mainly with pics from my phone.
> 
> ...


How do you cut the 'faceted' faces length-wise along the rectangular blank?


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## timebard (Nov 4, 2022)

Awesome work on both the blade rehab and handle!


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## tostadas (Nov 5, 2022)

martchap said:


> How do you cut the 'faceted' faces length-wise along the rectangular blank?


I sand it down to the correct height/width rectangle* first. Then I mark off the facets with a straight line along the blank, and sand them down til it hits the line. There is very little material to remove from the corners, so that part is not so tedious by hand.

*it's close to a rectangle, but tapered so the front is smaller than the back. Hard to tell from the pics on this particular material.


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