# Polishing knife to emphasize banding



## ExistentialHero (Apr 16, 2020)

Howdy! I have a Shiraki honyaki gyuto in Blue #1 (this one) that has been my daily driver for about eight months. (Don't worry, I'm very gentle 

As the patina has developed, it's ended up with a sort of hazy gray that obscures the gorgeous banding and, to a lesser extent, the hamon. The surface still feels very smooth and it's still wicked thin behind the edge, so it doesn't need grinding, but I'd still like to polish it up a bit. Any suggestions for how best to make that alloy banding really pop?


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## Runner_up (Apr 16, 2020)

Bar keepers friend will remove the patina lickety split. Then you can use fingerstones to bring back out the banding and hamon.


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## MrHiggins (Apr 16, 2020)

I don't know how to bring out the banding, but that's a seriously sweet daily driver!


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 16, 2020)

Runner_up said:


> Bar keepers friend will remove the patina lickety split. Then you can use fingerstones to bring back out the banding and hamon.



Thanks, I'll give BKF a try and see how it looks with the patina stripped. I don't actually own any finger stones, so further polishing will have to wait until I acquire some 



MrHiggins said:


> I don't know how to bring out the banding, but that's a seriously sweet daily driver!



I expected it to be mostly a display piece when I picked it up, but it's actually a really great working knife. It's super thin and light, nimble enough that it almost feels like a petty. It's especially fun with onions, pew pew!


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## drsmp (Apr 16, 2020)

You can also polish with a small felt pad (I use the round ones made for dremel tools - I slice them in half so they’re thinner ) I use dried mud from waterstones and windex as well as diamond paste. The mud from an 800 King stone gives a passable kasumi finsih


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## soigne_west (Apr 16, 2020)

I can send you some fingerstones


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## drsmp (Apr 16, 2020)




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## Dendrobatez (Apr 17, 2020)

Very nice finish, I'm going to have to try this out


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## lemeneid (Apr 17, 2020)

drsmp said:


> View attachment 77175
> View attachment 77176
> View attachment 77177


Never thought about doing this. I have a hand dremel at home. What was your progression like and how long did it take for you to achieve this? I've got lots of diamond paste and uchi powder at home


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## kayman67 (Apr 17, 2020)

Have you tried any kind of polishing paste?


drsmp said:


> You can also polish with a small felt pad (I use the round ones made for dremel tools - I slice them in half so they’re thinner ) I use dried mud from waterstones and windex as well as diamond paste. The mud from an 800 King stone gives a passable kasumi finsih



I second this. Also simichrome seems to put a nice shine and final contrast close to original, if you desire this, as it removes patina. Keep in mind that it needs to be used in opened spaces and to wash the knife well after.


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## drsmp (Apr 17, 2020)

To be clear I used the felt pad as a fingerstone and polished with my fingertips - I did not use the power tool! I sanded the Kato heel to tip to get rid of the grind marks, some corrosion and scratches. I think started at 320 , stopping at 1200. Then I used the felt pad loaded with King 800 dried mud/windex- also going heel to tip. I’d say 15 minutes per side to polish. The sanding was tedious, I probably put in over an hour on each side. I also used a small felt pad/diamond paste on the core to minimize fine scratches


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## drsmp (Apr 17, 2020)

The top pic was after sanding, bottom after felt fingerstone


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## Runner_up (Apr 17, 2020)

Man I think that Kato looks great. Nice job


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 17, 2020)

drsmp said:


> You can also polish with a small felt pad (I use the round ones made for dremel tools - I slice them in half so they’re thinner ) I use dried mud from waterstones and windex as well as diamond paste. The mud from an 800 King stone gives a passable kasumi finsih



Ooh, this technique seems really promising. The only stone I have that builds significant mud is a Kitayama--I'm otherwise using a bunch of Shapton Pros, which have many virtues, but muddiness is not among them. The Kitayama abraisive is quite fine, but I guess the failure mode here would probably be "spent half an hour and didn't get anywhere", so I'll give it a whirl!


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## drsmp (Apr 17, 2020)

The technique works well on wrought iron clad knifes (like Halcyon Forge) to give the area of transition from iron to core (not sure if the correct term for this area of the blade) some pop


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 17, 2020)

Wow, that really works! I used a blue shop towel (basically a heavy-duty paper towel) with thick pasty mud from my Kitayama; it cut right through the gray hazy layer and made the banding and hamon really pop again.

This was a few minutes' work with the towel:





Obviously I'm not done, but I forgot to get a "before" picture so I wanted to get a shot that still had some of the gray haze for comparison.


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## M1k3 (Apr 17, 2020)

Kind of doesn't surprise me the Kitayama worked so well. Supposedly it has natural stone powder in it also.


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## Slim278 (Apr 17, 2020)

I have used Flitz metal polish to remove patina from knives with good results.


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## applepieforbreakfast (Apr 19, 2020)

ExistentialHero said:


> Wow, that really works! I used a blue shop towel (basically a heavy-duty paper towel) with thick pasty mud from my Kitayama; it cut right through the gray hazy layer and made the banding and hamon really pop again.



Was this with the mud from an 8k Kitayama? Not sure if there's another grit available somewhere.


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 19, 2020)

applepieforbreakfast said:


> Was this with the mud from an 8k Kitayama? Not sure if there's another grit available somewhere.



Yup, the 8k (also sometimes called 12k). I like it for adding some refinement to edges, but it also seems to work well for this.


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## Malcolm Johnson (Apr 19, 2020)

Can’t wait


ExistentialHero said:


> Wow, that really works! I used a blue shop towel (basically a heavy-duty paper towel) with thick pasty mud from my Kitayama; it cut right through the gray hazy layer and made the banding and hamon really pop again.
> 
> This was a few minutes' work with the towel:
> View attachment 77232
> ...


 to see the final product because this looks amazing already. Totally going to use this on the bevels has of a knife I have in the mail....


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 23, 2020)

Update: I did some more and this actually started heading towards mirror polish, losing some of the contrast. I think my initial work might have just been cleaning off patina. I also got some scuffing and tipped several fingers in the process, so I'm gonna take a break for a while


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 23, 2020)

Based on the results in an earlier thread, it seems like @brooksie967 is a real expert here. How'd you do it?


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## lemeneid (Apr 23, 2020)

ExistentialHero said:


> Based on the results in an earlier thread, it seems like @brooksie967 is a real expert here. How'd you do it?


You have to get it to a mirror polish first, then after fingerstones and etching for lots of contrast and banding.


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## ExistentialHero (Apr 24, 2020)

lemeneid said:


> You have to get it to a mirror polish first, then after fingerstones and etching for lots of contrast and banding.



Any particular etchants you'd use for this? (Not that I have the mirror polish or fingerstone stages done yet, but it's nice to know specifically what I'm not attempting yet )


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## Ktva (May 5, 2020)

Has anyone tried to use magic eraser to remove patina? I guess it have quite fine abrasive affect and should not scratch surface so much.


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## Wander Vanhoucke (May 24, 2020)

ExistentialHero said:


> Any particular etchants you'd use for this? (Not that I have the mirror polish or fingerstone stages done yet, but it's nice to know specifically what I'm not attempting yet )


Lemon juice! it's very mild so you can't really overdo it, vinegar works too but lemon juice reveals more details. Get the juice from a lemon and add a few drops of dish soap, to break the surface tension and make it etch more evenly, and wipe it on until you get a grayish patina. polish with loose abrasive. Rinse and repeat. Walter Sorrells does it this way, check out his swords.


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## Michi (May 24, 2020)

Ktva said:


> Has anyone tried to use magic eraser to remove patina? I guess it have quite fine abrasive affect and should not scratch surface so much.


Yes, it work OK. About as well as using a fine rust eraser.


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## applepieforbreakfast (May 28, 2020)

Instead of using Dremel polishing pads like a fingerstone, I used those felt pads that go on the bottom of chair legs to prevent scuffing of floors. They're adhesive backed so your fingers don't shift on the pad. Skip the ones that nail in though, they don't feel very good.


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## ExistentialHero (Jun 9, 2020)

A few alternating cycles of lemon juice with soap to etch and a blue shop towel with King 800 mud to polish did great! There's still some darker areas that I'd like to clean up--I'll have to give the furniture pad trick a try--but the banding really jumps out now. Thanks everyone for the suggestions so far!


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## ian (Jun 9, 2020)

That looks super nice. Really well done.


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## madmotts (Jun 15, 2020)

I just cleaned up some stubborn white patina on my Yoshikane SKD using mud from a synthetic 2k and 5k. Required quite a bit of elbow grease. I wish i had taken a before picture. I tried Brasso first and it wasn't doing to much. For some reason it (names removed) was left with lime juice on it for an hour and it turned dark gray with some spots in it. Gotta bring stainless to other people's houses.


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## Majbjorn (Jul 23, 2020)

Great tips! I'm gonna go ahead and try some of that lemon juice etch on my Ikeda honyaki. There's some light banding I want to bring out.


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## naader (Jul 29, 2020)

ExistentialHero said:


> Wow, that really works! I used a blue shop towel (basically a heavy-duty paper towel) with thick pasty mud from my Kitayama; it cut right through the gray hazy layer and made the banding and hamon really pop again.
> 
> This was a few minutes' work with the towel:
> View attachment 77232
> ...


Try this with uchi powder


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