# Thinning WIP



## Badgertooth (Jul 12, 2016)

James at K&S is going to have kittens when he sees this but:

From machined on finish with faux shinogi line





To half a 220 Naniwa superstone later.





I have hit all but one low spot. I may sand this out when I refinish as the knife is performing very near where I want it now.





One side still to go and you can see very clearly that the shinogi is a machined on effect. That's not an indictment, lots of great knives have this. But I want to turn this from a great knife into a beast knife. Half way there and performance is much improved. 









I will update how I get on with refinishing, I am going to turn vertical finishing into horizontal finishing to future proof any further refinishing in years to come. Any advice on getting it slick outside of a tight progression of wet & dry in one direction from handle to tip?


----------



## panda (Jul 12, 2016)

man that is a lot of stock removal, looks like you completely changed the geometry of the knife. what i liked about the original ginsan series grind was its food release with its sharp shoulders.


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 12, 2016)

Sorry, I should have pointed out that this is not the Tanaka but the Kurosaki. I have no intention of changing the geometry on my Tanaka as it hits a nice sweet spot on release versus cutting performance. Where the Kurosaki was on the carrot-cracking side of that divide and I'd happily forego food release for performance.


----------



## XooMG (Jul 13, 2016)

The more I use my knives, the more satisfied I am with an "honest" finish that shows the geometry, even if it's got some wobble and wave. I think of this as an all-around upgrade to the knife.

I really need to get around to redoing my Shoshin Sakura.


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 13, 2016)

XooMG said:


> The more I use my knives, the more satisfied I am with an "honest" finish that shows the geometry, even if it's got some wobble and wave. I think of this as an all-around upgrade to the knife.
> 
> I really need to get around to redoing my Shoshin Sakura.



Yeah. I also don't have the equipment like a water wheel and belt-sanders or skill to lengthen and change the angle of the bevel like you got Kurosaki san to do with your little beauty on BST. What I do have is a flat stone and dogged determination to attack the blade flat. The grind isn't rhomboidal like a Kono Fujiyama and I'm not destroying an S-grind like on a Shig so I figured I'd literally thin the knife on the vertical and get the bevels more even. It was actually your BST post that convinced me to do it.


----------



## DanHumphrey (Jul 13, 2016)

How did you like the knife before all that work? Because it looks beautiful...


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 13, 2016)

It was a belter on softer items but a little wedgie on denser items. I'd take a scuffed up performer over a pretty drawer queen.


----------



## DanHumphrey (Jul 13, 2016)

Badgertooth said:


> It was a belter on softer items but a little wedgie on denser items. I'd take a scuffed up performer over a pretty drawer queen.



Oh, ha, I didn't mean "it was pretty before why did you wreck it"; I meant "it's so pretty but I'm not comfortable thinning so is it a viable option for me out-of-the-box". Sounds like it is. 

How do y'all learn thinning, anyway? Pick up a cheap wedgy knife and go to town?


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 13, 2016)

It's a great option out the box! 

Thinning is the scariest thing in the world until you start thinning. But grabbing a sharpie and working slowly and carefully on a cheap knife is the best way to go. You'll learn a tonne about your knife and improve your sharpening a lot too.


----------



## DanHumphrey (Jul 14, 2016)

I may just do that. One question though: when you say the shinogi is a "machined-on effect", what exactly do you mean? Whether it gets there by forging, machining, or grinding, isn't it a distinct change in the angle of the metal, and you ground it off on the stone? I'm either too blind or inexperienced to see what by "very clearly a machined on effect", no matter how many times I stare at the pictures. :O


----------



## XooMG (Jul 14, 2016)

DanHumphrey said:


> I may just do that. One question though: when you say the shinogi is a "machined-on effect", what exactly do you mean? Whether it gets there by forging, machining, or grinding, isn't it a distinct change in the angle of the metal, and you ground it off on the stone? I'm either too blind or inexperienced to see what by "very clearly a machined on effect", no matter how many times I stare at the pictures. :O


He means the shinogi you see in the initial product is cosmetic, and does not match the geometry of the knife.


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 14, 2016)

XooMG said:


> He means the shinogi you see in the initial product is cosmetic, and does not match the geometry of the knife.



Yup, perfect. Can you see how in the first photo there's a perfect crisp line that looks to be the apex of angle where blade flat becomes bevel. And that bevel is perfectly uniform? Almost as if someone took painters tape and sandblasted the bevel?

Then zoom into the fourth picture if you can. That is the bevel laid flat on the stones for the first time. That line is suddenly not so straight and you can see what look like reflective pools of light. Those pools are low spots in the grind. 

This process is actually more of abt getting the real grind closer to the cosmetic grind than the opposite. By the time I'm done there'll be no lows and, in theory, less wobbles on the line where the bevel starts. But then, similarly to the maker, any bits that are just too much work to fix, I'll cosmetically mask with sandpaper on the blade flat and muddy stones & finger stones on the shinogi.


----------



## DanHumphrey (Jul 14, 2016)

Ah, thanks for the explanation! Now I do see it. Is that the sort of thing Shigs are popular for not having?


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 14, 2016)

Exactly. Different grind but wonderfully consistent. Part of that is due to the fact that they are not ground mechanically, they are meticulously scraped with a draw-knife type thing called a Sen before hand sharpening.


----------



## Badgertooth (Jul 29, 2016)

Getting there.


----------



## Doug (Jul 31, 2016)

Looking sweet. I like what your doing with this blade. Are you concentrating on the flat upper portion of the blade with a sandpaper progression and leaving the edge bevel with a stone finish?


----------



## Badgertooth (Aug 1, 2016)

Thanks Doug. I'm doing something in between. I'm using sandpaper and other abrasives to blend into the stone sharpening


----------



## Badgertooth (Aug 1, 2016)

But yes, concentrating primarily on the flat of the blade


----------



## sharptools (Aug 10, 2016)

Badgertooth said:


> Getting there.



Amazing job Badgertooth. You've inspired me to work on an old knife. I started working on a old Hiromoto 240 honyaki that I've been meaning to thin. Great value for the steel but lots of work. Thinning is almost done. then going to go through the wet/dry sandpaper process.


----------



## sharptools (Aug 11, 2016)

Just a thought. I really liked this thread. Is anyone interested in making this thread sticky? I see a refinish/mirror finishing/thinning thread here and there and always enjoy them. Sorta like the latest knife buy/patina threads in the other section.


----------



## Badgertooth (Aug 11, 2016)

Yeah maybe a refinishing thread under the sharpening station.


----------



## DanHumphrey (Aug 17, 2016)

Sorry to pester with questions, but how do you thin to this degree without flattening the grind, as in the "flattened grind" thread?


----------



## Badgertooth (Aug 17, 2016)

DanHumphrey said:


> Sorry to pester with questions, but how do you thin to this degree without flattening the grind, as in the "flattened grind" thread?



Haha no, not at all, that's the point of sharing. I've largely maintained it by working on the bevel at its original angle before attacking the flat. After doing all that work it made me realise that what I want more than the original geometry is a zero bevel result.


----------



## sharptools (Aug 18, 2016)

DanHumphrey said:


> Sorry to pester with questions, but how do you thin to this degree without flattening the grind, as in the "flattened grind" thread?



I'm not sure how others do it but when thinning I always use a "very very slight" angle instead of completely flat. After some blending you get our original curvature back. Also I always keep 7:3, 6:4, 5:5 strokes to retain the original geometry of the respective 70/30, 60/40, 50/50.


----------

