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I’ve never owned one of my “good” knives. They have all been ones that fell into the “to good to scrap, not good enough to sell” category. Today I decided I would make myself a “good” knife. Little edc in W2. It’s .300” thick, but “actually” a 1/16” thick lightly convexed blade with a hollow ground T shaped spine. I’ll taper the tang and drill pin holes after heat treating. This is at 320 grit. I’ll apply clay for the hamon tonight and heat treat tomorrow.
 
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I’ve never owned one of my “good” knives. They have all been ones that fell into the “to good to scrap, not good enough to sell” category. Today I decided I would make myself a “good” knife. Little edc in W2. It’s .300” thick, but “actually” a 1/16” thick lightly convexed blade with a hollow ground T shaped spine. I’ll taper the tang and drill pin holes after heat treating. This is at 320 grit. I’ll apply clay for the hamon tonight and heat treat tomorrow.
I never have any luck drilling holes after HT.
 
Finishing up a big rehab order!

3 Stainless Damascus spoons were thinned/lightened from 3.8oz to 2.5oz each and then re etched
3 Burnt Chestnut handle pieces got red spacers, faux ivory ferrules installed
2 Ho/Buffalo Horn handles got buffalo horn butt caps installed after owner cut the handles too short and exposed the tang hole slot
1 Ho/Honey Buffalo horn handle got resanded
1 Buffalo Horn/Ebony and steel spacer handle got resanded to get the spacers flush again after wood shrunk and owner tried to fix it themselves

1 Shun Gyuto got a full regrind/thinning/etching, spine/choil rounding, and fixed the handle where the owner tried to thin down the metal butt cap and went too far, causing an ugly hole, which I enlarged and then hammered some home made mokume from quarters into the hole as an inlay.
1 Damascus Santoku I shorted an existing handle, added a spacer and ferrule to, resized to fit the santoku and then installed
1 Hirotomo White #1 Honyaki Yo handle knife thinned down, spine/choil eased and re sharpened.
2 Petty rehandles using supplied pieces from other handles and adding spacers. PITA having tiny pieces of wood to work with that are barely larger than the other pieces, so everything has to be perfectly centered.
1 Funayuki tang repair (snapped just past the machi cuts in the tang by the owner when he removed the handle). I used some SS tubing crushed into an oval and JB welded to the existing stub of the tang and then the handle opened up to be reinstalled.
1 full rehandle on the MAC Bread knife in Walnut and Red G10, stainless pins.

I still have 2 more kitchen knives to regrind for another customer and than I can get back to normal knives and Tuna Pokers!394569851_10102175049261040_7566416650174088646_n.jpg
 
Finishing up a big rehab order!

3 Stainless Damascus spoons were thinned/lightened from 3.8oz to 2.5oz each and then re etched
3 Burnt Chestnut handle pieces got red spacers, faux ivory ferrules installed
2 Ho/Buffalo Horn handles got buffalo horn butt caps installed after owner cut the handles too short and exposed the tang hole slot
1 Ho/Honey Buffalo horn handle got resanded
1 Buffalo Horn/Ebony and steel spacer handle got resanded to get the spacers flush again after wood shrunk and owner tried to fix it themselves

1 Shun Gyuto got a full regrind/thinning/etching, spine/choil rounding, and fixed the handle where the owner tried to thin down the metal butt cap and went too far, causing an ugly hole, which I enlarged and then hammered some home made mokume from quarters into the hole as an inlay.
1 Damascus Santoku I shorted an existing handle, added a spacer and ferrule to, resized to fit the santoku and then installed
1 Hirotomo White #1 Honyaki Yo handle knife thinned down, spine/choil eased and re sharpened.
2 Petty rehandles using supplied pieces from other handles and adding spacers. PITA having tiny pieces of wood to work with that are barely larger than the other pieces, so everything has to be perfectly centered.
1 Funayuki tang repair (snapped just past the machi cuts in the tang by the owner when he removed the handle). I used some SS tubing crushed into an oval and JB welded to the existing stub of the tang and then the handle opened up to be reinstalled.
1 full rehandle on the MAC Bread knife in Walnut and Red G10, stainless pins.

I still have 2 more kitchen knives to regrind for another customer and than I can get back to normal knives and Tuna Pokers!View attachment 83670
Interesting job. Not so sure I’d tackle that!
 
It was a pain, especially because of the little pieces! Very tedious and time consuming! I have my way of doing Wa handles from larger blocks, so using premade/preshaped pieces from other handles is a pain! The burnt chestnut handles are easy to do since they are often oval or D shape, so it's easier to shape. The octagon handles are more difficult trying to match the bevels and tapers, so I rough it on the belt sander, then clean up with sandpaper and granite reference plate by hand.

I used to do a lot of belt thinning, re profiling and re handling Japanese kitchen knives years ago, so I have all of the equipment still, but prefer to start with my method start to finish! The spoons were interesting trying to take weight off and not weaken them and the customer wanted a dark etch, not a polished stainless looking etch, so that took a while in my etching solution!
 
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