Cleaning day

I'm waiting for Jason to finish his joint to post the new one.

Today was cleaning day. A few blades' ura, my room and the stones. Oh, and in the morning I touched up those top facets. This is the before picture so you see the colour of the vice with some oil

For the ura I was using my dad's dremel with an orange stone, and lots of dressing with my diamond dresser. The stone gets clogged with the rust. Small movement parallel to the blade edge, raising the tool when you reach the edge. Clean the whole surface, go to a flat stone to check your progress.

This is what one year ago I really afraid of doing, my hands were more stupid back then. Today it's a piece of cake, and a really good economy. Grinders are cheaper than whetstones, so better use a grinder to have a nice looking ura and make your stone last longer.

It takes time though, it was like 2 hours for 4 large blades and one small not pictured.

I bought that blade for peanuts in ebay, it reminded me of some Tanaka has, for the skin colour, it kinda has the same feel of it:

The bottom mark, I think it's a guild mark. Mine has also the lines in the back (different pattern) and a beautifully made lamination line, no numbers though. When It's sharp I put a pic of it. I don't think it's a famous blacksmith or anything, but it's really nicely made, and super light. Very easy to sharpen too. I need to get a dai for it, and I'm really thinking of buying white oak from japan. Did I say that yesterday already? (Reading more from Tanaka's blog, maybe my blade with no number is from Sato-san 佐藤さんの鉋 brother of the blacksmith of Tanaka's picture.)

Last one, this is the one I took most off

it actually kind of retained its ugly shape, you can see two flats next the the sides of the ura. All that was polished before.

It was really nice to feel how faster the flattening goes as you take more material from off from the blade.

Now, the stones:

I'm using in general the red unknown brand bought in paris like a century ago with my sushi knife. Then the 3000 white/yello cerax? suehiro? I got it from fine tools. It's slower than the naniwas but I'm starting to like it slow. In the middle a natural my dad had complete glazed that I've been cleaning and trying out. Cuts fast and feels like something between 1000 and 5000, still cannot figure out well. On top a cheap dictum natural stone that works for shit without a nagura. On the left small 330mate and murakami black nagura. Then the 400 naniwa that is like 3 microns thick by now. (That's why I started to use the brandless red, I was running out of "coarse" stones.)

We really need Jason to finish his joint, I'm running out of tools to fix by now, need to start cutting joints again.