Show and tell- 3/25/2014 (Special birthday edition!)

 

A few weeks ago, Junji put a REALLY nice kanna up for sale. My wife immediately told me to buy it, "If you don't, I will!", she said. Here I was, feeling all responsible and prudent for not immediately buying yet ANOTHER Japanese carpenter's plane. Besides, it was too nice, too new. My other tools would get jealous!

Well...... Actually, after seeing me wander aimlessly about the house, sighing heartfully, she finally got exasperated enough to ask, "Why the glum face?". Wisely foreseeing days of excruciating should I/shouldn't I, she decided to be proactive and kill two birds with one stone. I have a birthday coming up soon, and I am one of those people who are impossible to shop for, so she saw the perfect opportunity. Wise AND beautiful!

I have also begun my foray into high quality saws. My personal sharpening epiphany has lead me to learn how to sharpen EVERYTHING that I use. To transform a tool that merely works, into something that feels like an extension of your own hands..... Well, the thought of a disposable tool makes me a bit sad now. But EVERYONE uses disposable blade saws now, right?

Disposables work great, last a long time, AND are cheap. I, of course, need to buck the current and swim upstream. Given the choice between common and cheap over rare and difficult, I unfailingly choose the more obscure. I have been waiting a while for exactly this type of saw, a azebiki-noko, to use for cutting small joints and such. An opportunity presented itself....

A NOS Nakaya azebiki-noko. I think that it is made by Shigemon, but I'm not sure. In any event, it's here and I'm happy.

 

I need to make a handle.

 

 

A bit of surface rust, but no pitting, from sitting on a shelf for 30 years. One side is rip tooth, the other is crosscut.

 

 

The teeth are so tiny and sharp, they remind me of the teeth of a fish. A mean little bitey fish!

 

 

The blade(plate) is dramatically tapered in thickness. This photo is looking from the heel, towards the toe. It looks like the blade thins into nothing.

 

The edges are beveled and tapered, hand done. Perfect.

 

 

 

I happen to already have another saw (a 270mm Ryoba) made by the same blacksmith, but a different grade, more machine made than hand made.

 

Different sizes.....

 

....same signature.

 

I had heard about happy saws, and how they will "sing" when being used, how they resonate. The big saw will sing, true, but the little saw...... The little saw rings, clear as a bell, when you touch it. And keeps ringing, like a tuning fork. It's actually a bit unnerving.

 

This is my first "real" saw, a professional grade tool, and to compare the two saws, side by side, there is little to compare. They are very different. The little azebiki breaths quality. Sharpening is gonna be a b***h, though.

 

 

 

Now, my most expensive Japanese tool, although that's not saying much, haha! For the same price you could buy a (new) very mediocre chisel from Japan Woodworker.

 

72mm Kojiro hira-ganna (finishing plane).

 

 

 

My first plane that still has its koppa-gaeshi intact, nice and tight.

 

******EDIT 3/1/2015******

Doesn't this guy read his own stuff? I need to correct some terminology here,sorry. Obviously if you want to learn the proper terms, you might search elsewhere,haha. I suggest Chris hall.

I said koppa-gaeshi, but that's actually the nearly vertical ledge just in front of the blade's cutting edge.

What I meant to say.......is that the TSUTSUMI is still intact. The tsutsumi is the funny little ledge that contacts the bevel on the primary blade, and is primarily seen on the better quality dai's. After a few years of conditioning the sole of your kanna dai, the tsutsumi dwindles away to a mere flap of wood, but this kanna is virtually new still.

My apologies, my bad.

 

*****end edit*****

 

 

 

It even came with its own house!

 

 

 

The ura-suki has been carefully preserved, and has probably only been sharpened a few times. I love how easy the back face is to sharpen, when it hasn't been all fouled up. No fat ashi here! Ito-ura, here I come!

 

 

The soft iron ren-tetsu is VERY soft, easy to work, and sharpening will be a simple affair.

 

It also has a lot of figure. I expect that this is a special variety of iron.

 

The chip breaker blade has a spot of discoloration, where the hot (Yes, hot!) shavings and resin have gummed up the blade.

 

Sometimes a chip breaker blade will get almost blue from the heat of planing, certainly discolored, and you can feel the heat as you cut certain woods. I would guess that it has something to do with moisture content and all of the heat energy that is released as the water molecules change phase.

 

 

The detailed texture on the head of the blade is very deep and 3-D. I almost wonder if it was done using an arc-welder, it looks strangely familiar. It's not something that was done using a texturing hammer, in any event.

 

The head is a bit deformed by hammer strikes, but not badly.

 

Not surprisingly, I need to immediately polish it. Notice that I said polish, not sharpen. It IS sharp! And the bevel angle is already right where I want it, 30 degrees.

 

I head right to my best stone, the Nakayama-esque asagi.

 

Soooo much figure to the iron. The blacksmith used these remarkable materials to achieve this exact effect.....and this is ONLY visible if you use these stones. A true example of a functional synthesis in art, I suppose.

 

 

The bevel surface looks dull and uneven, but is actually an almost perfect mirror.

 

 

So cool.

 

 

AND the super soft wrought iron was easy to repair. It only took a handful of light hammer blows to reshape the head, back into its intended form. This is the softest metal that I have ever worked, by far. I tried to duplicate the original file marks, too.

 

Definitely my best birthday present, ever. How did you guess?

 

 

The danger here is that a door has been opened, a precedent has been set. If I mope enough and let slip some mournful sighs, will she buy me these oh so nice tsuki-nomi that Junji found this morning.....

 

 

20-22 inches of giant chisel, meant for fine tuning the supremely detailed joinery used in temple construction. So very pretty, two with ebony handles and what COULD be ren-tetsu bodies (very rare in chisels) and the third just, well......just nice to look at.

 

Sigh....... sigh.....*ahem*...SIGH!!!

 

 

 

 

 

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Waterstone reality.... an Asagi of Indeterminate Origin (AIO), part 2

Slurry slurry slurry...... A funny sounding word in its own right, and it just gets MORE odd when you use it.

DMT #1200 slurry.

This is new territory for me, in terms of natural waterstones. My finest stone is a koppa (piece or splinter, sort of) Ozuku asagi, but this stone is finer yet and the action is smoother without being soft. Really easy to use and FAST, for its grit. I thought that the Ozuku was relatively fast, but THIS waterstone is about 4x faster! When I close my eyes and touch the Ozuku, I think of a blackboard, a writing slate, cold, sharp. When I touch this stone, I think..... cool, firm, a hard surface dusted with powder...

I want to try this stone with the ODC, but first I need to go back and do a bit more ground work..... and a reality check.

T=30sec. each stone (I'm not hardcore or anything).

This is the "ink" stone and the Ozuku asagi, using the ODC nagura. The slurry on Inky has oxidized to more of a gray/brown, but it was black a few seconds ago. The slurry of the Ozuku is still black. I am concentrating on polishing just the steel, so I am using a stroke parallel to the cutting edge.

When I use the ODC, I give the stone just a few swipes, barely enough to see. It is a VERY mild abrasive and as the ODC breaks down, it seems to expand about 10x in volume. Strange stuff.

T=15sec.

Even stranger..... With this stone, the slurry forms but only gets a bit darker, a gray tinge. "Normally" the ODC breaks down and quickly turns black with iron particles. With this stone, the slurry just sits there, as though the stone isn't working..... VERY interesting!

I THINK that what is happening is this......

A typical natural waterstone is composed of a range of particle sizes that are mostly larger than the particles of the ODC. The smaller ODC stuff acts as a cushion or filler, reducing the metals exposure to the abrasive. As the ODC degrades, more of the base stone's surface is exposed. In effect, the largest, most jagged particles are buffered by the ODC until they are worn down to a common size with the other abrasive grains.

 The slurry is the worn and degraded particles that have been dislodged from the parent stone. They both abrade the tool steel surface AND the stone surface as they get ever smaller.....

This stone behaves differently, with the ODC slurry at least. Magnify the last drawing 10x....

This stone seems to have an average particle size that is slightly SMALLER than that of the ODC. The ODC is masking or preventing the steel from making contact with most of the parent stone. Only a few particles are larger than the ODC, so they would be responsible for the slight darkening in color of the slurry. 

I feel that this is significant. I think that I have found the practical limits of the ODC nagura. This speaks well of both this stones quality AND the utility of the ODC nagura. WAY cool!

T=15 sec. 

No nagura and almost no slurry formation, but the stone doesn't feel super hard and is quite friendly. That dark patch on the upper left corner of the stone is basically all swarf. Amazing.

Full mirror on both steel (hagane) and iron (jigane). This blade is harder than most and somewhat special.

 Different blade, still good, but not AS hard. About as hard as my daily "users".

T=15 sec

I set the bevel to the stone, close my eyes, and slowly "guide" the blade. You can "feel" the stone remove the metal. I haven't felt ANY scratchy bits yet, not even the two dark spots. 

This bevel is reasonably flat and, if you look close, you will see some rust pitting but almost no scratches left over from other stones. 

Like I said, this is new sharpening stone territory for me, and I think that I know why.

Alex Gilmore at The Japan Blade  has a few stones that look similar, like this beauty....@$2,100!

Nakayama Maruka awasedo ttoishi

Here is my AIO again.

Very similar, especially the skin, although his are stamped and have a known provenance. If you go to his site (Item Nakayama #19), you can watch a video of his stone in action. The speed of metal removal is comparable to mine.... incredibly FAST!

I must admit to a certain degree of , not scepticism but maybe uncertainty, about how GOOD these old Toishi were/are. These old premium stones are an order of magnitude better than anything that I have used to date.

This is my A-team grit progression.... Inky, Ozuku, and AIO.

The bar has been raised.

Waterstone reality.... an Asagi of Indeterminate Origin (AIO), part 1

Wow! 3 days from Florida!

Just like the pictures from the auction. It's heavy, very dense and looks to be a fine grain slate. Very slight usage, as near as I can tell, and only needs a bit of lapping, no more than 1/32 here and there. Mostly around the edges. The size is a bit smaller than stated, but still a very respectable 212-76-36mm. I was hoping for more of a "blue" color, but it is definitely tending towards the gray end of the spectrum. 

A very faint stamp, but unreadable.

Full skin (kawa) back with just a wee bit of the corner chipped away.

Some skin on a few of the outer corners, too.

I think that these are called "moles" by natural waterstone aficionado's. Some sort of inclusion, like a trace of iron ore. There are two, and they look like they may be scratchy....

So here it is. While not exactly disappointed, I was hoping that it would be a liiiiitle bit more..... flashy. I was hoping/dreaming that as soon as I brushed off the grime I would be looking at some wild pattern of black spots and a bright blue color, a nice kerasu asagi. The reality is.... different.

While not perfectly flat, it is close. This will give me more opportunity to work on flattening this huge India stonestone (Waaa!!! Synthetic?!) that I got from my friend Brandon. 

Too slow, the heck with that! Bring out your diamonds! #340 or so, I forget, but it was very fast. I tried a #400 eze-lap plate but the "stiction" was a pain. This cheapy worked great. I use the darn things every day...... $8 for a set, and the only problem is getting them to adhere to a substrate. Best $8 ever!

Well, here she is, in all of her glory. For the price, I can't complain. I would've been bummed if it was a synthetic, though there was not much chance of that, with the skin and all.

Let's take it for a test drive. This is where we left off.....

Hard blade, steel type unknown, mirror finish ( from the Oregon coast sandstone) with some slight scratching. These are the artifacts from different stones on an incompletely prepared bevel.... my bad. 

Whoa!! 5 seconds! Look at all of that swarf! Instant reaction and no slurry, but the action is still smooth. NO rubbing/dragging/digging. it's a bit like using a black crayon on gray paper. Slight hyperbole, but only slight. REALLY fast and smooth..... Soooo smooth....

No weird, new scratches. Just building polish.

This stone doesn't seem to need a nagura, but let's try it anyway.

Diamond nagura?

This slurry acts strange......... It gives the impression of being about as thick as milk, but doesn't get in the way. It is as though the blade almost goes UNDER the slurry, if that makes sense. The blade feels like it is riding gently on a very thin cushion, which it is. This also makes it very easy to feel the "bite" of the tool, allowing you to minutely adjust the angle of the blade.  If I hadn't seen how quickly the stone cuts, I would think that it was a slow cutter, but...

This photo mostly shoes how un-flat the bevel is, haha, but it also shows how the steel at the blade's edge is being polished by the slurry. You can see that the steel is almost divided into three horizontal bars. The leading edge is being polished by the pressure wave of loose abrasive grains that comprise the slurry itself. Because the particles are no longer anchored to the substrate, they bounce and roll about, becoming smaller and smaller, and in doing so produce the  characteristic hazy finish that is the trademark of a natural waterstone

The second line, the hazy one in the middle, is where the steel is actually TOUCHING the stone surface. This would be the "true" grit of the stone. The third line is likely formed by a trailing eddy of slurry, and makes it clear that the bevel is not flat, my technique is poor, or (most likely) both of the above. 

Now, I am just testing out this stone so I'm not concerned with the less-than-flat bevel, but if I was GOOD at sharpening AND wanted the finest possible edge, I would lighten up on the hand pressure, just the weight of the blade itself, and polish until the slurry has degraded into nothing and is forming a dry glaze. At least, if this was a normal stone that actually MADE some slurry....



As if this wasn't long enough, there is more....