A gift for a friend-----refurbishing a seme-ganna Japanese plane

I've been building some stairs, to access an attic bedroom that we built only, what.... 6 years ago! Already? The ladder that we had been using had it's charm, but I think that the renters of our house might want something a bit more traditional.

Treads in the works.

And.... A gift, for a friends collection, a seme-ganna.

At long last, here it is.

From this......

.... To this

I would like to tell you about how difficult this project was, all of the interesting little details and tricks that make these projects so gratifying, but......

This was super easy. A light surfacing, to remove the ubiquitous red Japanese paint (My friend Brandon says that every old american tool that he buys has spatters of white paint on it. The Japanese tools that I buy have red. Huh, Go figure!), left the wood looking wonderful.

There was some iron staining around the mouth (What have you been eating?!!) and top of the dai. This is simple to remove, using a phosphoric acid solution, typically sold as a paint prep for rusty metal, or an etchant/cleaner for ceramic tile. Swab a little on the dark areas and it will fade away in 15-30 minutes. The acid is very mild, no worries (I mean, don't drink it, or anything, but...), and doesn't discolor the wood.

The irons were a pleasant surprise. They are virtually unused, and only required a minimum of attention. I gave them a brief traditional rust bluing, to even out the slight amount of discoloration from the surface rust.

The surprise was that the main blade was forged from ren-tetsu wrought iron (unusual for this size of blade), and even more surprising was that the sub-blade is laminated as well (definitely not what I was expecting).

Notice the dinged up corners?

The ren-tetsu is very nicely layered.

Unfortunately, as I was removing the blades to photograph them, haha! Dropped!

At least we know that the  hagane isn't brittle hard, eh Michael?

So, off to the stones for a very quick touch-up. This was done rather late in the evening, so I did this old-school (no power, just muscle).

My stone sequence for this quick project.

Two cheap China diamond stones (mounted by me on wood bases), a strangely discolored white aluminum oxide based man-made waterstone (probably a King Hyper, and rapidly becoming a favorite of mine), and two naturals to finish things up.


The stone on the left is an aoto of some sort. It is relatively soft and serves to ease the transition, from the deep angular scratches of the artificial stones to the shallow, gentle scratches of the natural finishing stones.

A quick way to evaluate the relative hardness/softness of a natural waterstone, is to dab a bit of water onto it's surface. The softer stone quickly absorbs the water, while the hard stone absorbs little or none.



The choice of a hard stone versus a soft stone is rooted in some very interesting physics. I'm not going into that now, but it's something that I am trying to get a better grasp of. Later....



Because I mucked up the blade pretty well when I dropped it, I need to flatten the edge first, using a diamond stone.

The newly flat edge is uneven, because the blade had been partly skewed. In for a penny.....


I reset the bevel, using #80 grit 3X sandpaper (a 3M product), mounted on glass.

Yes, that is a sharpening aid! I'm feeling lazy. They aren't worth a crap for Japanese plane blades, but for narrower stuff they can be damn handy.


Instead of letting the burr form and fall off on it's own, I have begin removing it as I go, using a fine grit stone.

It takes a few moments longer, but *maybe* provides a stronger edge. We'll see. My thought is that the burr falling off on its own, is due to metal fatigue, and work hardening is not what you might choose for a durable edge. This idea isn't original I'm sure, but it is something that I want to try it out.

 It's nice to have stones large enough to use with a guide, if needed.



The hard Ozuku asagi gives a really nice finish to most blades, and is one of my favorite stones. You can really see the beautiful layering pattern in the wrought iron.

This blade is also a bit unusual, in that the stone gave the wrought iron a bit of a purplish cast. Every one is different. I love it!

Very close to a full mirror polish. It's funny that these cameras make it so difficult to for me to get the photos that I DO want (I want a macro shot of the layered jigane), but give me many pictures like these.



Here is where those stair treads are going. Obviously a closet (at least, it was.).

Thankfully, there is ample feline supervision in our house.

Cat tested.

Comparing two Kings, (waterstones, that is)....

Another eBay fail......"I've lost my Mojo!!"

Here's the original description.

Offered for purchase

ONE

Old Natural Very Fine White Sharpening Stone. Measuring 8 1/16" long, 2 9/16" wide, 1 1/8" thick, and this weighs 1 lb 14 oz unboxed. Not signed as to the maker. This is in decent shape, the only cleaning I did was to give it a quick wash with soap and water. There are some chips on the corners and a few small ones on the edges. There is some rust staining on the sides and a few on the top. The one face has a wee bit of a dish end to end, the other one looks fairly straight. There are a few light dings on the face but nothing too bad. This one ain't perfect but it sure is old. A decent collectible old sharpening stone for sure!

Not a bad description, compared to most of what you see on eBay. Natural, white, and old...... I was hoping for a Hindustan or maybe a Lily White Arkansas/Washita.

Not natural, white, or old. Well, it's actually pretty  white....for a sharpening stone. 

So what is this thing? 

The size is a direct match to my "King" brand Deluxe #1000 grit.

The corner shows some raised vertical lines, extrusion marks or molding imperfections.

Faint horizontal cracks, signs of shrinkage (There was shrinkage!!!). Again, sure signs of a man-made stone.

I sent the photos to the seller, but he still maintains that it is an old, natural sharpening stone. He did begrudgingly offer a refund, but I would need to open a complaint case with eBay/PayPal to get my shipping refunded...... How do you get  a 100% rating on over 11,000 tool sales, and not learn something about old sharpening stones?

Well, enough bitching.... my curiosity got the better of me, lets see what this thing will do!



What's a big Norton oilstone good for? Flattening waterstones, haha!

****
Actually, they work fine for the simple carbon steel used for old western tools. I support the theory that tool steel hardness matches the available sharpening technology. You can achieve an Rc-64 hardness with simple high carbon steel, but it will be brittle and you won't be able to easily sharpen it using traditional oilstones. To draw the temper down to a more realistic Rc-56/58 is practical. The blade become more tough, resilient to impact shock, and is easily sharpened. What good is a super hard tool that you can't sharpen?

My point is that it's not that they didn't know how to make hard steel blades, back in the day. To the contrary, it's that they were smart enough not to. Your average 18th century carpenter is going to be pretty pissed-off getting a blade that shatters the first time he hits a knot in the board he's planing!

Culturally, we have the unfortunate tendency to discount and discredit the knowledge of the past, assuming that "They just didn't know better". Don't get me wrong....I don't assume that everything old is better than the new stuff. I think that it is very important to study "HOW" things were done, because the "WHY" is still pertinent today. If you assume that you're the only smart guy in the room, it makes it hard to learn anything new.

****

Where were we? Oh yeah.....

This face I flattened completely. Underneath the old, soiled surface is an extremely smooth, ivory white (not pink, like in my crappy photo) material, most likely of an aluminum oxide composition. Some staining remains.

This big naga-dai (big-body) kanna has been sitting here for too long. This is the equivalent to a western jointer plane, like a Stanley #7.

Before

After 15 seconds or so. 

I'm just looking at scratch patterns here, not trying to actually sharpen, OK?

The stone feels only slightly gritty/coarse, different from my King #1000 grit, smoother and moderately muddy. Fast-ish.

Now to compare it to what I do know.....


The suehiro #3000 is way finer.

The King #1000 is..... different.

I run this one so that the scratch pattern runs parallel to the edge....

.....then a few swipes on the new stone to see how the scratches compare. The white stone scratch pattern runs about 50° here, with the #1000 visible underneath and parallel to the edge.

They look about the same to my eye. The character of the scratches looks slightly different, though.

Now I do a side-by-side comparison. The red #1000 grit on the right, the white stone on the left.

While I would guess that the new white colored stone is close to a #1000 grit, the scratches have a different look to them. The red #1000 (right) shows lots of coarse marks that extend to the hard steel. The scratches from the white stone don't extend into the steel so much, indicative of a softer abrasive, perhaps?

Artificial waterstones are composed of a range of grit sizes to achieve a nominal finish number. The old-school Kings use a broad range of grit sizes because, for 80% of users, you just want something that is fast, but still inexpensive. The vast majority of users are sharpening knives, and these stones will give a good serviceable edge. Sharp, yet toothy enough for meat and soft veggies. There is also the thought that big scratches and little scratches can be beneficial arrangement, resulting in a more durable edge. Interesting, to be sure.

The white stone may have more finely graded particles but it feels faster than the red, on this relatively hard blade. One thing WAS apparent...... This white stone is much more resistant to dishing than the King Deluxe.

The King Deluxe #1000 grit was pretty dished after relatively light use, although this blade was fairly hard.

The gap measured 0.06" over 8" -or- 0.15mm over 205mm, take your pick.

This is the white stone, zoomed in to see the gap. Even though it saw much more use, the gap measured a more reasonable 0.0015" over 8" (0.038mm over 205mm). 

The amount of dishing (or lack thereof), is interesting, and I was quite surprised. This stone is rather muddy, and felt a bit like my suehiro Rika #5000, which tends to dish in use. I searched many different offerings of waterstones, and based on the size, color, and character of this stone, I'm gonna guess that it's a King Hyper #1000. The Hyper stones have a harder composition and evidently added a different diamond-like abrasive to their mix, to be more effective when sharpening hard stainless steel knives.

I can't complain too much...... The stone was cheap, and it's a decent stone, works well, all that. An old, fine, natural stone? That it ain't.

Ironic, that as I am trying to get away from the synthetic stones, they somehow keep showing up. Swimming upstream.

Sharpen the Miki hisa folding knife using the King man-made/natural waterstone

Inertia has set in big-time. I've been working on my blacksmithing (Tong forging mania!! Interesting, no?), the to-do list just gets longer, and some of my projects have been on the back burner so long that I've no idea where to begin (again!). In addition to all that, the shop is getting so packed full of stuff that it's getting hard to find room to move, yet alone get some work done. EBay, here I come! I need to work on my meager photography skills. Certainly no lack of things to do, but where to start?

I know! Let's sharpen something!



A while back, I bought a peculiar looking waterstone. You can't have too many natural waterstones (or kanna, or chisels, or odd bits of wood/rusty metal/screw's/nails/files....), right?

Odd looking, to be sure. I thought that it *might* be a Japanese natural waterstone....

.....but it's not :'( 

What I thought was a manufacturer's INK stamp (first photo), is actually an IMPRINTED stamp. Bummer!

It's a weird stone, though. The fractures are probably due to freezing, but might just be from sitting too long in the water tank. It has the feel of a stone that doesn't want to be permanently wet. The fractures *look* like something that you see associated with old aotos, showing vertical cleavage planes and a somewhat coarse structure. It doesn't have the uniform grain of most man-made waterstones. Now that it's all cleaned off, it's composition is obviously very homogeneous. Definitely man-made.


Prior to bidding, I did a fairly thorough search for artificial waterstones with similar color, size, and markings, but didn't find any matches, so I was somewhat optimistic that it would be a natural stone. Oh well. Since I already have more synthetic stones than I can use, I set the stone aside for a while. A few days ago, this popped up on one of the Japanese sharpening stone blogs that I follow.....

We have a match! The gist seems to be that it's an old, unusual, King brand waterstone that is made from reconstituted natural materials. I guess that I was partially right, haha! In any event, my interest was renewed. And, yes, I actual read blogs about sharpening.......


The stone is 210-68-40 mm and feels rather light in weight, with an odd grainy, soft feel to it. It puts me in mind of a big chunk of powdery chalk, and feels too soft to be very practical as a tool sharpening stone. You can see how dished it is. It's obviously been used for sharpening knives, so.......



For ages now, my pocket knife has been one of those plastic, breakable blade disposables.

Even a $-Store craft knife can be improved by a little sharpening. A couple of swipes on a fine diamond stone will work wonders! The problem now becomes that the plastic body of the knife wears out faster than the blades do. And..... Plastic.

I sharpen disposable blades. My name is Jason and I have a sharpening addiction.......


I  got this a few weeks ago.

A Miki-hisa folding pocket knife, nothing special, but decidedly nicer than what I have been carrying. Mass produced, but with a laminated blade and a Bubinga body, after a bit of massaging it seems OK. I relieved the sharp metal edges and reshaped the body some, until it felt better in the hand, and while I wouldn't pay full retail for one ($40'ish), I thought it worth the $12 I paid.

Amazingly enough, I have had this for 3 weeks and it STILL has the factory edge! It's time to try out the new "mystery" King waterstone!


But first, some ground work. I use the Po'boy #125 diamond lap (loose diamond grit on a maple wooden block) that I wrote about before.

T=20 seconds. A minute on this is sufficient to remove most of the coarse factory grind.

Before I get too carried away, I need to work the hollow ground back of the blade. I start on a #400 Eze-lap. On the right edge of the stone, you can see a strip of black electrical tape. This is to keep the upper (curved) back of the blade contact to a minimum, at least for the roughing stages.

This being a cheap knife, the blade has a pronounced curve or hook towards the steel side,  so not only is the back of the blade hollow ground, it's also bowed along its length. This makes it pretty well impossible to make the back truly flat without making the urasuki all misshapen and ugly. 

I go for looks, cheat a little bit, and only do the minimum required to establish a small flat at the cutting edge of the blade (the lower, straight edge). The back is still slightly bowed, but it is adequate.

From the #400 grit diamond stone, I go to the oddball King man-made/natural. It is a very open bodied stone and needed to be soaked for about 5-10 minutes before using. It's very porous. 

And interesting....... Nowhere near as soft as I was expecting. I thought that this guy would  fall apart and be a heavy mud producer, but that wasn't the case, at least with this blade. It felt moderately fast, but without being aggressive. A soft, rough stone. Weird. You can feel the grainy nature, but it isn't scratchy at all.

An analogy: If carborundum/ silicon-carbide is a handful of finely ground glass, a typical aluminum-oxide stone would be a handful of fine beach sand. This stone would be a handful of dirt, or maybe sawdust.

The finish is in the #1000-2000 range, but the scratches are shallow, not sharp. This thing serves the same purpose as a coarse aoto. It would act as a bridge to transition from a sharp and scratchy synthetic stone to a natural finish stone. I strongly suspect that was the intention of the manufacturer. 

I would like to try this stone out using a hard kanna blade, but both the top and bottom surfaces are WAY too dished. This thing is shaped like an "S"!

Sticking with the "odd" theme, I use one of my favorite Oregon beach stones next. This was a bit of a step back, grit-wise, but served to confirm the relative grit finish. I didn't want to wait for more synthetic stones to soak. Most of the natural waterstones are splash-and-go.

I consider this stone to be around #2000, but a touch scratchy and the density is uneven. I still like it though.

And another Oregon natural waterstone to finish.

Good enough for a pocket knife.

eBay junker Jnats

Just when I think that I am immune from buying more natural waterstones......

Last night concluded some eBay auctions that a few of you might have been watching, of which there were a number of Japanese waterstones, both natural and synthetic. I would be the first to admit that I already have more sharpening stones than I need, but it's still fun to look, right?


Please bear in mind that I am FAR from experienced in the whole Japanese natural waterstone department, so this will be of no real value, but it is fun to guess. If anyone cares to comment and present their own opinions, this will be even more fun (at least for me!). In retrospect, I should have bought all three. Then we could do a "Guess-the-stone" roundtable. We could've sent the actual stones on a rotation, to try out in person....... THAT would've been REAL fun! Perhaps one of you bought some of these? If so, please contribute!

That said, here are the 3 that I was most interested in. The color balance of this seller's photos has changed recently, as he has started using new backgrounds with his descriptions. I have NO idea how "off" these pictures are. None of these stones had a detailed description, just size, weight, and a guess as to the fine/coarse nature, and in my experience, the seller is not an experienced user, so we get to guess.


This looks like a nice finising stone, with a fine grain structure visible on the chipped, natural edges. The greenish color with a more diffuse/mottled rosy color towards the upper edge has me thinking "Tomae". Size is about 210-72-15 mm, 1039g,  but looks like it could be sitting in a carved recess, so it may be slightly thicker. It sold for $131.50. That would be a GREAT price for a decent Tomae!

Is it a Tomae? I think of Tomae as being more tan than green, and hard.

The amount of old slurry still collected around the edges has me thinking that this would be a pretty soft stone, so it might be from a different layer. Anyone?..... Anyone?...... Bueller?......Bueller?

When I see auctions that have a number a different stones/tools, whatever, I like to imagine that there was one original owner. What did this person do? How were these tools used?  For these stones.........I am gonna guess that these were used for sharpening knives. This looks like a great stone for finishing kitchen knives, not TOO fine, and soft, to slightly ease the bevel. I like to use a slightly soft stone when finishing a large single bevel blade. This looks like a nice stone.

209-62-66 mm.  Blue/green towards white with a hint of purple specks (renge?) Some lines, with darker staining from solute migration. Some of the photos hinted at possible small white spots..... Nashiji? I am going to guess that it is some sort of Suita.

The sides are rough and dirty. I didn't see any distinct layering. This stone looks virtually new/unused, and based on the pictures, the least attractive face was used as the work surface. Was this stone just not used very much? Why?

I think that this is the opposite face. I would like to try this side. It certainly is more attractive. You can't use just any face, though (Well, you can...... but).

With natural stones that are formed through deposition/sedimentary process, the orientation of the individual particles has a significant effect on the way that the stone functions. One face can feel sticky or rubbery, yet not be effective for metal removal. It will be doing more burnishing than actual sharpening. Roll the stone 90° and it might work well, like a completely different stone. Finishing stones are typically used flat grain ie: the grain runs side-to-side. Aotos are used end grain. The grain goes up and down through the thickness of the stone.  

I bet that if THIS were the working surface, this stone would've sold for at least twice as much, and quite possibly more. As it is, it sold for $71, a steal (probably), but the hanger for me was the $55 shipping. The stone weighs 2100g. That extra 100g doubled the shipping charge, because anything over 2000g gets shipped EMS (like fedex, fast but spendy).

My mother gave me an eBay gift certificate for my birthday (Thanks Mom! How did you ever guess?!!), so feeling flush, with money to burn......

A spin of the roulette wheel. This nasty thing was identified as a synthetic stone, and I suspect that is why there was only 1 other bidder. Well..... AND it's really ugly looking. 210-65-33 mm. 727g. 

The mottled color might just be staining from sitting outside in the rain for years.

The rough edges look like spalling due to freeze/thaw cycles. It COULD'VE been a perfectly formed rectangle at some point in time.

It is significantly dished on both primary faces, top and bottom. 

There is the remnant of a manufacturers ink stamp on one edge, and you can see that it says "Trade mark". This stamp is the only thing that gives me pause (Hahahaha!.....Well, that and the whole "synthetic" thing in the description), because I have a strong suspicion that using English to identify the product means that it was intended for export. Export=mass production=crap intended for people who don't know any better (like me, haha!) I bet the eBay seller saw the stamp and thought "synthetic".

What do I like? Why do I think that this is a natural sharpening stone? 

The color is mottled on all faces, and extends into the interior of the stone. A synthetic would only show discoloration on the surface. The spalling exposed the grain structure of the stone so you can see the "inside", as it were. If you enlarge the photo, the interior looks like it HAS grain structure. A synthetic has no grain, it looks even, is amorphous. This stone shows cleavage planes and what look like small inclusions of disparate minerals. Even taking into account the spalling, I doubt that this stone was ever a perfect rectangle and a manufactured stone would be even, of course. I think it's a Jnat.

I would guess a binsui or white Amakusa, but the Amakusa's have small voids/pores and a softer particulate "feel". This looks to be a more solid, crystalline structure. I would expect it to appear almost pearlescent. Hope springs eternal, right? 

Whatever it is, it was used for sharpening knives. The dishing looks like what you get from a right handed sharpener shaping long blades. Dishing is anathema for carpentry tools like plane blades, but works very well for long edges, like kitchen knives, that don't require exact angles and would be preferred by some users. Hell, even I let the bevel get a bit convex on our kitchen knives, and I think it's clear how anal I am about flat bevels! 

I will guess that this is a natural stone, maaaaaaybe a Suita, and was used for primary bevel setting, and about #2000-3000 grit. The opening bid was $5.99, I think, and there was only one other bidder. I hoped to win it at $7, but was pleasantly surprised to learn that the other bidder had gone higher ($20), but not too high. $20 would be WAY too much to pay for an old synthetic stone, in this condition, so I am thinking that the other bidder was thinking along the same lines as me, that this is a natural sharpening stone and not some old  $5.99 carborundum sickle stone.

I guess that I'll find out soon. Any guesses?