Time is NOT on my side.....

Junji in Japan (Ebay seller yusui) sells WAY more tools than I can hope to use, but even so, I want them all. The discovery that accompanies a new-to-you tool, the quality of its manufacture, the way that it has been used over time.... all of this is fascinating. Some of the items are nearly new, but most have seen use. Some are looking for a place to retire... these are often the ones that I most love. A tool that has been used with care, used until it is nearly gone, these are often the best (the worst ending up in a swamp, hopefully). If I only had enough time.....

If you are looking for good value in vintage Japanese tools, I highly recommend him. Honest, helpful, polite and patient, his buy-it-now prices are usually VERY good. He has excellent English language skills and ships at cost, so a 2kg package costs about $30 and take 10 days. That's only a few days more than, say, A Lee Valley Tools order. $30 dollars might get me to the nearest Home Depot and back again, but it would be a near thing (AND they don't have what I want, either). For some reason his auctions don't see the action that they deserve. It must be a foreign purchase sort of thing. FWIW, it's totally painless, no duties or anything weird, and you get to track the package as it makes its way to your door..... A VERY good value!

New (nearly) tools are fun too...

30mm Umehiro kote-nomi

Ooooooh, I can't wait to sharpen this one! 20-30 year old price tag of 3400 yen. That's about $33 USD..... time IS on my side, for this at least.

So, time......

I follow some pretty obscure blogs, one of which is the Nao natural whetstone (soon to be Tamura Mountain, I believe) that I mentioned in a previous post. New natural waterstones!! Nice ones, too, and word is getting out....http://kunimoto.blog. I think that my hope for getting inexpensive Wakesa grindstones is.... too late.


Kuni is who is referred to, by some, as the magician, at least I think that this is the guy. If he isn't, I don't know who is....

It's good to have role models ( this from kunimoto's blog).

The blacksmith was Mr. Kengo Usui..... Usui Kengo, and for the last 25 years, Kuni has been working to perfect himself, to bring honor to the maker of this fine tool. 25 years of REALLY intense thought and commitment to excellence..... 25 years.

Kunimoto has one blog about, for lack of a better term, extreme sharpening that completely pales anything that you will find in English (A while back I hit a wall regarding information pertaining to Japanese tools, sharpening, using.... so anytime that I find some new info it makes me so excited that I have a difficult time sleeping. I barely sleep, as it is, so this isn't a big deal. What would it be like to WANT to sleep your life away?). He also makes beautiful furniture, and has another blog about his day to day work. If only I had more time....


I'm still working on the 'ol workshop renovation.

The new lumber rack is already buried (which was what got me started in the first place, haha). It's on the left. I haven't seen this much floor in years.

This is more like what I am used to, although this is still cleaner than it was.

I want to build something. I want to do something REALLY well. 25 years.....

Toolbox stock preparation and ease of tool sharpening

Strike one off of the list. I made some bases (finally) for some of the sharpening stones that I use at least some of the time...

They aren't lined up for a photo op, there is actually a greater purpose at work here.

I sunk some holes and filled them with silicone to act as non-skid.

Why is it that silicone is so contrary, sticking where you don't want it, but when you do want it to stick....

I first tried wax paper, no love there. I thought about poly-ethelene sheet, but decided to give this a shot. I waxed the work surface about 5 times and the stuff STILL didn't want to let go. Only 2 pads popped out. The silicone has a bit of wiggle to it that I might find too objectionable, though. We'll see.



I roughed out some stock for the toolbox project...

The pile on the left is what I got planed before I decided to stop. The kanna were a bit dull to begin with, due to planing a bunch of black walnut the other day. Time to sharpen!

55mm, 65mm, 72mm or so.

This is the progression that I use, from left to right, thick to thin cut. Secondary blades are not in place for the photo and the one in the middle? That one I am still trying to figure out. It's only set for 1 blade right now and I may keep it that way. I just need to tighten up the throat.

Different dai thickness's.

The middle kanna is a bit of an oddball. The dai is thinner, not from use, it was just cut that way. The wood used isn't the usual red or white Japanese oak. Examples of those species happen to be on either side. The grain is completely different and the feel is very dense. It shows a very attractive ribbon pattern with ray flecks and for whatever reason seems very tiring to hold and use for any amount of time. This might be due to the thinner/lower height, but I've got other kanna made of white oak that are just as thin and are not tiring..... Strange. The "pull" is a bit higher, but it does cut well and the iron is very easy to sharpen and holds an edge pretty well.

You can see from the height of the urasuki (the back hollow) that this blade is practically brand new.

This blade was laminated using lots of steel, what kind.... I wish that I knew. It is REALLY easy to sharpen, but holds a good sharp edge. In comparison, the blade on the right will last for generations, it's that hard. For all I know, it already has.

Nice ren-tetsu kanna blades.

Easy to sharpen------>hard

The stones are out, might as well do a few extras. The relative ease at which these different blades sharpen is remarkable. The tiny 28mm kanna blade on the left is super easy to sharpen and actually holds an edge well. It fits a (probably) cheap kanna that took a lot of work to make functional but now is a favorite. The blade on the right holds a great edge but is a b***h to sharpen. It has a circle stamp on it that I "think" indicates a special type of aogami steel.

The chisel....... ohhhh, my poor little chisel. This 24mm is a joy to sharpen, gets RAZOR sharp and works wonderfully for paring things flush. It had a lot of hand forged character and is well made...... but was tempered a bit too high, making it soft. Cutting anything harder than pine causes the edge to fold.

A tool that is too hard is very bad and will chip and shatter at the edge, but I actually LIKE that situation. That means that I can draw the temper myself and get the steel just the way I want it.... JUST soft enough to hold an edge without chipping. Right now I choose edge retention at the expense of ease in sharpening, but maybe this will change in the future. This chisel is TOO soft and it wouldn't be right to sell something that doesn't work to it's potential.... This one needs to go back into the forge to be re-hardened. Not today, though. I've got more wood to plane.

I cut some of the thinner POCedar to use for drawers and such. I started to plane it down and it felt as though the tools were fighting me, the wood was tearing out, nothing felt right. I went back and cut a bunch more wood on the tablesaw so I would have extra for other projects and this time, when I used the planes, things worked well. This is the stuff that is soooo hard to learn, to listen to your inner-self and KNOW that you are doing something wrong. If I had continued, I would probably still be at it NOW, so I figure that I actually saved time by shifting gears. I know that I did a better job.

Still haulin' (haul part 2)

Chisels!!!!

I need more chisels like I need, well......surely I need SOMETHING more than chisels but I still want EVERY one that I see. I really don't know why. I use about 4-5 every day, and a few others occasionally....the other 482? Almost never. Just kidding about the 482, Renee ):-0. 

Here is what I see.....3 mm mortising chisel. 

VERY nice wrapped steel lamination. This will look very nice after sharpening it with the natural stones. The jigane will really stand out.

 2 mm mortising chisel.

 Can't see the lamination line, so I am curious as to the quality of the smithing. The tool looks fairly well made, with a good shape to the iron....I can't yet tell if this is a factory made item or was made by an independent blacksmith. It still has the factory grind. It's probably never been sharpened.

 Different chisel, a broken 9 mm.

This is a nicely made chisel, a "real" chisel, made by a non-factory blacksmith. The shaft of the chisel is still black, as is the back hollow of the blade. The black coloring is the result of the steel oxidizing as it is plunged into the slack tub (water bucket) after heat treating. On cheaper tools, the blade back hollow is then ground down to ease sharpening and the shaft is ground to create a matching fit to the ferrule. On REALLY cheap tools the chisel is cast steel. I have seen these painted to look like they were forged. Buyer, educate thyself!

A better blacksmith will spend the time to individually hammer the shaft to fit the ferrule and grind the blade back before quenching (why? I don't know yet. Perhaps so that the buyer knows that the temper of the tool hasn't been ruined by hot grinding...). The blade warps from the tensions of cooling sooo quickly, inducing a reverse bend to the blade. Hopefully not too much....

*******EDIT*******

I don't want to correct the (hopefully) occasional mistake, hoping that anyone reading this might understand that this is a progression, but.....

Quenching a laminated tool can cause the steel to expand, resulting in a blade that warps to the iron side. I had this totally backwards. This is important and warrants an edit. Oops!

******END EDIT*****

Too much. This is what happens when someone who doesn't know any better tries to bend the blade back to being straight. You can't do that. This is what happens, sigh..The pictures that Junji took showed this condition very well, so I knew exactly what I was buying. I'll cut the end off, grind it back and it will be good to go. The chisel looses a few years of life, but will still be a fine tool.

Different chisel, a  20mm.

This one is a mystery. Very hefty, dense metal, good thick Japanese white oak handle. The finish is odd, though. Kind of an incomplete patchwork of sanded (not polished) and black. 

This is a REALLY good handle. The end grain shows a heart center. That means that the handle maker took a branch (yes, a stick of wood) of perfectly straight grain and thickness, aged it carefully so that it wouldn't crack and peeled the bark off when he deemed it ready to use. A heart center handle is the strongest because the wood grain is continuous and the force is directly channeled to the cutting edge. Very efficient. 

The back of the chisel blade is a horror, completely sanded. This would be considered shameful, to do this to a well made tool. If you were the guy who made this....well, I would be disgusted!

Here is the cutting edge and the patchiness that I mentioned. This is a great lamination line -AND- the iron used for the body of the chisel has some weird layering to it, a bit like wrought iron. I have some other chisels that show the same effect and they sharpen soooo easy, but take a wonderful sharp edge. This will look REALLY nice after I sharpen and polish. I like the forged/black look, but this will still be nice polished. A bit bright for my tastes, but......

6.5 mm. Good?

Nice balance, fits my hand and the handle is nice, unfinished white oak. The best "user" tools have white oak handles. It's my favorite, though if you don't put a finish on them, they get all gray and dirty. I use shellac, but bare is better. Some people wear gloves so their handles stay clean. Wow! That's commitment! 

White oak is a more expensive option (more expensive than red oak, anyway.), but strong and resilient. The flashy and/or crap tools for export get rosewood and ebony...terrible for tool handles that get hit.

Or is it cheap? Sanded shaft/ferrule, shiny lacquer on the metal parts...

..and a sloppy lamination line, VERY uneven. This was in a 3 chisel lot...I wouldn't buy one this sloppy, normally. On the positive side, it was actually forged by a human being, by hand and probably not in a factory. Maybe he was having a bad day...

Again, a "real" tool. Black-back. Pretty even, nice curved flow where the blade transitions into the shaft. This is one of those tools that you just have to reserve judgement and use for a bit.

Some of my favorite tools are the seemingly junkers. My favorite chisel is a 20 mm that looks like it was soaked in a bucket of piss, then attacked with an angle grinder. The back is completely flat (bad) and deeply rust pitted (worse). Super easy to sharpen, dense "rich" iron and hold an edge crazy long and doesn't fold or chip.

 Last one....37 mm.

Not too much to show. Its heavy. Very nice shape to it. Nice file work (files are cutting tools, like many small blades, and when skillfully used become a decorative tool) and the lamination line is very interesting. A bit uneven. I wonder if it is intentional? The iron looks very "rich" to me. I am looking forward to sharpening it....

So.....2 kg of joy on a rainy day.

Domo Arigato, Junji!