How a chef knife almost ended my sharpening career

Hello, and thank you for reading!

I apologize for the long wait however, I had almost lost this sharpening battle. I have fought long and hard, learning very much in a short period of time.

This knife was originally sharpened incredibly poorly, with a bend, twist, deep low spots, and overall poor geometry.

I wanted to give up before I had even started, I was not sure if it was possible to fix. I thought perhaps I should throw it away and “cut” my losses.

However, I realized that I had nothing to lose, and that I rather had everything to gain and at the very least perhaps I could learn a powerful lesson. It turns out that I learned more than one lesson and this knife was an unrelenting teacher.

This knife is a blue 1 honyaki by Kenji Togashi. The steel is 65+ HRC. The steel is also incredibly tough/durable making it incredibly difficult to grind even with diamond.

I couldn’t have completed this project without NSK Kyogo Diamond whetstones. However, this has lead to the creation and use of a new series of stones which I will release at a later date.

Besides the bends twists and low spots the other issue that made the knife so difficult to work on was the fact that the molecular structure is much larger for aogami (blue) steel than shirogami (white) steel.

I had previously finished a white 1 honyaki by Nakagawa. In comparison, that knife was so much easier and faster to finish and I really enjoyed.

Not only that, it was incredibly difficult to make the homon stand out on the blue steel in comparison to the white steel. However, the alloy banding was very abundant and strong on the blue steel.

Please watch this video in order to view my journey with this amazing blade which was custom created by a legend.

Video here

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