Japan trip 2014, Sakai City, Aoki Hamono, Norikatsu Nishimura
James Zhang |
We also went to visit another one of our Syoushin sharpeners: Norikatsu Nishimura , who is also a Dentou Kougeishi (Traditional Skilled Craftsman, 伝統工芸士).
When we arrive, we saw Mr. Nishimura sharpening our kiritsuke shaped gyuto.Checking the straightness of the bladeOnce the shape is out, he moves to the polishing stationAfter a series of different grits, this is how a blade comes out from machine polishing.After the polishing wheels, hand polishing is required to bring out the cladding and the shinogi line.There is an extra step for our gyuto: hand sharpening on a natural stone, which means you will receive a gyuto with an sharp edge OOTB :DThis is the stone that Mr. Nishimura uses.Mr. Nishimura demonstrates the sharpness on a piece of news paper.We checked out the edge by cutting a string of hair (without any backing, just holding the hair in the air and chop), the result? We were satisfied :)
[Restored October 2026: this 2014 post was lost in a site migration and has been brought back from the Internet Archive, with all ten original photographs recovered from our own photo archive.]
