When you set-up your water-stone, have it running left to right in front of you. Small stones are just fine for these small tools and it is more important to have well maintained stones than how large they are or are not. It will be almost impossible for you to get a good face/edge on your knife if is is has to ride in and out of an unleveled surface. First of all, it's very important that your water-stones are flat, without dished-out areas or grooved tracks. CheersĪnnie, keeping the knife in the correct position can be difficult but there is a simple method you can use that works well for me. I hope you will let us know how well the shop handles your knife and how it performs on your next block. Even paper rubbed with honing compound and backed by a piece of plate glass or wood is preferable to a buffing wheel, cloth, felt or leather. Firm leather, backed by wood is a good second choice. Wood hones are best for this as the material will not roll over the edge and dull the blade. If they use a mechanical cloth or felt buffing wheel, then the odds are better than good that the fine edge of the blade will be blunted and kept from achieving a truly sharp cutting edge. A shop may also neglect to properly flatten and polish the back of the single face blade for a truly sharp woodcut tool. It may be too much of a stretch for the run-of-the-mill tool sharpening tech to go from sharpening mower blades or kitchen knives to the very specialized nature of the Japanese toh. These are very small tools and they need a deft touch. A grinder will often remove much more metal than needed for a good edge. This concave face might also effect the handling of the knife while carving. If they use a vertical wheel grinder it will also cause a concave 'face' in the blade which might not properly support the cutting edge which is a more brittle than the soft steel/iron backing that absorbs a lot of shock that bi-layer tools experience while being used. The best nature of the bi-layer blade will not be easy to recover if it is overheated and you will have to remove significant amounts of material to get to metal that has not had its' temper stolen by careless handling and too much heat. It is likely that the knife sharping shop will use machines to shape/sharpen your tool and very likely will overheat the relatively small blade so it will not hold a good edge. Pauses for periodical touch-up sharpening are easy to work into the woodcutting routine and will give you a small rest as you carve as well as the best edge for the job. A very good reason to learn to do this yourself is that toh tips break frequently and it's just not practical to break your pace of carving to send out for repairs. After the repair/reshaping, hit them with the water stones to remove the deep scratches from the diamond surfaces and to polish to a smooth surface. Reserve the coarse stone for major repairs. A set of diamond 1 x 3 inch 'stones' in coarse, fine and extra fine are ideal for reshaping these knives' geometry in a mater of a five minutes or so. It is really very easy and will allow you to work uninterrupted when the Muse is upon you. I hope your blade will be all you want it to be when it is returned to you but I want to encourage you to do this work yourself in the future. I'm hoping to pick it up tomorrow, as good as new. For a mere $5.00 they were happy to reshape my knife for me. I found a local precision tool sharpening company with the welcome words "No Job Too Small" on its advertisement. I briefly thought about getting a motorized sharpener, but found it to be cost prohibitive. I have managed to learn to use a leather honing block and some small water stones to keep the edges sharp on my little tool set, but the broken point was too much for me and my attempts to reshape the knife just made matters worse. I've tried to learn the subtleties of sharpening, but it all makes my eyes glaze over a little bit - maybe it's a girl thing. Interestingly, even though I'm using these woodworking tools on a daily basis, I'm not really a tool kind of person. Although I rarely use such linework in my own prints, I do use the hangi-to quite often, so I was pretty upset when I dropped mine on a hard floor and the point broke! The hangi-to is essential for carving the beautiful thin black lines that are always found in ukiyo-e prints. Then larger areas are cleared away from these outlines using gouges and chisels. The hangi-to, pronounced hahn _ gee (hard g) _ toe, is used to closely outline the design on a block. This is a Japanese hangi-to, the carving knife that's used most often in traditional moku hanga.
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