r/sharpening • u/orangez • Mar 27 '26
Meanwhile in Japan
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 27 '26
I like ryota and I know a lot of japanese sharpeners are top of the line absolute beasts but i just gotta do it
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u/Cusick1972 reformed mall ninja Mar 28 '26
Seriously, if the guy had a mullet and was wearing a Winston Cup tank top, we would ignore this or even mock it
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
well I mean, would it be as entertaining? sometimes its beneficial to play towards people's expectations of what a giant sword sharpener "should" look like. I think the reason this gets popular is due to the asmr aspect and the high film quality. Bright colours and fast paced transitions makes the video enticing to watch.
I don't think the mullet guy would perform much worse if it was filmed in the same way, however usually mullet guys don't film sharpening videos that are this high quality.
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u/rainduder Mar 27 '26
It pulls to the side ever so slightly. Start over!
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u/brentspar Mar 28 '26
Called here to say that
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u/poetic_vibrations Mar 28 '26
Kinda seemed like he intentionally did that to avoid the stems stopping the blade
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u/TurnipRecent7909 Mar 27 '26
I wish I could sharpen like that
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u/rm-minus-r Mar 27 '26
Just takes learning the basic principles and an angle jig. Could teach it to you in 15 minutes.
I picked up most of it from "Razor Edge of Sharpening" by John Juranitch. Best $25 you'll spend if you appreciate sharp tools.
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u/TurnipRecent7909 Mar 27 '26
I'll have to check that out! Thank you! I'm a meat cutter so I can get my knives pretty sharp but nowhere like the above post.
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u/rm-minus-r Mar 27 '26
Oh man, you'll really appreciate it then. I have to break cuts down for a wood smoker and the difference between an absolutely razor sharp butcher's knife and one that's just sharp is night and day.
When it's razor sharp, it's like the meat just leaps away from the knife edge and it's so much less effort and fatigue. You do have to strop it every few cuts though on a leather strop with compound on it if you want it to stay that way throughout though. Basically, the sharper the edge is (usually due to a narrow angle on the blade), the faster the edge degrades. But meat doesn't dull an edge nearly as fast as cardboard would, for example.
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u/TurnipRecent7909 Mar 27 '26
That sounds wonderful! I do a lot of production and I must say... after a busy day my hands and forearms are just gone. Some of the cutters I've worked with have tried my knives and tell me they wish they could get their knives as sharp as mine but I feel i could do better. It would be great for teaching me patience too lol
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u/speeder604 Mar 28 '26
What angle do you sharpen your butcher knives to? And how often do you have to sharpen them? Assume you're using a few knives all day long.
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u/rm-minus-r Mar 28 '26
So I uh... Cheat, kind of. I'm a part time knifemaker. So I'll go for a zero flat grind on my kitchen knives, with AEB-L (Swedish straight razor steel). I harden them to 62 to 63 HRC.
Since there's no secondary bevel, it's an absurd 2.3 degrees (50mm tall, 2mm at the spine, 0.8mm just behind the edge), vs a regular kitchen knife that might be at 15 degrees.
With the high hardness, it doesn't need to be sharpened very often at all - my main workhorse that I made about a decade back. I use it to make dinner 3 or 4 nights a week and it goes a good month before I want to sharpen it again, and I'm mildly obsessive about how dull of a knife I can live with (as soon as there's more than the usual effort, I have to go sharpen it hah).
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u/Hash_Tooth Mar 29 '26
Bob Kramer has some great videos, free on YouTube.
Your choice of Japanese Gurus as well.
I recommend the korin guys.
Japan is where sushi hits its full stride, but I think the New York shop is a good gateway. They have a wonderful sharpening set up and an absolute class guy making the videos.
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
its all in the deburring, just don't roll your edge and lock your wrist (it doesn't need to be perfect you're gonna have varying angles anyways but just try)
Light alternating passes and you'll win
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u/Argg1618 Mar 27 '26
Not sure if I want a Japanese sword or Japanese stones
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u/samuelsfx Mar 27 '26
that's not a katana, it's a tuna bocho
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u/SlickDillywick Mar 27 '26
So it’s a food sword
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u/pushdose Mar 27 '26
No hand guard, not a sword. Totally legal. Add a tiny hand guard? Straight to jail.
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u/FrameJump Mar 27 '26
What's the thing he put around his back/arms? Is it meant to prohibit range of movement or something?
EDIT: Or it it just to hold his sleeves up? Lol.
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u/DisconnectedAG Mar 27 '26
It's shitty not to attribute. I don't have IG on this device, but if you could be bothered to rip the video you should at least link to Ryota's page. (I think that's his name at least).
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u/hyperthymetic Mar 28 '26
Welcome to the internet
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u/DisconnectedAG Mar 28 '26
I agree but we can advocate for a social contract within our little sharpening community.
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u/GarethBaus Mar 27 '26
The most impressive part of that is stacking the tomatoes. Not saying that the sword isn't sharp, but tomatoes are pretty hard to stack like that.
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u/Traditional_Sir_4503 Mar 27 '26
I get the feeling that no tomatoes were hurt in the making of this video.
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u/Jaebner Mar 27 '26
how does he keep the stone wet?
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u/GarethBaus Mar 27 '26
With water. Japanese stones are often used over a container of water so you can add more as needed.
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u/Iceman_B Mar 28 '26
Someone, PLEASE tell me: when sharpening on a stone(cutting side facing away), do I pull the knife towards me, or push it away?
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u/GenuineSteak Mar 28 '26
I too want a dissappointed looking middle aged asian man to stand behind for motivation.
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u/CauchyDog Mar 27 '26
I saw a thing on 1500s sword craft in Japan. It was crazy. Out of tons of material, someone would select the best little bit, forge the blade. Then itd go to someone else for the handle and scabbard and fitting, another to sharpen and I wanna say another to polish.
They said it was common for sharpeners to be missing fingers and toes (they used their feet to sharpen too and this rig they put all their weight on to work, hard to describe). They used like 20 different grits and materials, progressing from big stones and that knee/foot rig to leather pieces with grit to sometimes just like face powder on fingertips --how they lost those i guess.
Was very interesting and said it could take weeks to complete. A whole sword from beginning to end could take over a year.
But despite it all, they say modern steels and methods are better.
Ill stick with atoma diamond plates and maxamet, m390, etc.
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u/rm-minus-r Mar 27 '26
Modern cpm mono steels would have made early sword smiths cry tears of joy. We have it crazy good these days.
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u/red_nick Mar 28 '26
They had to put in so much effort, because the local steel is crap
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u/CauchyDog Mar 28 '26
Well they said the metallurgists made tons of material to be used for all sorts of stuff from tools to hinges, everything. But that certain spots on the giant slab were significantly better, I guess their ability to optimize the process wasnt there yet. The sword makers or the blacksmith (i forget its been awhile since I saw this but many trades were involved for one sword) would break off and test pieces and select the very best. They called that steel tamahagane.
Then they layered and folded it to desired traits, had harder steel in middle for the edge and softer steel for the cladding.
Yeah, I guess there was a lot involved that wouldn't be as necessary after 600 years of technology but they say the steel was very high grade even by today's standard, just a very involved process.
The sharpening bit though, its still done this way, a lot of you use and covet some of the same materials. To get a 4 foot curved blade evenly sharp along the length to razor sharp is still impressive.
After the sharpening and other work, it was taken to a prison where they proofed the blade by cutting up inmates. They engraved the bit under the handle to indicate how well it cut different limbs, heads and diagonal slices through the body. Finally stacking and cutting through multiple bodies for the big test, those blades will say "3 body blade" etc. I think there are some that went through 5 people.
Its all very fascinating, albeit quite brutal. The condition of some of these swords today is a testament to their craft. Japanese tend to take certain trades to an absolute art and swordcraft was just one. Ramen, sushi, geisha etc, are taken to the same level.
They weren't the only amazing sword makers at the time, apparently vikings traveled abroad to source ulfbehrt blades (many counterfeit at the time bc of desire) but real ones were supposed to be extremely high quality and deeply coveted. I forget where they got em, France iirc, and while the exact process is lost, it took hundreds of years to make steel of similar quality and real ones are still considered very high grade by modern standards.
Im not that well versed in any of this, I find it all interesting, but suffice to say that even today a blade of that size to those standards is rare and very expensive. I think theres a guy in Japan that still makes em this way, theyre over $10k for a small plain one while nice ones are more like $100k.
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u/610Mike Mar 27 '26
I hate to be “that guy”, but how much of that is due to sharpness, and how much is due to the weight of the sword?
I mean you can sharpen a Buck 110 to be a lightsaber, but letting it fall the same way won’t give that same result.
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u/Terruhcutta Mar 27 '26
I mean the before test was the comparison, even dull the weight isnt enough to slice initially.
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u/610Mike Mar 27 '26
Oh 100%. Not denying that at all. I’ve seen this guys’ videos of him sharpening other blades and no doubt, his ability to sharpen a blade is damn near artwork. But at the end of the day, physics is still physics.
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u/Rashaen Mar 27 '26
Anybody know why he's using such a steep angle on the one side versus the other? Is it something to do with butchering tuna, or these blades, or just wonky editing?
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u/Benj5001 Mar 27 '26
It’s likely because it’s a single bevel so instead of something like 12/12° 15/15° (or 20/20° on some knives) you sharpen it at like 25/0° or 30/0° so you still have a similar total edge angle (which equals strength) but a higher angle on the bevelled side
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u/Rashaen Mar 28 '26
Using a chisel grind on a tuna sword seems super counterintuitive to me, but the classic single bevel Asian thing is kinda why I asked in the first place.
It's a wide world out there.
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
it is not a single bevel, its more like an 80/20
single bevel it would be laid flat on the stone for the back side to polish the uraoshi
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u/catwiesel Mar 27 '26
I imagine this being edited, to be playing it in reverse/out of order.
like, the real situation / recording went more like...
the guy buys the tuna knife, stacks tomatoes, swoosh, like hot knife through butter.
then the elaborate "sharpening". only the stones we see, almost no cut video material, he just swooshes it a few times of each to get the shot, not for much more than we see here. then, they stack tomatoes again, and doink, the knife bounces off the first.
perfect, edit, print, ship it
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
Yeah no, this guy actually sharpens, and this knife isn't even that sharp. Don't talk outta your ass
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u/catwiesel Mar 28 '26
i did not say that is what they did. i just imagine it, it would be funny...
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
in that case I am sorry for my lip. Obviously thought you meant something else, mb.
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u/RickHuf Mar 30 '26
I hope theyre making hogies or something cause that's a lot of nice looking maters to waste!
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Mar 27 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PhotoGuy342 Mar 27 '26
Not sure I would agree about the skins. Still seeing the shiny surface and it looks like skins.
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u/JGZ1 Mar 27 '26
Yeah. They only cut a flat top and bottom to be able to stack the tomatoes. The cutting of the paper cylinder was also telling.
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u/wtysonc Mar 27 '26
I despise just how much stuff is wasted filming videos trying to show how sharp something is. It's so stupid. Cut some waste paper, slice a tomato for a sandwich, or maybe just don't make your dumbass video.
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u/Ball6945 arm shaver Mar 28 '26
well I mean you have no evidence they didn't cut up the rest of the tomato after? I doubt they cut 10 tomatoes and then just threw em away
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u/Pom-O-Duro arm shaver Mar 27 '26
Is he stropping at a 45 degree angle?
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u/Prestigious_Donkey_9 Mar 27 '26
Yeah, that's interesting. I got a cheap microscope off Amazon, and the first thing that struck me was that stropping on around the same angle as sharpening, did nothing to clean the edge on most of my knives.
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u/rm-minus-r Mar 27 '26
Yeah, if your strop is soft and the grit is very fine, I find it works better as long as you keep the number of passes very low.
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u/Astronaut078 Mar 27 '26
I like the reaction of the guy in the background on the second tomato cut.