Home > Oiire > Yamahiro
Image Item Name Price (AU$) Stock Size Origin
Yamahiro 30mm 120, 160 AU 2 Oiire
(Bench)
Sanjyo,
Niigata

 

Yamahiro (Okazaki Takeshi) is one of the Sanjyo blacksmiths who specializes in White Steel chisels. These are the flagship model from Yamahiro, White Steel #1 chisels. One fully adjusted and sharpened, and another not adjusted nor sharpened.

The back flattening and polishing process is very important. 50% of the sharpness depends on the back polishing. You can see how the top one is polished and hazy. New chisel's back is usually warped to the steel side, so requires attention to make it neatly flat. You don't want to have a step at the end of the body by grinding too much at the neck side.

High quality red oak handle by Kane-ei the handle maker. You can see the stamp of Kane-ei.

The top one shows the properly lowered hoop. All new chisels come as the bottom one, and sometimes it is very difficult to lower it. This one was very easy.

This is how an unsharpened brand new chisel's edge looks like. Lot's of work ahead. You'd need a good hard coarse stone and a jig, otherwise it'll take days and weeks even to grind the meat off.

The right one's angle is fixed and fully sharpened and polished to hazy finish with Okudo Suita stone. I am quite confident this chisel cannot get any sharper that this unless I use a super expensive fine finishing stone. Ready to be used right away.