A Living National Treasure Documentary Ota,Tokyo HON'AMI Koshu

[Baba Yaga]

 

[Matsunoki]

Interesting to see the Honami family’s prolific use of uchiko when preparing to inspect a blade. I can only assume the quality that they have access to is better than that which we have easy access to…..or is the dislike of using it more of a “Western” opinion?

In addition to some of the “out of polish” blades that I have inflicted on you all I do actually have a few in excellent Japanese polish and I have always used uchiko with no adverse results. Maybe I’m just lucky?

Interesting. 

[Larason2]

Interesting, thanks for posting! I also found it interesting that they used primarily the edge of the stone for the komonagura do and uichigomori do polishing steps, and that they use those tiny stone fragments for the final finishing! They talk about the second son and third son, I wonder what happened to the first son? They have quite a nice setup there, a whole room to devote to polishing!

[Larason2]

I think there are definitely grades of uchiko, which is just ground up uichigomori do stones. The grit on those stones is very fine, but if you press too hard, you will remove the product of the final finishing, thus losing detail. Also, if it's too cheap it might not be ground fine enough, which could cause a scratch!

[kissakai]

I enjoyed the video - thanks

 

Some time ago there was a good post about about uchiko

I bought mine from Japan after reading recommendations from this post

[Stephen]

Bob Benson makes fine uchiko,

caught from the slury of his stones.

Yes to the above it's to be wiped gently not with pressure. 

Fine for out of polish blades, not for just recently polished.