Sharpening Part 20 – Flattening and Polishing the Ura

A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.

George R.R. Martin

Now that we are geared-up and our sharpening stones are flat, let’s make our blade sharp. The first step in sharpening a new blade is truing the ura. So let’s get to it.

General

All standard chisel blades and plane blades, whether Japanese or Western, need to have a planar flat or ura that it will be in contact with the sharpening stones its full width, and ideally, full length. Perfection is not necessary, however, so don’t let yourself get obsessive. If the ura is arched (concave), for instance, so it is in contact with a flat sharpening stone near the neck of a chisel, or head of a plane blade, and the cutting edge, that may be workable, but it must be in complete contact right behind the cutting edge. I cannot stress this importance of this point too strongly.

Once the ura of your chisel is flat and true, you should not need to true it again unless the blade needs major repairs. Japanese plane blades, on the other hand, are a little more complicated because repeated sharpenings tend to gradually wear out the land right in front of the cutting edge, called the “ito ura,” and the bevel must be tapped-out to compensate, and the ura re-flattened. I won’t delve into the subject of “tapping out” the ura of plane blades in this post but will save it for future discussions about Japanese planes.

Evaluate the Ura

The first step in flattening or truing an ura is to evaluate its condition. Don’t start grinding away willy nilly without first checking it and making a plan. If you find you cannot stop yourself, don’t walk but run to the nearest pharmacy and buy a bucket of the medicine discussed in part 19 in this series about maintaining sharpening stones.

There are several ways to check the ura’s condition. A narrow straightedge works well in most cases. Place the edge on top of the full length of the shiny land at one side of the ura all the way to the cutting edge. Keep the straightedge touching the land; Don’t let it span the hollow- ground urasuki. Hold the straightedge and blade up to a strong light source and look for light passing between them. This technique is quick and dirty and will suffice in most cases, but does not tell you a lot about twist.

Another method to check the ura for planar is to paint the shiny lands with dark marking pen ink or Dykem liquid, apply a bit of fine sharpening stone mud to a piece of flat glass, like the piece mentioned in Part 17, and rub the blade’s flat or ura over the glass. The high spots will become obvious. If the ura is banana shaped (convex), mark the high spot with your marking pen. More often than not, the ura of chisels will be generally flat, but the last 6mm or so of the cutting edge will be curved upwards towards the chisel’s face.

I learned two things from my examination of this Sukemaru brand atsunomi. First, there is a high spot (convex) at the skinny land on one side located approximately 1/2 to 5/8 the blades’s distance from the cutting edge. The land on the other side seems a little low. Hmm, curious. This is a bit unusual, but it happens when a blade warps during heat treat, which Shirogami steels tends to do frequently.

The second problem I observed was that the last 3~4mm of the land right behind the cutting edge curves downward away from the ura just a tiny bit, enough to cause problems.

I next need a plan to resolve these problems with a minimum of time and effort and without making things worse.

Make a Plan

The temptation to start grinding away immediately will be powerful. If it becomes too much, take a coffee cup or three of the medicine mentioned above and slather it on your head forcefully. Don’t hold back, for Pete’s sake, rub it in really good now. Some say my excessive use of this medicine is why I am as bald as an egg, but I prefer to believe it is caused by the light radiating from my gigantic brain (ツ). Thank goodness for my aluminum foil skull cap with its protruding copper wires!

Any plan needs goals and objectives. In this case the goal is a perfectly planar ura, but if this goal is difficult to achieve quickly there is an objective you should plan to achieve immediately in any case, one that may make it possible to achieve the larger goal over multiple routine sharpening sessions without any special effort.

As I keep harping, to make a chisel or plane work well, you need a flat area right at the cutting edge. This is where the cutting occurs and the area I need to keep sharp, so I will make creating this flat area the first objective in my plan, and then determine the steps to achieve it. Make certain every step in your plan and every stroke on the stones gets you closer to this objective, not further away. This means working smart.

If the blade is arched (concave), touching at two points, one near the neck of the chisel blade, or head of the plane blade, and at the other at the cutting edge, and not in between, all is well. I recommend you leave a blade like this as-is because after a few sharpening sessions the ura will become flat and twist-free without any special effort, and the blade will become very sharp and be entirely functional.

If the blade is wavy (rare) or banana-shaped (convex), your plan needs to take those details into account.

I located the highest point of the bulging area at the ura and marked a line across it with my marking pen. I then measured halfway between this line and the cutting edge and made another line. This area we will call the “focus line.” It is here where I need to focus the most pressure when grinding down the ura, not the entire length of the blade.

The purpose of doing all this prissy planning and layout work is to protect the right and left side lands from being wasted unnecessarily. Newbies try to work the entire length of the blade, but this is illogical and ignores three points. The first point is that the majority of the metal I need to waste is usually located to the right and left of the land nearest the cutting edge, not the full length of the blade, so there is little benefit to grinding the entire ura. The second point is that the side lands are thin as a blade of grass and will abrade very quickly with almost no effort. Besides, without using large plates and stones, it is very difficult to work the blade’s full length accurately without wearing notches in the side lands anyway. The third point is it makes no sense to try to grind down the land nearest the neck since the plane of the ura hinges on this land. Best to leave it alone and focus my efforts where they will make a difference.

Plane blades don’t even have a land near the head, so the futility of working the entire ura on plane blades is even more obvious than for a chisel.

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Work the Plan

The traditional Japanese tool used to flatten and/or correct ura is a smooth steel lapping plate called a kanaban, meaning “metal plate.” To use it, carborundum powder and water are placed on the plate, and the blade is lapped. This is not a difficult process at all, but there is a tendency for the blade’s perimeter to be ground more than the interior areas as the grit is forced in between the kanaban and the blade’s perimeter. To avoid this tendency, and to speed the process up, I prefer to use diamond plates instead of kanaban.

Whatever plan you developed, and whichever tool you selected for this job, the time has come to work the plan. Do you need more medicine? A bigger coffee cup?

First, color the ura’s perimeter lands with a marking pen or Dykem to help you see where the ura is being ground down. Don’t ever guess.

Place the most pressure on the focus line selected above. Move the blade back and forth (not side to side) onto and off of the diamond plate or kanaban with the cutting edge and the focus line always touching the diamond plate or kanaban. Don’t go past the high point for now. Be careful to not grind a notch into the narrow side lands where they meet the edge of the diamond plate or kanaban. Most people make this mistake at first.

Grind the ura down so the line at the highest point and the cutting edge is fairly flat.

Remember, the narrow lands at the sides of the hollow-ground urasuki will abrade down quickly. And the rest of the ura can be gradually flattened during subsequent sharpening sessions using regular sharpening stones. It doesn’t need to be made perfect immediately. What matters most is the steel on the land right at the cutting edge.

Polish a blade’s ura up to the level of your finest finishing stone once, and don’t touch it with rougher stones again unless it is absolutely necessary, or further gradual flattening is required. This means that in normal sharpening sessions you must remove all the damage at the cutting edge by abrading the bevel with the rougher stones, and only when the bevel is ready for the finish stone, do you work on the flat or ura, alternating from bevel to flat/ura until all defects, burrs, and even visible scratches are polished away.

If you condition the flat (ura) side of the blade correctly, and keep it polished, you should not need to work it on anything but your finish stone until it is time to tap out and grind the ura or back in the case of plane blades. Therefore, the bevel side of the blade is where we spend most of our time and effort.

Now that the ura is in good shape, we will look at sharpening the other side of the wedge, the blade’s bevel, in the next post in the series.

YMHOS

Links to Other Posts in the “Sharpening” Series

Sharpening Japanese Woodworking Tools Part 1

Sharpening Part 2 – The Journey

Sharpening Part 3 – Philosophy

Sharpening Part 4 – ‘Nando and the Sword Sharpener

Sharpening Part 5 – The Sharp Edge

Sharpening Part 6 – The Mystery of Steel

Sharpening Part 7 – The Alchemy of Hard Steel 鋼

Sharpening Part 8 – Soft Iron 地金

Sharpening Part 9 – Hard Steel & Soft Iron 鍛接

Sharpening Part 10 – The Ura 浦

Sharpening Part 11 – Supernatural Bevel Angles

Sharpening Part 12 – Skewampus Blades, Curved Cutting Edges, and Monkeyshines

Sharpening Part 13 – Nitty Gritty

Sharpening Part 14 – Natural Sharpening Stones

Sharpening Part 15 – The Most Important Stone

Sharpening Part 16 – Pixie Dust

Sharpening Part 17 – Gear

Sharpening Part 18 – The Nagura Stone

Sharpening Part 19 – Maintaining Sharpening Stones

Sharpening Part 20 – Flattening and Polishing the Ura

Sharpening Part 21 – The Bulging Bevel

Sharpening Part 22 – The Double-bevel Blues

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