White Steel and Super Blue Steel

[Thomas Herbert]

I have some knives coming from Bladesmith Murray Carter. They are made from either white steel with one of them made from “Blue Super” steel.

Are these sharpened in any special way or still in normal progression? I’m assuming these are blended steel formulations. His work making custom knives is amazing and I don’t want to “experiment” on these as one new to knife sharpening.

I’ll post some pics as soon as they arrive.

[wickededge]

I have some knives coming from Bladesmith Murray Carter. They are made from either white steel with one of them made from “Blue Super” steel.

Are these sharpened in any special way or still in normal progression? I’m assuming these are blended steel formulations. His work making custom knives is amazing and I don’t want to “experiment” on these as one new to knife sharpening.

I’ll post some pics as soon as they arrive.

That’s super exciting! He’s an phenomenal knife maker and they should be a treat to work with. I can make some recommendations once you get them in and post some pictures.

-Clay

[Daniel Nash]

I’m very interested in this too, Clay. I have several Murray Carter knives, shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgqjnjF0_Fg

If that provides you enough for any recommendations, I’d love to hear them. Also happy to take some close-up pictures.

Thanks,
Dan

[wickededge]

Hey Dan,

Can you send me the specs on each of those beautiful knives along w/ a close up photo?

-Clay

-Clay

[Daniel Nash]

Hey Clay,

Started taking a few this evening and quickly realized I suck at taking pictures of blades! Going to have to work on that. The photos you take of yours are beauties and really show of the qualities of the blade.

Here are a few I took of Murray’s Original pattern neck knife, the right, uppermost knife in the overall collection photo. Hoping that will help size the other blades. I’m happy to take other close-ups of the other blades, but it might take a few days to happen. Other than length, let me know what other blade specs you might need.

(Click to access WebShots where full size can be downloaded)

~Dan

[Thomas Herbert]

Dan, nice collection i’m suprised you took the neck knife off long enough to photograph it:P

[Daniel Nash]

Thanks, ElPasoTom! If you have one in your order, you’re going to love it! I have to keep myself from ordering another, though he just came out with what he calls is Perfect profile and I might just give in for that one.

Just realized I sort of hijacked your thread here and I apologize for that. Definitely interested in any opinions on sharpening these steels.

~Dan

[Thomas Herbert]

Dan,

No problem… I’m new here myself. Glad to see another fan of Carter Cutlery. I’ll only have two of his pieces though.

5.7 sun Stainless Fukugozai Wabocho in Blue Super steel

Neck knife 182 Oyako hammer finish white steel, ironwood handle

So lets figure out how to keep em sharp

Thomas

[wickededge]

I need to acquire one of his knives too!

-Clay

[Thomas Herbert]

OK,

Got a nice surprise in the mail today. Two new Murray Carter Knives.

Kitchen knife is in Blue Super steel

Neck knife in white steel with hammer finish

Sharp as hell too!

[Thomas Herbert]

Trying with larger pics… sorry still getting used to the forum and photobucket.

[Ken Schwartz]

These would look even more beautiful with a natural stone finish on them. Thiis provides contrast between the soft cladding or jigane and the harder core of white or blue carbon steel or hagane.

And yes I do have some natural stones available for the WEPs for just such a knife.

—
Ken

[Thomas Herbert]

Ken,

First i have to get a WEPS, currently not scheduled to ship until end of April. I also ordered the ceramic stones, and a full set of Choseras. Where would these “natural stones” fit into the progression, or how would i make use of them?

Thanks

Thomas

[Mark76]

Wooh! Those are beautiful! I just realize our kitchen is in desperate need of a Murray Carter knife…

Thomas, you can increase the picture size by uploading larger sized pictures to Photobucket. The ones you uploaded are 320×240 pixels. Photobucket is quite generous with space. I usually upload 1024×768 photos.

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Ken Schwartz]

Natural stones, among other things, provide a ‘natural stone finish’.m This finish treats the core steel differently than the softer cladding steel, providing contrast between the two and revealing structural characteristics of the knife. Rather than giving the same shiny finish to both steels, the softer steel produces a matte finish because it more easily is scratched by the natural stone and the core steel gets a shiny finish but with a slight black haze to it or kurobikari finish. This reveals the structure of the steel, giving the knife a most interesting finish. Some rare synthetic stones also produce a similar effect such as the Nubatama 2000 grit stone as seen in this video

Where I ‘convert a typical synthetic stone finish to a finish closely resembling a natural stone finish. Note the change in contrast on this blue steel knife (specifically aogami super).

So in a sense these stones represent a parallel series of stones with some fascinating characteristics of their own. You can transition from synthetic stones to naturals at any point along the sequence of refining an edge and you can follow the natural stones with compounds as well and even use compounds on naturals as a component of the slurry.

The edges produced are quite different especially under a scope, and have different characteristics particularly as regards edge longevity. You will also find that for instance for some tasks the particular toothiness of an aoto (medium grit range natural) will provide an edge very well suited for a butcher – not overly refined but very pleasant to use for meat cutting. This is a very long topic and one that would completely take this thread way off topic.

Natural stones ‘react’ in an individual manner to different steels and different methods of using steel by individual knifemakers, so in my opinion a knife made using traditional Japanese steels by a traditional Japanese style knife maker like Murray would react very favorably to sharpening with natural stones.

—
Ken

Ken,

First i have to get a WEPS, currently not scheduled to ship until end of April. I also ordered the ceramic stones, and a full set of Choseras. Where would these “natural stones” fit into the progression, or how would i make use of them?

Thanks

Thomas

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