Kitaeji Maintenace 3

Continued from Kitaeji Maintenance 2.

Case 3 Pikal:

Pikal is a polisher which is used in Japan.

I applied this polish at a part of the knife with a kitchen sponge.

1 min of polish and the Kitaeji pattern is almost gone.

Now maintenance with the Maruka fingerstone:

With experience I got better with the water/mud ratio. You will see it is almost all swarf and little mud.
After 1 or 2min the Kitaeji pattern is back:

Case 4 Chromium(III) oxide (Cr2O3):

This polisher is sold in Japan as "Aobo" which means blue stick.

Arrow is just indicating shadow of the "Aobo"

Cr2O3 polish with tissue paper

The Cr2O3 polish was quite slow. It took me 5 min and still the Kitaeji pattern was still visible.

I used the Hakka fingerstone to regain the Kitaeji pattern and the result is here:

Conclusion.

Polishing the Kitaeji with polishing agent which make mirror finish to soft iron will destroy the Kitaeji pattern.
I think some synthetic finishing stones does it too. (I did not do the test because I do not have fingerstones from synthetic finisher).

Regaining of the Kitaeji pattern is very easy with high grade natural fingerstones.

The contrast of the Kitaeji was:
Hakka>Maruka>Uchigomori

The uniformity of the finish was Uchigomori=Maruka>Hakka

I have tested more than 10 other natural fingerstones which I did not make any pictures. The 3 fingerstones in this test are the best 3 of the fingerstones I have tested so far.

These 3 fingerstones can be used to the Kasumi finish too to make nice haze.