This is a Tiger Tanto from Hanwei (Paul Chen's shop). The owner wanted a unique look for his piece and a more refined polish as well as an upgrade to the existing tsuka. We cleaned up the lines and blade geometry a bit (not a lot to do there, honestly) and enhanced the hamon and hada, not that it is terribly visible due to poor photography. It is difficult to really pick up the details in a blade but we are working on photographic techniques to help with this.

We also carved a new tsuka core, applied new black lacquered same, and wrapped it in 4mm purple silk ito. The saya was left alone aside from replacing the sageo with the purple silk ito tied as you see it here.

As to the hamon/hada enhancements, you can kind of see what we mean here. The top image is a simple close-up, and the bottom image is the same photo, but with the brightness lowered by about 20 points to help bring out the details.

As you can see, we obliterate the acid washed hamon and apply techniques that simply allow the subtle and natural features in that area to come out and show off a bit. It is, in my opinion, a much nicer, much more elegant appearance. that these blades definitely deserve.