# Communities > Bladesmiths, Blacksmiths, Artisans and Professionals > Japanese-Style Sword Makers Cafe >  Bo Hi ? Burnished or polished ??

## Dwight Pilkilton

Which is it, or perhaps both due to its usual location. I was just thinking outloud here this morning.

Thanks
Lets all wish and pray for the very best for our soldiers in harms way.

Dwight P

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## Joseph Renner

They are burnished, "traditionally".

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## Keith Larman

Both.

The polisher needs to address aspects of all horimono. They get rust, corrosion, wear, etc. just like any part of a sword. The insides of the horimono, the ridge, whatever all have to be cleaned up, crisped, etc. That's done with stones cut and shaped to size right up into uchigumori. Any horimono is usually finished first because it is easy to slip out of a groove while doing the polish and futz up the rest of the polish. Then the final polish is completed as well as burnishing. Sometimes the burnishing is done well before any of the finish polish of the rest of the blade just in case.

And there's lots of issues in polishing blades with even a "simple" bo-hi. One for instance is that slurry will gather at the end of a groove while polishing the surrounding areas of the sword. This will then pull out slowly and smear up the polish at the end of the groove. If you see faint lines at the end of especially fine grooves that's what you're looking at.

The bottom line is that they are polished in the sense of normal stone progression, then burnished. And there is a lot involved in doing it well and maintaining a nice polish and clean burnish. 

And if you want to drive yourself nuts, try doing fine grooves in 1086 which had a hardened area running through it. Refining the shape was a serious butt-pain not to mention getting into those fine little buggers and getting them burnished... 

Keith

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