Tell the customer it's a ladder pattern...

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-Evan

Heres what I think is going on. Looking at your blade I see small black dimples which tell me its likely leftover forge scale, also the direction of the scratches is going from tang to tip. I have been working on my hand polishing for around 9 months and its literally the newest skill I picked up. the issue is your hand sanding method I am guessing your last machine polish was going from tang to tip and then you started hand polish going tang to tip you started with eather an eather 400 or 220 stone or paper and did the polishing in the same direction as your hand polished. the result was you left a lot of scratch marks in the blade as you polished, however, we're unable to see them till you hit it with a high enough grit to get a high polish. you never want to go the same direction whenever your hand polishing, professional Japanese polishers will change the direction of there polish around 25 degrees as they go up the grits, however, as far as I am aware no classical Japanese blade has a plunge cut in them as the blades are beveled goes down to the tang. however, all you really need to do is alternate each grit going eather tang to tip or edge to spine. the starting direction of your polish is determined by the direction of your last machine polish.

personally I always grind edge to the spine so I always start my hand polish going tip to spine. you're also going to want a good light source above your blades when doing hand polish as that way you can see the finer and finer scratches made as you go up the grits. this is just personal preference however I feel you should always start at a grit lower than your last grinder belt. like me, you stop at 220 grit so I always start with a 120 grit stone. also, the first stones used by a Japanese polisher set the foundation given we use grinders to do are rough polishing instead of hand stones the first-hand polish grit sets the foundation of the entire final polish thus it takes the longest to do and should never be rushed and having that good light source is key to getting it done right. however, you also want to make sure the last polishing grit goes tang to tip as this is the direction that produces the better polish. if you're having trouble seeing the scratch marks made by the 120 grit belt I recommend getting some Dykem Layout fluid, as you will know all the scratches are gone when you no longer see any blue or in my case red lines on your blade.

I have never used it with my polishing stones but you can also use the fluid as you hand polish, however, it's really easy to tell when you have gotten rid of your lines as going edge to spine leaves very unattractive marks in your blade that are easy to see.

I learned about Japanese polishing practices from the book the craft of the Japanese sword, which is out of print and expensive now along with being completely in black and white prints. I got lucky and snagged a copy of the second us edition on amazon before it went out of print the original copyright is the year of my birth 1987. however, I also own a book called The Art of the Japanese sword The craft of swordmaking and its appreciation is by the same authors, covers the same subjects, is almost 100 pages longer than the latter, is in full color, and available eather as a hard copy or on kindle and was published in 2012. however, I am still working threw the latter book so I can't yet compare the two till I finish it. I will include some links to the layout fluid and book.

I hope this answers your initial question.

Dykem layout products: https://www.amazon.com/s?srs=19821892011

The Art of the Japanese Sword: The Craft of Swordmaking and its Appreciation: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/4805312408/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1