Help with chipping

I gave a friend a Shun Classic santoku a year ago, and I'm about to sharpen it up for him. There are a couple small chips, maybe 0.5mm, clearly visible to the naked eye. Besides stressing to them how to take care of the knife, what I can do to make the edge a bit more robust? Given the size of the chips I almost doubt a microbevel will do any good. He is also looking to upgrade his cutlery, and now that I see how hard they are on knives (although they probably know better now) what steel should I be looking at since VG10 is known to be chip prone, even for a J knife. Would Aogami Super (Hiromoto probably), SKD (yoshikane), or V2 (Kumogoro) be good choices? And lasers are probably out the question.

what type of chopping board does he have? plastic? wood?

I own a few Kumagoros. still love them to this day.

franzb69 said:

what type of chopping board does he have? plastic? wood?

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Wood, he doesn't know what kind, probably something cheap from Target.

still better than plastic. chipping still? maybe it's technique.

Alot of home knives edges bump into things other than food & a board.Plates,silverware etc.Most people use softer steels where the steel rounds or dents more than chipping.Harder steels can chip with abuse,twisting or prying wt. the blade.

I used VG-10 Tojiro DP,never had problems wt. chipping,but I take care of my knives,I always liked thin edges on my carbons at work,it speeds up prep quite a bit the only tradeoff is to protect those edges.

I see people cutting on plates & sheetpans & wonder why their knives are dull.Most chipping in knives comes fr. the edges coming into contact wt. hard objects.

Get him an edge guard, ive seen people with knife trays/buckets where they get chucked in with no care.

Ask him about his honing technique as in the other video thread about using a steel, most chefs just go Willy nilly with their knives on their steel not really knowing what they are doing, and those shuns will chip on a normal steel.

Are plastic blocks that bad? I have one use sometimes.

It sounds like the chipping may have come from his wife throwing it in the sink in a fit when he told her not to put it in the dishwasher. That is what he is thinking happened anyway. And yes they did keep it in one of those cage buckets with other utensils until I saw it, he uses a block now.

He does no honing (probably a good thing), I'll just get it to sharpen every now and then. I think mostly it is awareness issue, where they just needed to be educated on how to treat a good knife.

Anyway, for future purchases, any particular metal I should steer him towards if his wife stays a bit careless? I would imagine any of the tool steels like SKD or V2 would be better than VG10, but I'm curious about the blues too.

Nope, it has nothing to do with the fact that it's VG10, which is a good knife steel. SKD, V2, anything harder than HRc 59-60 will chip if abused. If the abuse continues, consider a softer rosewood-handled Victorinox or a Messermeister.

A lot of brand new knives chip before the factory edge has been removed. Don't know if it is very local overheating during HT or during buffering, but it's very common. Start sharpening on a coarse stone and make sure to remove some steel.

I believe this chipping is pretty common with the Shun Classic chef knives. I know ours chips quite a bit, which is one of the reasons it is pretty much 'retired'. Used only on BoardSmith boards the last two years (and another wood one before that), plus sharpened under the watchful eye of Mr. Martell a couple years back (small chips before that sharpening, after that sharpening, and after later sharpenings). None of the other knives we use regularly has had this problem.