Deba advice

Is a 210 deba too big to use for small-med sized fish? Say the usual snappers and seabreams you see for sale in the market...not sure how much those fish weigh...but that size.

slowtyper said:

Is a 210 deba too big to use for small-med sized fish? Say the usual snappers and seabreams you see for sale in the market...not sure how much those fish weigh...but that size.

Click to expand...

shouldnt be.. i prepped quite a few sardines yesterday with a 210 deba and those are tiny and quite fragile. seabream and snappers should be perfectly fine for that if not ideal

You can certainly use a 210, but you don't need anything that big. Technically a 150 or 165 would do for the typical snappers and sea breams you see in markets. That's going to be a little small for something bigger like whole salmon, but then snappers and sea breams are a lot smaller than salmon

I use one all the time.
[video=youtube;W7__yMkGvzc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7__yMkGvzc&list=UUY7LzKnt-Q59iQz01e10rnw&index=5[/video]

Nah mean?

I always think 210 is a great size for deba. Should be just fine for a snapper but can also do salmon without any issues. And for small fish like mackeral or sardines... Well, I just use my petty for those, LOL.

I was thinking about adding a Fujiwara FKM 150mm Deba to an order I am about to place at JCK.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this knife? I would mainly be buying it to use on small to medium size fish, but wondered if it could be used for any other jobs.

rdpx said:

I was thinking about adding a Fujiwara FKM 150mm Deba to an order I am about to place at JCK.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this knife? I would mainly be buying it to use on small to medium size fish, but wondered if it could be used for any other jobs.

Click to expand...

I don't have personal experience with Fujiwara deba, although I bought my mom 210 gyuto and its a good knife and a super value. By reputation only, I would expect Hiromoto to be a better quality knife, and JCK just happens to have a 170 western deba in stainless: http://japanesechefsknife.com/Page4.html Just another option to confuse you. It looks like the Fujiwara is a single bevel, while the Hiromoto western deba should be double beveled. If you're looking for some versatility, the double bevel knife will be much better at other tasks.
Good luck.

Both the Fujiwara and the Hiromoto are double bevelled, and asymmetric.
The Fujiwara comes with a more extreme asymmetric edge. This doesn't make it a single bevel. A single bevel has a concave left side. An asymmetric double bevelled blade has a flat left side.
I wonder what the advantage is of a western deba over an equally heavy European chef knife. For heavy task the softer steel of a European chef blade could be an advantage IMO.

Not looking for great versatility, just wondering if the FKM Deba would be useful for anything else apart from prepping fish.
Does fact it is not single bevel make it less of a knife, Deba-wise?

phan1 said:

I always think 210 is a great size for deba. Should be just fine for a snapper but can also do salmon without any issues. And for small fish like mackeral or sardines... Well, I just use my petty for those, LOL.

Click to expand...

I was thinking same thing, until I used 18cm and paired longer mioroshi with it.
A winning combination.
Still like the 21 though.

Slowtyper, depending on how much fish you are going to be preparing, 18cm would be enough just for breams sized things.

I agree with the others that there's no harm with going 210, and that 180 is certainly enough.

I disagree though that you'd need at least 180 for something like sea bream and snapper. On each side of the fish, you're just going in from "edge" to spine. You're not going from top to bottom of the fish, just halfway. Being generous, let's say they're 15cm from top to bottom. If the spine is about halfway, that's just 7.5cm of flesh to cut through. If you're angling the edge at 45* or so from vertical, then you're really still only using about 11cm of edge.

After doing top, bottom, then when you're doing the final separation of the filet from the spine, there's really just a small contact area probably in the middle of the blade edge as you run the knife from tail to head.

No harm in going bigger, and bigger deba certainly have more appeal. I just don't think they're necessary for smaller fish like sea breams, snapper, trout, tilapia, etc.

Ikkanshi Tadatuna Double Beveled Deba Knife 210mm INOX

This deba is at aframes. I have never heard a double bevel deba. Anyone ever use this beast.

Ucmd said:

Ikkanshi Tadatuna Double Beveled Deba Knife 210mm INOX

This deba is at aframes. I have never heard a double bevel deba. Anyone ever use this beast.

Click to expand...

double beveled deba? Is that like a western deba?

seems to me it's a western deba with a wa handle

http://yhst-27988581933240.stores.yahoo.net/ikkanshi-tadatuna-double-beveled-deba-knife-210mm-i210.html

it's tadatsuna though, just a spelling error. i'm a spelling nazi. lol.

Looks solid. Never used a double beveled deba either.. wonder how it handles

Benuser said:

Both the Fujiwara and the Hiromoto are double bevelled, and asymmetric.
The Fujiwara comes with a more extreme asymmetric edge. This doesn't make it a single bevel. A single bevel has a concave left side. An asymmetric double bevelled blade has a flat left side.
I wonder what the advantage is of a western deba over an equally heavy European chef knife. For heavy task the softer steel of a European chef blade could be an advantage IMO.

Click to expand...

I just got this email from Koki at JCK regarding the FKM Deba:-

"Fujiwara FKM Deba 150mm. This knife has Single Bevel Edge as the Japanese Traditional style knives. Normally most common size of Deba is Deba 180mm. Deba 150mm and Deba 165mm size are popular for home cooking. Deba 150mm size is especially good for the fish size approximate 200mm."

(It is not clear on the FKM page when it mentions edges as 70/30 then says the deba and a couple of others are only for r-hand use, but the mail from koki seems fairly clear. has anyone actually seen one of these knives to confirm)

Personally I decided against getting one now - I think a deba is top of my list of knives I really would like to buy at some point though.