I was at large local independant kitchen store (kitchen window in MSP) and was surprised to see that they had a pretty large selection of the new Onion Rain knives.
It was near the end of the day and I didn't want to waste too much of the staff's time, so I didn't take many pics, I did give them a pretty thorough once over.
Sometimes I really hate being right, but pretty much everything that I feared these knives to be was confirmed: horrible profiles (with the exception of the regular paring; they didnt have the reverse model): ridiculous handles, and almost meat-cleaver thick behind the edge.
To Lamson's credit; it looks like they did a good job executing a terrible design. Every contour of the turd handles where smooth, symmetrical, well finished and well attached to the blades. Neither the spines or choils were eased, but the weird "rain" finish was executed cleanly, and the blades all appeared true and the distal tapers where even. As I said, the grinds where thick and ugly, but I have no idea if that was to Ken's spec or not, but if he got so many (much simpler) parts of the design so wrong, I'm willing to assume that he didn't know what the grind and thickness behind the edge should look like either.
These knives are worse than the Shuns.
Seeing these knives actually made me both sad and pissed off. All of the elements are there to make a game-changing line of American knives: Great materials, skilled manufacturing, a famous name, great distribution / sales network, and it was all ruined by stupid, ignorant, arrogant, wrong-headedness. What a ******* joke and what an inexcusable waste of an opportunity that much more deserving designers would have killed for.
Please avoid giving this ass-clown any money.
here's a crappy pic befitting the crappy subject matter:
