Japanese knife maker ID please + check out this chip!

Today a customer brought me their knife for sharpening. They told me they had been using it with the chip for years, and asked me what I could do about it :O
Anyway after discussing it they are replacing the knife with a Fujiwara FKM (any opinions?).

Is anyone familiar with this knife maker? It's a little hard to tell in from the photo, but the bottom stamp says DP. The lamination line is interesting and doesn't look like a Tojiro flat type lamination at all. Thanks.

Here is everything I observed which may not be obvious from the photos:
The bolster wasn't soldered/integral. The tang ran to the back of the knife but not along the bottom of the handle. It was in the top half only. There was no discolouration on the blade, but the core steel had some moderate oxidation on the exposed tang. The handle was a kind of dyed and laminated wood, with very nice fit and finish. It tapered down nicely at the butt.

Nice bite

crazy chip! last one i saw like that was on a shun... lol

Bye bye hagane

The knife needs to be completely reprofiled, not worth the time/effort unless you are very skilled and have access to power tools. Probably worth mentioning that the core steel may or may not run up the whole length of the blade (i.e. if it is warikomi construction rather than san mai) as well.

try to turn it into a sweet petty knife!

They are going for a replacement, me and my 1x30 aren't up to this task. The core steel goes right to the top. I will try to take it off their hands once the replacement arrives :laugh:

the handle tells me it's a sakai made knife. similar to those generic vg10 knives that gets remarked as different brands. probably an older version of it?

A few more chips like that and you have a nice bread santoku

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/13008-Help-Please-Identifying-Cleaver?highlight=Hiromoto
Some of the Kanji looks similar to the Nakiri in this thread? Hiromoto maybe?

It definitely shares a lot of the small Kanji with the Hiro.

Ok. This has me completely baffled but I'm definitely no expert.

I'm not sure how the name of the maker is read correctly but it says "Registered" and "Made by 'Hikitake', 'Hikidake', 'Hitsutake', 'Hitsudake', 'Hitsugaku' or 'Hikigaku' (there are few ways to read each caracter)." The bottom part says "GOLD Honwarikomi DP".

I googled the maker in English and Japanese but not many things come up. One page that keeps coming up with the knife has it described/written 匹岳作（Made by Hikitake, Hikidake, etc.) but the item name is listed as 正岳作 （Made by Masatake, Masadake, Tadatake, Tadadake, Syoukaku or Syougaku).

Hope it helps.

I guess it means that it wasn't made by any well known maker. That's all I needed to know. Thanks.

That is a crazy chip. Cut off everything below chip with bandsaw/cutting wheel then thin/re-grind the leftover blade. This is how I would try to fix it, but someone else may have a better solution.

It hurts just looking at it. How the hell where they able to use it like that for years?