sakai yusuke asymmetry

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TheDispossessed

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looking at the choil shots of Sakai Yusukes on Kiechi's ebay, it seems these are extremely asymmetric knives with an (obviously) right handed bias on the grind and setting of the blade in the handle.
this makes me hesitant as a lefty, anyone have any thoughts on this?
thanks
 
As I recall the bevel is micro. The dang blades are uber thin. Unless these newer ks type clones are ground much different, I would say you should experience no problems. As a fellow lefty, I take ootb asymmetry less serious these days as I can tweak it to my liking.
 
I have one(lefty). As no chop said, the knife is ground so thin that there isnt really any steering issues to be had because of how thin it is. However, the grind on the left side is pretty darn flat, and being so thin there really isnt much room to tweak it. Stiction on the blade is pretty bad on that left side. Its not the worst choice, but i would be very hesitant to recommend it to a lefty. YMMV.
 
All of the Yusuke knives I have - except the Extra Thick flat profile which is pretty close to being 50/50 symmetrical - do have a slight right hand bias. I have a standard 270 gyuto and the left side is slightly flatter grind than the right side which has a good bit of convex for such a thin knife, but the left side isn't dead flat. I'm not sure if this is intended or just a result of being hand made and ground very thin. I could be wrong, as always, but I believe Keiichi markets all his Yusukes as being 50/50.

As mentioned above, they are very thin and I don't think you'll have any unusual problems using it left handed - stiction happens on the right side of my 270 as well as the left. You can always e-mail Keiichi and talk to him directly.
 
They are VERY asymmetric on my personal specimens, and since I'm right-handed, I'm very happy with the Sakai Yusuke asymmetry. I'm not sure what others are seeing. Of the Sakai specimens I have, the Gesshin Ginga seems the most symmetric. I own the Sakai Yusuke 240 gyuto and a few pettys, a Konosuke HD 240, Konosuke HH 240, Ginga 240, Ginga 210. The Konosukes are also very asymmetric, and I love it!

They are so thin that it might not make much difference to a lefty. But take a look at Gesshin Ginga if you're a lefty. That's just my personal experience. I can tell the difference between my asymmetric Kono or Yusuke and my more symmetric Ginga when I'm trying to cut paper thin slices.
 
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