What's the asymmetry for?

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Don Nguyen

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I haven't seen many double-bevel knives without some form of asymmetry. What is the real purpose of it?
 
steering for particular handiness and differential friction: having friction points at different places on the blade should reduce drag through a solid food item.
 
Say in a right hand knife, you can have the bevel closest to you nearly flat (or actually flat (with a hollow) in a single bevel knife) without it effecting food release, then you can have more convexity on the right bevel (looking down on the knife in the cutting position) to allow for better food release. If you had the same convex grind on both sides it would lead to more wedging and a thicker geometry than in the example above. If you go very flat and thin on both sides, food sticks a lot more.
 
Also, from a production point of view, I'm sure it's cheaper to more or less flat grind one face and convex the other.
 
steering for particular handiness and differential friction: having friction points at different places on the blade should reduce drag through a solid food item.

Never heard that,sounds good though,Being right handed have felt that assem. cuts better than 50/50.Of coarse most of my assem. blades have excellent steel that take very sharp edges.
 
I would add that all good Western knives I know have an asymmetric grinding, right face more convex, left one flatter, but their OOTB edge isn't off-centered as with the Japanese.
 

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