I was the original owner of this knife and owned this knife for over a year. Most of the comments here are speculation based on other of Mario's earlier knives, and they're not consistent with my experience.
This knife was a very good performer overall; although it's not a laser, it cut very well in many types of cuts, especially push cutting toward the heel. Fast or slow, it performed very well.
Initially, I actually found pull cutting to be the worst, especially toward the tip, and horizontal cutting through the tip because of the profile of the edge along the tip as it was essentially flat and almost bird's beaked. But, I reshaped the tip so that it had a slight curve and it performed much better. Nonetheless, that's relatively speaking - the knife performed well all around; the best performance quality of this knife was the food release.
When I sold it, it needed just a little thinning - the knife was sharpened only about 5 times by me, Jon and, IIRC, tk59. The CPM154 is hard; it loses its freshly sharpened feel very quickly, but keeps 80-90% of its sharpness for a long time.
Here are my original comments to Mario in February 2012 after I used this knife for a bit and gave this knife its first big workout:
I'll start off with my criticisms since they're few. I go back and forth on the tip. Sometimes it works great, other times it's a little troublesome. It seems like you really have to work to get the right angle, or right follow through with the point on the board to make sure you cut through everything with the tip. I think it needs to be rounded just a touch - and I mean "just a touch" so that it's not flat, but just very slightly rounded. I think the natural draw through motion of using the tip will allow a person to get full use of the entire length of the tip when you do this. I noticed when I was going through onions, I had to make sure I made full contact with the board with the tip to ensure that I went through the entire onion. Second, and I haven't had any knife really do great on carrots, but the knife seems to have some steering and wedging issues with hard carrots. That, to me, is the holy grail of tests. I haven't owned or tried a knife yet that goes through carrots very well.
On to the positives. I think the geometry is very good. In fact, as I chopped onions, doing horizontal slices and then vertical slices, I noticed how easily it went through the onions. It was a breeze to get through six onions quickly. Celery and bell peppers were easy to cut. I cut the bell peppers skin side down and did a small chop quickly and efficiently. Onions stuck the most to the knife, but I think that was a product of the onions being very moist. Other than that, I got through the vegetables extremely quickly. Also, I've been fooling around with various grips on the knife and it's become easier and easier to use. I don't think the handle is too large now. I'm also really enjoying that amboyna wood. That is a winner.
With respect to chicken, this is where the tip seemed to really do its best work. Because it's almost a straight point, when boning the chicken, it was very easy to cut - the knife cut where you put it. A finer edge would have made the cutting easier, although possibly sacrificing feel, but it still did a great job.
I think the one thing that most surprises me about the knife everytime I use it is how easy it is to use. The balance is extremely good, and for an over 240 mm blade, it doesn't feel that big, even though it's more substantial than other knives I've used.
I'm not sure how to improve the grind, but I think that, and the edge along the tip, are the only things that need to be worked on performance wise. But, I think going forward, the changes you may want to make are minor. It's a very good performing knife - better than other knives that are more expensive in my opinion. I did notice that my knife came with a few scratches on it. But this, again, is minor. The edge also seems to be holding up well.
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My comments of cutting above were based mostly on push and slight rock chopping, and some pull cutting.
I also want to clarify a few things. This knife isn't in the condition that Mario made it/that I purchased it, or the condition that I sold it, and, based on the comments of the current owner, it's likely not performing the way it was when I had it. Based on the scratches on blade face of the knife, and the comments about performance, the geometry of the knife has very likely been changed. I want that to be clear so that there are no assumptions that this knife currently is how Mario's knives are.
In my experience, thinning, per se, doesn't necessarily improve performance; proper thinning does. Also, proper edge shape makes a big difference in how a knife performs, especially in how a knife feels when it first goes into food.
Also, the handle was oiled by someone besides Mario or me -- natural amboyna doesn't need to be oiled -- to be clear that Mario did not sell the handle that way.
And, now that I've used a lot more knives, I can say that when I had it, it performed much better than a Masamoto KS (I've owned one and would choose this knife over a KS any day of the week as it was a better cutter than the KS I owned), but may not cut as well as a Kono HD, but will have MUCH better food release.