Question about white steel #1

Hello
I'm looking to pick up a yanagiba and had my eye on a suisin densho 270mm. It's white steel #1. I've got a friend who has had trouble sharpening his white steel gyuoto (not much what who the maker is). Is his a trend with white steel? Because I've heard this problem arise and rather not purchase and yanagiba that I'll have problems sharpening.

Thanks for you help!


Mike

White steel is super easy to sharpen. But sharpening yanagiba in general takes a little bit of learning.

i've got 3 knives in white steel. they're all easy to sharpen and easy to get super sharp. i also think the fact that they're clad knives with softer iron cladding makes them easy to sharpen too. the suisin densho is also a clad knife and white #1 vs white #2, i really don't think most people would be able to tell the difference. white #1 is supposed to get harder but more brittle.

the only instance where white steel might be hard to sharpen, would possibly be with a honyaki knife, where the whole blade is mid 60+ hrc white steel. this might be hard to sharpen.

Hi kpnv
there may be some misunderstandings here:
1. Claddding or not has no or if only very little impact on the sharpabilty of a gyuto. You are sharping the edge, not the whole knife. The effect is also bneglectable on an Yanagi
2. HRC60 is not exceptional hard, more like mediumhard. There may be a correlation between hrc and the ease of getting a knife sharp, but thats far more complex t. There are steels that sharpen supereasy at HRC63 and others with HRC60 take like forever....
3. What stones are you using? Or are you using stones at all? There is no machinge to sharpen a yanagiba
4. Its no so much the steel, but the heattreatment. You can get a 440c at HRC64 if you like, but that would be useless, because this would knife crumble like a wasa-bread..
5. i also dont think that anyone could tell the difference between "white#1" and "white#2" (you already knew that the steel is not white, right?). Its not much of a difference, plus the HT has a huuuuuuuuuuge impact..

But to answer your question: I never heard of anyone (who is used to sharping) have any Problemns of getting an quality knive with shirogami sharp...

Greets B

Suisin Densho is a very good yanagiba, very easy to shapen, and maintain. Like Jon said when he promoted Densho series,

"Syuji Yamaguchi : Yamaguchi tries to sharpen knives in a way that makes subsequent sharpening easier for the end user. He considers both honbadzuke and all sharpening to take place afterwards when shaping the knives he sharpens."

I used to have 300mm, but let it go because I had too many yanagibas for a home cook. Two that are still with me are Shigefusa and a custom ordered Gesshin Hide, so you know that reason of letting go was that Densho was anything bad.

I've read a fair number of people posting here that you probably can't tell much of a difference between any of the white and blue steels. My only experience with White #1 is a Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan suji made by Teruyasu Fujiwara. Of all my knives, it gets the sharpest the easiest, hands down and that is compared against White #2 and AS.

I am curious who made your friend's white gyuto. Is it White #1 or White #2? I can only imagine that it must have a bad heat treatment.

wrt banjo

im just saying that a clad knife with softer cladding versus a honyaki knife without any cladding is easier to sharpen. and i didn't mean 60. i meant 63/64/65 or whatever a honyaki knife might be, hence the 60+.

also, i don't get what you mean when you just sharpen the edge of a yanagi. when you sharpen a single bevel, you need to bring the shinogi line up by as much as you bring the edge upwards to maintain the geometry. if you're taking material off the shinogi line, that's softer iron cladding on a clad knife. on a honyaki, there is no softer cladding and the whole knife is a similar high hardness.

yes, the cladding doesn't affect how sharp the yanagi gets. however, the cladding does make it easier to sharpen as opposed to a honyaki knife.

but like i said before, white steel is easy to sharpen and get to get ridiculously sharp.

banjo1071 said:

Hi kpnv
there may be some misunderstandings here:
1. Claddding or not has no or if only very little impact on the sharpabilty of a gyuto. You are sharping the edge, not the whole knife. The effect is also bneglectable on an Yanagi

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I don't agree with these statements.

ThEoRy said:

I don't agree with these statements.

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+1

mhlee said:

+1

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+2