Help to buy one Takohiki.

Hey all.
Fist my name is Rodrigo and i'm from Brazil.
I'm looking to buy one Takohiki to make sashimi/sushi at home, I read some in the forum, but a found a lot of information about Yanagi (yanagi ba) its use in sushi make, but i want to buy one Takohiki just for howl they look!
So...if anyone knows of a topic to talk about takohiki, or maybe have some pacience to help me!

I'm right hand, this is my fist sushi/sashimi knife i itend to spend 80-100 U$ in the knife, my fist question, with 100 dollar i can buy a good knife? or just some crap, and in the second time i made sushi i will need to buy another one??

the material of knif. in my home i only have stainless stell knife, just regular knife, zwilling and wusthof, so my sharpening skill is limited to stainlees steel, but i see some knifes in white, bue stell, carbon steel...

and of course, anyone have some knife sugestion in this range price, and that fits my needs sushimaker ( im far for a sushiman lol)

Thanks for your help.

Cheers

Ps: Sorry if i made or write some wrong.

i can't really recommend a single bevel knife to someone who doesn't sound too experienced with knives and i also can't recommend a takohiki either because it tends to be more uncommon, more expensive and harder to use. we haven't even got to the sharpening and maintenance yet.

you can still make sushi/sashimi without getting a takohiki. i'd recommend doing that for a bit first and seeing if your sushi/sashimi making habit is a long term thing. or you could spend $100 on a stainless tojiro on ebay if you want a cool toy.

For $80-100? Nah, can't recommend a good takobiki or yanagiba. Maybe around $250 and we can talk. In your price range I would suggest a Fujiwara fkh or fkm Sujihiki. Not a single bevel knife but it's a solid performer in stainless or carbon.

I wouldn't recommend anything around $100. Chances are if its that cheap, it would be machine made not handmade like it's supposed to be. Sometimes machine made traditional Japanese knives come in for sharpening, but we have treat them more as Western style knives than Japanese, because if we really tried to put the same thin blade on it, it would chip like crazy. Like Theory recommended, I would suggest getting a sujihiki instead for that price range.

I've worked sushi for 7 years, and the cheapy sub 100 dollar knives I see brought in by guys are unsharpenable. They are super uneven and chip like crazy. I guess its not impossible, but I would be very disappointed if anyone on my staff bought one at that price after talking to me.

Frankly single bevel knives are only a good investment for guys cutting fish professionally or someone who is a real enthusiast. Making maki rolls you will see no real value in them. Making nigiri will take a year of everyday work to get good enough.

As for constructive advice: The cheapest yanagi I ever enjoyed sharpening was a Yoshihiro : http://echefknife.com/kasumi-yanagi-sashimi-japanese-knife.html . We're told that Jon has made them less of a crap shoot with his Uraku line. It was really forgiving for beginner sharpening. Secondly the Sakimaru takobiki we can all agree is a bad ass looking knife. The regular, short, thin, square tipped takobiki less so. Both, I will argue, are harder to get used to that traditional yanagi tip, and the sakimaru are almost never a bargain.

Don't give up making sushi at home. Its can be a fun group activity for friends and cool at a party.

I realy apreciate The help os everyone!
About The price range, 100u$ means to me = 100,00for knife+ 30,00 shipment+ 60% import tax = 208u$ final price( in Brazil i pay tax for The shipment too :bigeek
Maybe i can wait a time to buy a better knife!!
Thanks

Welcome Kibaumm You maybe better off buying in Brazil with high Import tax.With the International popularity of Sushi I would think there would be a supplier in your country.

As others said hard to find a yanagi or Takohiki at 100.00.You can find them however the quality is low.As mentioned JKI sells the Gesshin Uraku white steel at 200.00.It is hard to find a better yanagi at that price.

Hi there Rodrigo!

Just wanted to say that you shouldn't be discouraged by people advicing you against buying a single bevel. If you're interested in japanese knives and want to learn how to use them, go ahead and do it. I say buy a decent deba and three or four usable waterstones, and start cruising youtube for instructional videos. A lot of us started out with no knowledge or equipment, but a lust to learn, and I think an aproach like that shouldn't be discouraged. Learning by doing, and failing, is very educational.

Oh, and don't buy anything expensive! You're going to mistreat quite a few knives and molest a few stones in the process of learning proper handling and sharpening. So wait with the takohiki until you know how to treat it right.

The best of luck to you!
G

Grunde said:

Hi there Rodrigo!

Just wanted to say that you shouldn't be discouraged by people advicing you against buying a single bevel. If you're interested in japanese knives and want to learn how to use them, go ahead and do it. I say buy a decent deba and three or four usable waterstones, and start cruising youtube for instructional videos. A lot of us started out with no knowledge or equipment, but a lust to learn, and I think an aproach like that shouldn't be discouraged. Learning by doing, and failing, is very educational.

Oh, and don't buy anything expensive! You're going to mistreat quite a few knives and molest a few stones in the process of learning proper handling and sharpening. So wait with the takohiki until you know how to treat it right.

The best of luck to you!
G

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We aren't discouraging him from buying a single beveled knife. We are discouraging him from buying an $80 single beveled knife. It's just a bad idea, there's just too many problems with single beveled knives of this poor quality. It's just going to be a poorly made, cheaply constructed pain in the ass to use and sharpen. Really not worth the headaches at all. Step the budget up into the $200 range and we can start making some good suggestions.

I think its more of a preference thing rather than being difficult to take care of, but I guess I wouldn't recommend it as a first knife since it generally has a shorter life span than a yanagi. Maybe that's why people on the forum aren't recommending it.

ThEoRy said:

We aren't discouraging him from buying a single beveled knife. We are discouraging him from buying an $80 single beveled knife. It's just a bad idea, there's just too many problems with single beveled knives of this poor quality. It's just going to be a poorly made, cheaply constructed pain in the ass to use and sharpen. Really not worth the headaches at all. Step the budget up into the $200 range and we can start making some good suggestions.

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I would agree. Aren't Zakuri tako's around the $200 mark? I think Jon carries Zakuri.

akirapuff said:

I think its more of a preference thing rather than being difficult to take care of, but I guess I wouldn't recommend it as a first knife since it generally has a shorter life span than a yanagi. Maybe that's why people on the forum aren't recommending it.

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Well, it's both really. The grind is gonna be all whacked out with really high and low spots in the blade road. It's going to take a ton of work to flatten that all out to an acceptable level. There will most likely be issues with the ura as well, again with whacky grinding. There can also be issues with warping and torquing of the blade which will make sharpening it properly next to impossible. Lets say you put all these man hours into fixing this $80 blade then what do you have to show for it? An $80 blade that took tons of work to make it even functional with crummy edge retention that's a ***** to resharpen. Not worth it. The only thing you can learn through this process is not to repeat it ever again.

Namaxy said:

I would agree. Aren't Zakuri tako's around the $200 mark? I think Jon carries Zakuri.

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its a double bevel knife... more like suji with a takobiki shape

There are Kanehisa yanagibas available from Hida Tools in Berkeley, where I bought mine nearly 20 years ago, for under $100. But, if they are anything like the one I have, they are just OK and do have issues - slightly wavy grind toward the heel, ura is shallow, doesn't come sharpened - and they're OK cutters.

But, for a beginner, they're fine. Still, you'll need sharpening stones for sure.

Well, actually the first reply did just that but I'm not going to split hairs...

I bought my first deba from a hardware store in Kyoto for around $80-100 and I cant say I have experienced any problems with either quality or sharpening - apart from my own lack of skill of course. That seems to me like the perfect object to practice single beveled sharpening.

All the best. I didn't mean to upset anybody.