Another Which Knife to Buy Thread

OK, I'm back in the market for a Santoku, 210mm max length.
My budget is $200 give or take.
A loose list of my requirements is as follows:
- cutting performance is primary
- prefer a Wa handle
- I'd like the knife to be easily resharpened on my Spyderco Sharpmaker
- the knife needs to look nice, not super high end, just nice

Please post pix, or links to purchase sites if possible.
Thanks all,
Lenny

Ignore my sharpmaker comment...just checked the angles. Good luck.

Is the 30 degree side on the Sharpmaker too obtuse for most kitchen knives?

30 degrees might work OK for a cleaver, but that's the angle I use on plane blades.

It may be difficult to recommend a knife if you want very high (and I assume lasting) sharpness but insist on using a Sharpmaker on it.

Thin, very hard blades and Sharpmakers are a bad combination, it's very possible to chip the edge while sharpening. Waterstones are a much better choice for those thin, hard blades -- and thin hard blades are the only ones that really get and stay very sharp.

There might be a knife that will work for you, but I don't know of any.

Peter

So, the take away point here is that I have to learn to freehand sharpen on water stones?
All you guys with fine Japanese knives know how to do this?
I'm in serious need of an education.
Which knives can be sharpened on the Sharpmaker?
And how, exactly, does a blade chip just running it down on a ceramic rod?
BTW, I'm not a collector; I just want one good knife to use in the kitchen.
Thanks all,
Lenny

Actually 30° inclusive is probably not too bad for a Japanese knife.

The technique for running down ceramic rods isn't ideal though.

Freehand isn't too hard, and most can do it with a little practice. If I'm using a sharpmaker, I'll flip it over and use the rods flat like a bench stone to get more surface area and better control, especially near the tip where jigs usually work poorly.

I think there's a pretty strong bias on this forum toward anything outside of waterstones, but the ceramics work fine if used properly. Controlling your angle freehand is actually not as hard as it may seem. When I was a kid and sharpened my knives, I always tried to do one long single stroke per side before flipping over... and it was clearly hard to maintain angle that way. The technique most of us use on waterstones is much much easier for producing a reasonably even edge.