ginga vs tanaka ginsan vs something else in the price range?

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I am looking at getting my brother a knife as a gift for his wedding. Right now i'm kinda torn between the knives and stones tanaka ginsan and the ashi ginga. With saya and shipping both are about $180. Is there one you would chose over the other? I am essentially looking for a stainless knife, western or j handle, for $180 including saya and shipping. Any suggestions appreciated
 
I'd suggest filling out the questionnaire to give the guys on here a better idea of what your looking for specifically thanks. :biggrin:
 
You did not mention the type of the knife (assuming gyuto) and the length? Based on the price range I guess you are talking about 180mm or 210mm?
Ginga is a good buy no doubt. No personal experience with Tanaka, but I think the F&F on tanaka is not as good as Ginga.
Also you can take a look at:
http://www.epicedge.com/shopexd.asp?id=86649 (You get a discount for being KKF memeber, but has no saya).
Also Takamura R2 is an excellent choice http://www.chuboknives.com/collections/takamura (does not come with saya though).
 
Ruso said:
No personal experience with Tanaka, but I think the F&F on tanaka is not as good as Ginga.
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I was looking at the knives and stones tanaka which james has taken care of the f&f issues.


LOCATION
USA

KNIFE TYPE
210mm gyuto

Are you right or left handed?
right

Do you require a stainless knife? (Yes or no)
yes

What is your absolute maximum budget for your knife?
$200 incuding saya and shipping to USA

KNIFE USE
Do you primarily intend to use this knife at home or a professional environment?
home use

prefer something with good F&F finish as its a gift.
 
The Ginga is a laser and one I like a lot. Don't know that the Tanaka could be termed "laser". Don't know if that's important to you.

You could keep some coin in your pocket (or buy him a combo stone) with the Gesshin Stainless from JKI. I bough one for knife skills classes and it's become my favorite to gift. Suisin Western Inox from Korin is another nice entry level stainless and might be a little prettier. Either would be the best performing knife he's ever used. And shipped from within USA.

http://www.japaneseknifeimports.com...n-specials/gesshin-210mm-stainless-gyuto.html
 
The Tojiro 520 powder steel is another nice knife. It is not a thin light blade, however the grind is thin behind the edge where it counts. Prices vary quite a bit. Knives and Stones (Australia) best price and he sells sayas too. Even with shipping I paid little over 140.00 for the 240mm. USA$ strong to AUS$ now. This is a much better knife than the DP series.
 
I think the nashiji finish on the tanaka knife is really stunning when you see it in person and with the fit and finish issues fixed by k&s (super classy handle!) I think that is what I would pick as a knife to gift a home cook... beautiful and functional. Quite a bit more robust than the Ginga as well. I generally fear for thin knives.
 
So is this Tanaka a flat, wide bevel? Or does it have some convexing? My Kochi has made me appreciate thin blades with flat wide bevels.
 
Both Kochis I had were more concave on the wide bevel and convex going up to the spine. Flat you mean edge profile?

I would definitely go with James ' tanaka ginsanko gyuto. Seriously a no brainer. Come on, that handle alone has got to be worth more than the blade. And from what I hear, the ginsanko line is a beast. Mine is at the post office waiting for me to pick up tomorrow when I get back into town
 
The nashiji finish ginsan is a high grind bevel on both sides making it fairly thin behind the edge. The 240mm is tall in the heel. The handle gets some flack, but not bad a D Ho wood with real buff. horn. Rounding spine & choil a must. After that a good blade for the coin if you can find them in stock at Metalmaster.
 
keithsaltydog said:
The nashiji finish ginsan is a high grind bevel on both sides making it fairly thin behind the edge. The 240mm is tall in the heel. The handle gets some flack, but not bad a D Ho wood with real buff. horn. Rounding spine & choil a must. After that a good blade for the coin if you can find them in stock at Metalmaster.
Click to expand...

I'm assuming that you haven't seen James' tanaka nashiji gyutos
 
Someone did a head to head of a stock tanaka hideyuki signature with the k&s upgrade... prototype I believe. I am not so sure that the choil and spine rounding issues aren't being a little overinflated... I don't find the stock ones too bad on the spine. the choil is actually chamfered on both of my tanakas so not sure what the deal there is. they came like that one from takeshi and one from mark. I noticed both of the knives are quite malleable/pliable. The retention of the petty thus far (2 weeks on the job) leads me to believe they're not bunk HT... Maybe something to watch out for.
 
sharptools said:
I don't quite understand what that means, can you please clarify?
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as in they will hold a bend under just a few pounds of pressure. I had never tried to straighten a cladded knife before but was quite surprised at how easy it was to bend the tanaka back into shape. So easy that I was worried it had been heat treated or forged poorly, however my petty displayed the same tendency to bend under less pressure than I'd expect for a spine of such thickness. They are from different vendors so I'm thinking it's probably not a one off type thing
 
420layersofdank said:
I'm assuming that you haven't seen James' tanaka nashiji gyutos
Click to expand...

Actually I have with the Bulbinga? handle not sure of spelling and rounded spine & choil. James has the best price on the Tojiro powder steel have been using it a lot last couple weeks. It is little on the heavy side, not ness. a bad thing. Has a great grind & steel much better than the DP. Cutting with it knife is starting to grow on me, nice cutter.

Over a year ago I bought a Metalmaster 240mm Ginsan for 120.00. Used it as a pass around blade at the school. I rounded the spine & choil & treated buffed the Ho D handle. A student bought it.

This semester starts next week, will be using the Tojiro powder steel and a few other knives as pass around blades. I am a fan of the Tanaka ginsan it is a very good knife at the price point.

Also think the Tojiro is a deal for a great grind & quality powder steel. As with most good quality stainless & carbon Gyuto's finish with a Gesshin 4K soaker & leather strop. Takes a nice edge & holds it well.
 
spoiledbroth said:
as in they will hold a bend under just a few pounds of pressure. I had never tried to straighten a cladded knife before but was quite surprised at how easy it was to bend the tanaka back into shape. So easy that I was worried it had been heat treated or forged poorly, however my petty displayed the same tendency to bend under less pressure than I'd expect for a spine of such thickness. They are from different vendors so I'm thinking it's probably not a one off type thing
Click to expand...

This is good to know, everyone has great things to say about this knife, which I don't doubt and value-wise it is probably very good, but at the same time, we don't hear much about what's bad about it. Nice to know what you're getting into if you decide to get one. Thanks for that info.
 
sharptools said:
This is good to know, everyone has great things to say about this knife, which I don't doubt and value-wise it is probably very good, but at the same time, we don't hear much about what's bad about it. Nice to know what you're getting into if you decide to get one. Thanks for that info.
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Here is what I can say in general.

I do like my Tanaka knife, I sharpened off the ootb edge pretty easily, just went 1k bester to 5k rika and I widened the bevel on the right hand side of the knife a bit-- some good news about the bendyness- the knife did NOT bend from sharpening, and I don't go light on the bester (I find it works better and clogs less with a bit of elbow grease). I prepped my mise en place (few lemons in there, no chips from cutting through seed so I think the heat treat is fine) and the knife handled it with aplomb. I need to take good measurements but this knife is quite tall, feels taller than my Sukenari (~50mm at heel). The blade of my tanaka is quite generous, it remains quite tall until the very very tip unlike many yo knives I have owned.. The ginsan steel did very good in sharpening and quite easy to deburr thanks to Jon Broida for the great videos. :biggrin:

Brunoise red onion was no problem whtsoever and the tip does fall pretty nicely through the vertical cuts on the onions considering how thick the knife is. The sukenari outpaces it on that test but the sukenari is just so damn thin at the tip... No cracking or wedging to speak of on carrots today.

To me the spine and choil on the tanaka are not awful, I did not split my knife callous open today so I consider that to be... something :clown: The handle is very nice. Perhaps I am overstating the tendency of the tanaka to bend. It is definitely not like a tojiro. I had big problems trying to take curves and kinks out of those knives. The tojiro require a kind of scary amount of pressure to bend back into shape, IMO, whereas the tanaka which I think might even be clad with the same ss (405?) WANT to bend, it would seem.

I slapped my tanaka in a saya before taking it to work because it fits a bit tight in my coffin case and I don't want risk putting too much pressure and bending it back out of shape. It fits quite nicely into koki's 240mm hou saya.

I attached a pic. Overall good first impressions of the knife, did not have any issues with staining however, I was much more careful today keeping the blade wiped down and dry when not at my board. I just feel like probably I will look down the spine sometime in the near future and have to go about straightening the damn thing again.

 
spoiledbroth, I'm a little confused. That's the ginsan you're talking about, aren't you - shouldn't that be stainless and hence stain issues are irrelevant ?
 
OneS said:
spoiledbroth, I'm a little confused. That's the ginsan you're talking about, aren't you - shouldn't that be stainless and hence stain issues are irrelevant ?
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Yes but no. I work in a kind of poorly ventilated professional kitchen, and to compound things it's been an unusually hot and humid summer where I live, so your mileage may vary here, but I find high carbon stainless steels (aus-8, aus-10, vg-10, ginsanko) are actually not tremendously difficult to stain.

I had posted somewhere in some thread about my Tanaka Hideyuki (ginsan) petty displaying a bit of staining after I left it out on my board for about an hour (cutting potatos, avg ph of 6 so relatively acid)... I swear I wiped it off and the staining looked more like little splashes (probably proquat 400, no idea if base/neutral/acid). I have yet to see this problem with the 240 Tanaka Hideyuki gyuto. All in all I do really like the knives.

At any rate I don't think it would take too much to do a slight stain on most good stainless Japanese knives. I have seen it on alot of Mac knives in home kitchens (aus-8).

I like how Maxim advertises his semi-stainless Itinomonn knives, "StainLess"... It's a better way to think of a stainless knife, it's not impervious to corrosion just much more resistant than carbon. Especially true in a professional environment!

FWIW the stains on my 150 petty polished out by themselves last time I touched it up on my 5k Rika (from the mud I guess). I have a 180 mac chefs series gyuto that rusted (sub 0.5mm spots) in a little under an hour... under a heat lamp being left partially unwiped after cutting a lamb rack (mustard crumb did me in I reckon).

Cheers. :cool2:
 
That's interesting, I haven't had that experience but then again, my knives are purely on what can only be described as a very light rotation at home. The amount of cutting I do at home probably barely warrants a single santoku, let alone the half dozen I have accumulated so far.... And of course, home being the driest state on the driest continent in the world (as is constantly drummed into us), I suppose rust has not exactly been a great fear. My old Misono UX-10s and a Hattpri petty are the 'family knives' and cop the most abuse - drip dried on the dish rack by the stepson after doing the dishes; and they don't seems to have suffered that much, and rust has certainly not been an issue. I wouldn't trust him on my high carbon knives, though !
 
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