Butcher knife

I started a new job two weeks ago. We bring in whole primals of animals and we butcher them. On my second day me and the head chef broke down half a cow and two sides of pork. I currently have a tojiro dp honesuki that proved a very big player and pleasantly surprised me so far and I used me tanaka blue petty as well.
I also have a victorinox boning knife and an Itinomonn mioroshi deba in my bag.
Also we split chickens (well pheasants) and go through a lot of fish.
The question is: should I keep my sights on the Itinomonn butcher? Is there an alternative to that? What about a more expensive honesuki? Will it be much better? I tend to be very protective with my knives, will more expensive honesuki make me use it less?

Have you considered using a tojiro hankotsu? It's a great little knife for a myriad of butchery.

You might want to consider adding a Victorinox 8" breaking knife. It's cheap and having a larger knife will come in handy.

bkultra said:

You might want to consider adding a Victorinox 8" breaking knife. It's cheap and having a larger knife will come in handy.

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+1. But make my cheap one the 10" Wusthof Pro series. At 50 bucks it's a gimmie.

Well, I had the Itinomonn butcher. It is a very strong and robust knife, the edge is pretty much indestructible. The grind is basically a scandi grind - nearly flat down to the edge. I sold it as being a home cook it was simply overkill. I would say that it should work well on large animals in hanging position. You may want to give it a try.

I chipped my Itinomonn Butcher. First time using it on whole animals, couple of pigs. JKI has a line of butcher knives that are affordable and quite nice. I found the page recently but now I am having trouble finding them all on one page.

JohnnyChance said:

JKI has a line of butcher knives that are affordable and quite nice. I found the page recently but now I am having trouble finding them all on one page.

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You will find them if you type 'semi' (as for semi-stainless) in the search on JKI. The semi-stainless honesuki looks very similar to the one that JCK offer.

I have that knife (from JCK) and really like it. It is typical honesuki with strongly asymmetric grind and flat left (right on left handed knives) side. The honesuki from JCK is made from SLD and I really like the balance, edge stability and edge holding. The blade has more belly than most honesuki and I really like that. The handle is relatively lightweight so the whole knife does not feel butt-heavy (as some western handled honesuki feel - e.g. Fujiwara FKM). It is however very different compared to the Itinomonn butcher with its thick, front-forward weight distribution.