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bonestter

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Thought I would get a little beater home kitchen knife to replace a 5" Santoku that went missing over the Christmas festivities

Regardless of the non-merits of the buying decision, the knife was delivered today ans has come as a bit of a shock - a total disaster

First the knife had moved in its box and the tip had slipped out the top of the box so I slashed open the pad of my thumb un-packing it. I knew this was a bad start...

Once out the box I noticed the tip was damaged and micr-chipped. Then I see the whole blade has a bend, and overall the quality is like a cheap Chinese play knife

Here it is:

2016%252520-%2525201.jpg


2016%252520-%2525201.jpg


Quite nice...

2016%252520-%2525201.jpg


Ooh, hang on, what's going on :scared4:

2016%252520-%2525201.jpg


I've never seen such a joke of a knife - lesson well learnt
 
What am I missing here. It looks like a tiny cheep santoku with average to better an average finish if it was from Japan.

Isn't that what you were buying?

Bill
 
It looks like the Damascus pattern is applied via a silkscreen
 
Looks fine to me. The blade is stamped out of plate VG-10/ Damascus and the bolsters are soldered on. Quite common.

Bill
 
lots of damascus looks like it's pixelated. I have noticed that. some of the more expensive nicer ones look that way too, I think the shiro kamo r2 pretty much looks like an 8 bit rendering of damascus
 
Why is there that gap between the 'damascus' and the bolster?

What is the construction of the blade? A stamped plate with etching? It's not cladding or San Mai is it?
 
The bolster has been tig welded to the damascus. It is standard practice in the Japanese cutlery industry.
 
I can't really see from the photo very well if there is a gap between the bolster and the patterning and the patterning or not. Could it be where the resist ended when the etched it? It is a very straight line liked it was masked off.

I was trying to get a picture of a shun's bolster but it wasn't showing up very well. Here is my Masamoto HC' bolster for what it's worth.

 
Well the bolster is clearly welded on and maybe that is done after etching. Naturally the connection is then ground down/polished so that's where the marks could come from.
What really leaves me wondering though, why you would get a 130mm beater :confused: and then also pick this brand/knife in particular :confused::scratchhead:. I mean i looked this up on amazon.de and at least there it's not even cheap, the 180mm Version costs 80 bucks :O.
 
Dan P. said:
The bolster has been tig welded to the damascus. It is standard practice in the Japanese cutlery industry.
Click to expand...

Tig welded...Really? I thought it was silver soldered on as its low temp. Tig welding would discolor a lot more more metal.

Bill.
 
Bolster soldered on first the ground then etched.... You don't get that contrast with a polish. I still think it's a sharp and straight line from masking with a resist for etching.

Is there a subtle color change in the bolster or blade as it transitions from blade to bolster?
 
Well, whatever you paid for it was too much...I googled the company and the Name is registered to a person in the city of Bonn (former German capital), who also runs a German online cutlery store focused solely on some of the "run of the mill" japanese brands (tojiro, chroma, Kasumi), my guess would be that he buys the knives from a japanese OEM maker (who then may have outsourced work to china to keep costs low). If it was produced by one of companies from Solingen, one wouldn't find pictures of the packaging with japanese kanji on it...
 
Newbflat said:
Tig welded...Really? I thought it was silver soldered on as its low temp. Tig welding would discolor a lot more more metal.

Bill.
Click to expand...

Yes, tig welded. Any discolouration is removed when the weld is fettled and the knife is ground/polished/buffed.
I presume they do the welding before HT? Or perhaps not?
 
Well, nothing lost, I've just had an email back from the company and they are going to fully refund me, and have said keep the knife
 
Yep.. Etched, unetched VG-10 plate because of masking and then bolster.


And I must disagree. That is much too crisp a line between the bolster and plate to be anything but soldered.
 
Newbflat said:
Yep.. Etched, unetched VG-10 plate because of masking and then bolster.
Click to expand...

This is correct, you can see it better in the close up picture. In the original picture it looked like a very straight line and I couldn't see the color transition.
 
why is it clad with 440c though that seems like a rather expensive thing to make Damascus out of no?
 
Wasn't it today at about 2pm that you were asking for tips on this purchase?

Where delivers the same day when the order is placed in the afternoon?!

Or maybe the other thread was for a different knife and this one was already en route?
 
But why? What's wrong with Tojiro DP for a start? And why such a tiny Santoku I just don't get it :dazed:
 
If you see the other post by OP, the knife is being used like a tall petty/utility knife, to cut up fruit and what not, it's not being used as a primary knife....and the OP kind of likes bling.
 
Also the bolster of the knife posted looks fine to me...my Ryusen damascus looks more or less like that
 
richard said:
If you see the other post by OP, the knife is being used like a tall petty/utility knife, to cut up fruit and what not, it's not being used as a primary knife....and the OP kind of likes bling.
Click to expand...

Exactly this ^^

The above blinger is to replace a similar (profiled) little santoku I use daily at home. The lost one was a plain Jane. This is going to be my token damascus knife :)
 
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