Knife handle installed crooked?

I recently received a knife and it seems as if the handle is installed crooked. I emailed the vendor (who shall remain nameless for now), and he told me,

"That happen quite often when you have some temperature change, knife is not bend and it is just wood in a handle that contracted or expended , it is very easy to fix thought
You can lay it flat on the table and push up or down then it will be fixed".

I tried this to no avail... Your guys opinions?

Those seem like BS excuses to me. I think it was either bent in shipping on was installed poorly, maybe the epoxy had not fully set? I would ask for a RA and send it back.

It's true that a bent blade can often be corrected by bending the blade as explained to you by the vendor, however you may not have that problem here.

The first thing to do is to assess if the blade is warped/twisted/bent/whatever. If it's straight then clearly the handle has been set on the blade crooked.

I see many Japanese knives with crooked mounted handles and if you think about how easy it would be to have this happen during the burn in process it's easy to see how this happens. Imagine plunging an orange hot tang down into a pre-drilled hole in the handle and then hammering it into place and how that could go wrong. I don't view a little bit askew as much of an issue myself but when it's like you show here that's annoying as hell and in my opinion something that should have been caught by the maker and retailer.

Does the edge line up on the bottom side with the center of the handle?

Dave Martell said:

Does the edge line up on the bottom side with the center of the handle?

Click to expand...

When looking at the choil, the knife is angled maybe 10 degrees to the left.

lobby said:

When looking at the choil, the knife is angled maybe 10 degrees to the left.

Click to expand...

That's what I thought you would say. Yeah the handle is mounted poorly.

is it 210mm kato? If it's from JNS, you can easily detach the handle and reinstall it by yourself.
I've done it a few times.

I have a Watanabe 270 honyaki suji and the handle/blade are straight, but the tang is crooked by several mm. It's impressive how Shinichi was able to burn it in like that. I'll probably have to straighten the tang out a bit for the customs.

Ok mods, I'm going to risk commenting in this thread. Regardless of price range (excepting Shig's), I've never possessed a J-knife that had the handle mounted perfectly. The blade is always tracking to one side or the other, or is rotated off line. The immediate cause of this is that it's difficult to mount a handle straight using the traditional 'burn in' method. I suspect that the root cause of this is that most Japanese makers just don't see the big deal. Their emphasis is on the blade, the handle...meh, it's close enough. The J-knifes that actually have well mounted (i.e. straight and radially aligned) handles almost always come from shops that do everything 'in house'. Knives made in the 'Sakai' tradition, not so much. As to the OP's issue, lay the knife down on a flat counter with the handle hanging out in space (such that it's angled down), press your hand down on the blade by the edge of the counter, and gently apply upward pressure on the handle. Check the alignment. Repeat as necessary.

Be well,
Mikey