Help, new knife blade bent 1-2 degree to the left

Hi, I am new here, please help me out.

I just bought a Sakai Takayuki High Carbon Gyuto knife last week, When I received the knife from courier, I found that the blade was straight & handle was straight, but the blade was 1-2 degree bent to the left from the handle!

I called the dealer that I bought it, he said Sakai Takayuki would probably not handle this case, because the knife is cheap, but I can send back to Japan with me paying for the courier fees, Japan will correct it free of charge. But I don't want to pay for the high expensive courier fees!

What can I do? I am left-handed, a blade bend 1-2 degree to the left makes me extremely difficult to cut things! Can I put on it a vise and bend it back by myself? Will it break? - because it's a high carbon steel. Many thanks!

If the handle straight, and the blade straight, it may be that the handle is installed at a slight angle. Sometimes single bevel knives can arc as well similar to a bi-metallic strip of metal, which I believe is different than what you described. 1-2° deflection is 4.7-9.4mm from true (EDIT - if a 270mm). Probably not the end of the world but it could probably be corrected by bending (there was a thread about this somewhere, don't remember at the moment).

Send it back to dealer. `If he won't accept it and provide you credit I (we?) would like to know who the dealer is. You may want to consider PP or credit card dispute if no resolution.

Dealer is correct in that it's hard to fully QA a cheap single bevel knife. But that's why he should do it and not leave it to customers.

Alternatively you could send it to one of the sponsoring retailers here and and for an evaluation of knife and a quote to effect a repair. Yes you'll have to cover it but it's better than a knife you can't use. JKI, Korin, Buttermilk, EE all come to mind. A quick search found a similar question addressed here. http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/21657-yoshihiro-vs-sakai-takayuki

Next time buy any knife but especially a single bevel from a trusted retailer here. You might pay a premium but you won't be searching out shipping costs to Japan.

Good luck.

aichmophobia said:

Hi, I am new here, please help me out.

I just bought a Sakai Takayuki High Carbon Yanagi knife last week, When I received the knife from courier, I found that the blade was straight & handle was straight, but the blade was 1-2 degree bent to the left from the handle!

I called the dealer that I bought it, he said Sakai Takayuki would probably not handle this case, because the knife is cheap, but I can send back to Japan with me paying for the courier fees, Japan will correct it free of charge. But I don't want to pay for the high expensive courier fees!

What can I do? I am left-handed, a blade bend 1-2 degree to the left makes me extremely difficult to cut things! Can I put on it a vise and bend it back by myself? Will it break? - because it's a high carbon steel. Many thanks!

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I don't think that there are many Japanese knives which have their handles installed perfectly straight.

So the blade isn't curved at all, but there is a misalignment between the blade and the handle?

In instances where the handle is installed at an off angle, I've heard of others laying the blade down on a flat surface and bending the knife (at the handle) in order to align it - I wouldn't necessarily recommend this (and I have never done it) but it is a possibility as the iron will easily bend.

Are you using a right handed Yanagi (as a lefty)? You might find that the problems are caused more by the handedness of the blade than by the handle alignment; the handle obviously wants to be sorted if it is a problem, but it might not fix your issues.

tjangula said:

If the handle straight, and the blade straight, it may be that the handle is installed at a slight angle. Sometimes single bevel knives can arc as well similar to a bi-metallic strip of metal, which I believe is different than what you described. 1-2° deflection is 4.7-9.4mm from true (EDIT - if a 270mm). Probably not the end of the world but it could probably be corrected by bending (there was a thread about this somewhere, don't remember at the moment).

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You've been doing a lot of trig here these last few days. :detective:

If there's a curve in the blade I can see that being annoying. If it's just angled coming out of the handle then i'd let my wrist make up the difference.

I'll stick my nose in

I've handled some knives with handles installed slightly off, and as a right hander a handle slightly off to the right is actually really nice to me. I've talked to some other enthusiasths that actually felt the same.

Of course, if a knife doesn't feel right to you you should do something about it. I just wanted to chime in with that possibly odd observation.

Thank you all for your kind replies and link. Very helpful! Sorry for my poor English, I am from & in Asia.

I also found some videos on Youtube about how to bend back bent knives.

I have sent a complaining email directly to Japan factory.

Yes Jessf, good that the blade is not bend, so I can try to use my wrist and fingers to adjust/compensate. But just that I am psychologically unhappy, because I have a Tojiro DP VG-10 knife - half of the price of this Carbon Steel knife, and is completely straight and the finishing job is perfect!!

aichmophobia said:

Yes Jessf, good that the blade is not bend, so I can try to use my wrist and fingers to adjust/compensate. But just that I am psychologically unhappy, because I have a Tojiro DP VG-10 knife - half of the price of this Carbon Steel knife, and is completely straight and the finishing job is perfect!!

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I believe that Tojiro is 'finished' by machine rather than by hand so that likely is the difference. Curious who the maker is?

chinacats said:

I believe that Tojiro is 'finished' by machine rather than by hand so that likely is the difference. Curious who the maker is?

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Sakai Takayuki I believe

MAS4T0 said:

You've been doing a lot of trig here these last few days. :detective:

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Haha ya I suppose after the Takeda thread… Still fairly elementary. I'd like to take the time to do the physics calculations with the calculus of a convex edge as cutting, if still in the academic days go to the materials lab and play around with the load cell and log/plot the results

tjangula said:

Haha ya I suppose after the Takeda thread… Still fairly elementary. I'd like to take the time to do the physics calculations with the calculus of a convex edge as cutting, if still in the academic days go to the materials lab and play around with the load cell and log/plot the results

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That could be interesting.


I did quite a lot of FEA on a knife a few years back when I was a student. Unfortunately they insisted that it be done with a plastic disposable knife, so it was kind of wasted...

MAS4T0 said:

That could be interesting.


I did quite a lot of FEA on a knife a few years back when I was a student. Unfortunately they insisted that it be done with a plastic disposable knife, so it was kind of wasted...

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We used software (SIGMA/W) to do the finite element analysis for civil eng problems, doubt I could do the math myself. Programs weren't cheap either, makes a Kramer seem within reach lol.

tjangula said:

We used software (SIGMA/W) to do the finite element analysis for civil eng problems, doubt I could do the math myself. Programs weren't cheap either, makes a Kramer seem within reach lol.

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This was software based too, but I have no idea what program it was. The interface was horrible so I wound up interacting with it through Python code instead of the user interface.

I wanted to do it on a kitchen knife (I'd just received my first carbon knife - a 52100 ZKramer) and wanted to model it, and use the laser topography equipment to build an accurate 3d model where I could see cross sections of the grind.

The professor had more mundane plans. He wanted to test a McDonald's plastic knife to see if any material could be removed without it being a problem...

MAS4T0 said:

if any material could be removed without it being a problem...

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a case of the typical "how cheap can we make things before they fall apart", I get it to an extent such as optimization problems but designing things to fail is generally not acceptable IMO. With many things it's true that "they don't make 'em like they used to".

Bent photos....

Oh I didn't realize it was a western handle… I've had a couple knives from Henckels (Zwilling-Kramer and Miyabi) with something similar, wasn't an issue for me and I'm also a lefty