190 mm yo gyuto

Finished my first gyuto this weekend. Woohooooooo :biggrin:

190 mm k-tip gyuto in 1084 carbon steel at about HRc 61-62, full convex grind with slight right handed bias. Handle is full tang with bocote and stabilized dyed maple burl, copper and black G10 spacers, and copper and mosaic pins. Pretty heavy at 7.8 ounces, a huge amount of that weight is from the full tang. I am kinda going for a rustic ghetto fabulous aesthetic... especially since it means getting away with leaving 50 grit grind marks on the blade, LOL.

Balance point right at the finger choil or notch. Just lucky, I guess... Although if making this knife for myself again, I probably wouldn't have done the notch because I usually choke up very high on my pinch grip with middle finger resting right against the choil. So the notch makes me grip even further up the blade.






Convex grind (slight right handed bias) to zero with the belt sander and sharpened on DMT XC diamond plate (220 grit), King 400, 1000/6000.






It came out sharp, f* me! First blood...






Full distal taper:






Choil pic, a bit distorted from the finger notch:






MOAR PICS! RWARRRRR


















Current family photo, you can probably see the family resemblance:






Next up will probably be my first santoku, a gift for my old boss. I think I may settle into a pattern of one knife for me, one knife to gift. Having a lot of fun learning and trying to get better at this.

Looking nice!

Looks nice, the knife gives me a vibe of power. It's probably the rustic look.

Very nice

Cool knife. Way to go MB!

Well done, sir! :doublethumbsup: :goodpost: lus1: :ubersexy:

Nice

:thumbsup:
1st gyuto? Ridiculous... in a very good way. Looks very good and the handle work really stands out. People posting their first knife making efforts on the forum make me think that even I could give it a go. Then reality hits and I remember my total lack of skills. Oh well, some of us have to buy knives to keep others producing them.

Well done!

Likelikelikelikelike...... But.......if I am really honest, I have to say the finish on the blade just doesn't do the handle justice. Rustic forged look, yes, deep residual scratches, not so much. That handle appears to me as full custom level, and then the blade finish just doesn't keep pace. Been buying some polishing stuff lately and been taking my 400 finished rehandled knives up to 1200 grit. The ones i haven't given away that is. Food release actually noticeably improved with it.

Getting all the scratches out might be a hassle at this point but you can always focus on removing them on the bottom half of the blade and bring up to a high polish near the edge. Makes the existence of the scratches higher up look like a deliberate design decision.

Thanks all for the kind words!

merlijny2k said:

Likelikelikelikelike...... But.......if I am really honest, I have to say the finish on the blade just doesn't do the handle justice. Rustic forged look, yes, deep residual scratches, not so much. That handle appears to me as full custom level, and then the blade finish just doesn't keep pace. Been buying some polishing stuff lately and been taking my 400 finished rehandled knives up to 1200 grit. The ones i haven't given away that is. Food release actually noticeably improved with it.

Click to expand...

Yeah, this is the kind of thing that happens when I get impatient or in a hurry, both of which are very detrimental when making a knife!

I usually grind to about 80-90% completion up to 220 grit before heat treat and then drop back down to 50 grit and go through a progression to 400 grit for the descaled area. This 1084 has been really good out of the quench, not warping and barely any curve to correct. I find that up to 400 grit gives a decent belt finish that is relatively smooth yet still somewhat rustic, but nicer than say the rough CCK style KU finish. However, this time I was doing even more post-HT refinement on the grind at 50 grit and rushed the other grits up to 400 a bit. I think part of it was trying to avoid a mistake like grinding up too high by the heel that you can see on one side of the blade, which I ended up doing anyhow, LOL. Part of it is my set up which is basically kneeling or sitting on the ground since I'm an apartment dweller and plop equipment on the outside balcony floor to do work.

I've read that food release is not as good at lower grit finishes, but I also am trying to address food release by the geometry. I think wide bevels help knock stuff off at the "shoulder" of the shinogi line, also a full convex grind depending on how it slopes up from edge to spine can also do the same in my opinion. I'm still working on getting a good consistent grind, as you can see after sharpening the cutting bevel is a bit large and not totally consistent height. It's just something I think I'll have to do over and over again to get better at, but in the meantime, I'm still very happy with the knives in the kitchen and in fact I always reach for my own knives first. Not because they are the best performers I have (though I've spent the most care sharpening them, so probably the best edges right now), but because it's the most satisfying to me to use what I made, LOL.

At this time I don't plan to go back over and do any more finishing/grinding, just using it until the patina gets funky enough that I don't care about pretty looks anymore!

milkbaby said:

Thanks all for the kind words!

At this time I don't plan to go back over and do any more finishing/grinding, just using it until the patina gets funky enough that I don't care about pretty looks anymore!

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Exactly what I said after many hours of thinning and trying to remove the scratches. And then several weeks later there's the mirror shine anyway. The knives are strong and the mind is weak.

As for the food release: mine was exceptionally terrible after I thinned the whole bevel flat on the stone. Polished it is still not good, but I no longer get the inclination to fetch a crowbar to pry the food loose:O:scratchhead:

Bellissimo!! 😍

Really like the rolling edge of the profile, looks a comfortable cutter.
Not so keen on the mixed material of the handle for some reason.
Perhaps a simpler handle would suit it better?
Certainly not a criticism, it's a very nice knife.
How's it cutting?

camperman said:

Really like the rolling edge of the profile, looks a comfortable cutter.
Not so keen on the mixed material of the handle for some reason.
Perhaps a simpler handle would suit it better?
Certainly not a criticism, it's a very nice knife.
How's it cutting?

Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind words. I like the profile, decent flat spot from the heel and gentle belly to the tip. The handle is a bit of an inverted version of a knife I made for my dad, his was bocote with dyed maple burl inlay. Thought that one came out prettier for some reason. I think aesthetically this handle would've come out a bit nicer with non-angled inlay or just a bocote bolster instead of what I made.

I was a lot happier with this grind versus previous knives, and while I got it close to as thin behind the edge as I pictured in my mind, the right hand convex isn't as strong as I would like for best food separation. It's one of the sharpest knives in my kitchen right now, so that's very satisfying.

I'm still a rank beginner, so this knife making stuff has been a really cool learning experience. I'm grinding a santoku this afternoon, so I'm going to take what I learned from this gyuto and modify what I'm doing.

Real question here is, has anyone eaten that sponge bob cookie yet? Cookies with faces need to be eaten before they become sentient and kill you in your sleep. Also, delicious.

Yeah, my 5yo was commenting on Spongebob (looking over my shoulder while I read this thread).