Hello Mr. Miyabi

Dear Mr. Miyabi and Ms. Zwillings,

Your SG2 steel is very hard and the knives that you craft from it are very beautiful. Unfortunately it is not capable of supporting a 9-10 degree edge. The edge easily chips on the cutting board. I recently received two of your beautiful knives. A Mizu 8" Chef and a 5" Mizu utility. Unfortunately the 8" Chef arrived with a bent tip and had to be returned. I guess QC was napping. After experiencing chipping on the utility knife, I honed it to what I am sure is a greater angle than 9-10. Since this honing I have experienced no chipping and the knife performs nicely. Today I received the replacement for the 8" Chef and cut a potato. Chips were immediately observed. I honed this edge on a Chosera 1k and then spent some time on my Nakayama Asagi with various nagura. Chips are gone and after multiple strikes of the edge on the cutting board (much more aggressive than cutting a potato) no chips were observed. Please stop marketing and sending out knives that are in no way capable of maintaining their edge. 9-10 degree edges are very sexy, but unfortunately yours are impotent.

Whatever makes you feel superior.

Weak factory edges are fairly common. Just sharpen new knives and move on imho.

Isn't "comes with a 9 dps edge that you can microbevel for normal use or keep as is for very delicate use" better than "comes with a thick 18dps bevel that would be half an hour of work to get to 9dps"? A valid point would be "put just that caveat in the instructions that come with it!"

And btw, what stainless knife do you have that can sustain 9dps on a board better than the one you are reviewing?

I've noticed too that many highly alloyed stainless steels have carbides too large to support a 9-10 deg edge. If I leave the edge at such angle, I get chipping too. However, after adding a microbevel, the chipping is gone.

The only knives that can sustain 9-10 deg on the board are very fine grained steels like 52100, AEBL or what Henkels calls FC61. But even on those I put a microbevel for edge durability.

Are you talking about 9dps or inclusive?

Ruso said:

Are you talking about 9dps or inclusive?

Click to expand...

9 dps

There's a reference 9dps SG2 knife, the "red" Takamura. Which, as I keep repeating myself, is delicate enough if kept at 9dps to forgive no error on the board.

I might be advocating the overuse of microbevels - but where, except on shirogami or maybe super-fine grained stainless, does not using one make a better board edge?