250mm W2 Honyaki Gyuto

My latest work and the best I've made yet! I'm considering knuckling down and actually polishing this puppy, something I would normally refuse to do. :laugh:



W2 steel hand-forged honyaki (metal plate insulators instead of clay).
250mm edge length, 56mm heel height.

I've managed to copy many of the qualities I consider 'high level' on gyutos made for performance. For example, the top and bottom of the handle meet up with the top and bottom of the emoto (knife neck).
Grind is a very subtle double concave to a convex spine, really hard to catch in a picture:



For my previous knife I got a lot of feedback that it was too fat and heavy. I've fixed the problem on this one by tapering the knife heavily in both length and in height:





I work in a commercial kitchen, and having the ability to take my creation to work is SO MUCH FUN! :lol2:
While its not yet polished, I'm finding it hard to pin-point areas in performance which I can improve.

I gotta go to work now, I'm gonna be late, but when I get back I'll go into more info on the heat treatment and performance - and maybe some videos! :biggrin:

Nice work Kippington. I'd love to see it when you've polished it.

Have you measured the hardness?

That looks really nice! The distal taper looks on point, and a lot of people rave about the s-grind for food release and food separation. The convex spine should reduce the blade weight a bit depending on the convexity, but if you prefer more blade forward balance, you could consider leaving more meat up there.

Love the profile, taper, looks great. Really love the profile...did I say that already

Uhh yeah...I think it’s time for a pass around.

labor of love said:

Uhh yeah...I think it’s time for a pass around.

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lus1: Definitely time to show others!
Looks great Jules. You've come a long way.

BTW, that other knife wasn’t “too fat and heavy” for me, I really liked it a lot!

I have to say that piece looks pretty impressive. Great job there.

Wowsa...great work!

Thanks heaps everyone!

Your kind words have convinced me to take the leap into 'hobbyist craftsman' and send this knife on a passaround! I could do with some feedback from a more critical crowd. Let me know if you want in on the action!

Me! Me! Me! I want in please.
(Did I say me?)

I'd also love to have a look at it.

You're in first Marek - Hell, you're that close I could throw it from here and hit you! :rofl2:

Then you're up next Nemo!

Nemo said:

Have you measured the hardness?

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Unfortunately I don't have any tools to measure hardness, and on top of that I use the rustic method of charcoal heat-treating by eye, so I have no idea what hardness it is other then to use old-school tricks like the brass rod test.

The cool thing about the heat-treat on this knife is that I wanted to try something different that, while not new to metallurgy, I've never seen anyone do to a blade. I took two mild steel plates and shaped them into roughly what a bladesmith would do with the thick layer of clay on a honyaki, like so:


Then I heated the knife up in a charcoal fire to about 800°C (outdoors because its a pretty big fire, and early morning while still dark so I could see the colors properly :knife. I placed the hot blade between the two metal plates like a sausage in a hotdog roll :razz: then quenched it while holding it in my hand - in water for a few seconds, then to oil.

[video=youtube;AHmKD9_F6ZU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHmKD9_F6ZU[/video]

The knife in this thread is the same one in the video (I heat treated after hand forging but before any grinding). And yeah the quench worked! The steel definitely has a hamon in the right place, I'm just too lazy to bother bringing it out!
This was a lot of fun to try, but holy ©@$# I took some hard knocks to get it right. A little bit of trial and a whole lot of error. :shocked3:



At least now I can confidently say that I've done enough destructive testing to get a good sense of what we can and cannot expect a good knife steel to do! :lol2:

Love that last pic! The school of hard knocks!

If you're not going to bring up the hamon, can't you use a fast engineered quench oil rather than water for W2?

Edited to add: I would really want in on the passaround just to see the knife in person, but in reality I'm too busy plus I'm in the USA. It's a bit sad, really...

milkbaby said:

Love that last pic! The school of hard knocks!

If you're not going to bring up the hamon, can't you use a fast engineered quench oil rather than water for W2?

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You're absolutely right! However, water is cheaper, more readily available and much easier to clean off a blade! :razz:
I wouldn't be using oil at all if I didn't feel I had to... but alas, here we are.

Who knows, maybe the hamon will come out in the natural patina? Thats what seems to have happened on my other one (the 1095).


BTW labor of love, your inbox is full!

Nice work I dig the profile!

Kippington said:

You're in first Marek - Hell, you're that close I could throw it from here and hit you! :rofl2:
<<< snip >>>
At least now I can confidently say that I've done enough destructive testing to get a good sense of what we can and cannot expect a good knife steel to do! :lol2:

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Excellent! Great to be first but please don't throw it my way. 250mm honyakis aren't designed for it. Come to think of it, I'm not much chop as a target... Easy to hit? Pretty much... but I bleed easily. :scared4:

Nice one mate! Does it want a trans-Tasman polishing?

Hell yeah Badgertooth, it would be an honor to send it your way, just for your opinion alone!

There's no need to polish it, its something I've never set my mind on. Even if you wanted to, how would you deal with the concave areas? This is a subtle question that pains me the more I think about it. :scared4:

Marek, yes you do bleed easy... off a Dalman and all over my kitchen bench! :razz:

That needs proper finishing!!!! Good work. I too have piles of broken blades hehe

That distal taper is incredible. Nice blade all around. This one is worth polishing!

Hey after 7 tries... you nailed it. Well done. I like your creativity as to the metal template for the hamon line... More coming out??

I am sure you will figure it out how to polish it with a buffing wheel with the right abrasives and compound. Meanwhile, couldn't you do a quick dip in an etchant ; say a mild one... any cheap vinegar to see the outcome and color of the hamon line? On the White and blue steel ( Hitachi)... i wld expect a white hamon line and that indicates the right micro-structures underneath. Where as on the 52100, ( burke; 52100 steel) so far I hv seen a black line only. Will try to etch it further and see the outcome as a future project..

Respect... man... and rgds Z

Can blade #2 from the left be salvaged into a nakiri? Might still be something fun to play with! I just picked up an old old nakiri from an antique fair in Sacramento, Ca for $2.00. It has about a 1/3" chip in it, but it has a really tall blade height (65mm) so I wanna see if I can grind it down a bit and re-profile.

Kippington said:

Hell yeah Badgertooth, it would be an honor to send it your way, just for your opinion alone!

There's no need to polish it, its something I've never set my mind on. Even if you wanted to, how would you deal with the concave areas? This is a subtle question that pains me the more I think about it. :scared4:

Marek, yes you do bleed easy... off a Dalman and all over my kitchen bench! :razz:

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I'd establish a horizontal polish and use thin strips of balsa backed sandpaper to get there then I'd lean on my knifemaking friends to find out how the make W2 go pop! I suspect it involves etchants

Thanks Badger, I will send it your way after a couple of people try it in Australia, should be around a month away.

I was thinking of polishing it myself, however I recently got my first commission (woo! :biggrin so I'm gonna start working on this new project instead.
The thing about polishing is - as someone that works in a kitchen all day - I feel that a person will be less inclined to use a knife for its intended purpose if it looks less like a tool and more like a work of art. Especially if it's a shiny carbon steel that will inevitably stain upon contact with food. Maybe I'm just making excuses for not spending time to finish it. :razz: And hey, I'll have to get into it at some stage if I want to get into the game of selling my stuff.

xsmx13 said:

Can blade #2 from the left be salvaged into a nakiri? Might still be something fun to play with! I just picked up an old old nakiri from an antique fair in Sacramento, Ca for $2.00. It has about a 1/3" chip in it, but it has a really tall blade height (65mm) so I wanna see if I can grind it down a bit and re-profile.

Click to expand...

On the 2nd from the left the steel was too thin for a quench, it warped like crazy in the water and is now pretty much trash.
Good score on the nakiri! It sounds like you can end up with a solid height of 56mm if you dont remove too much metal. Looks like a good project, the same kind of thing that eventually got me interested in forging my own knives.

Very excited for you and can't wait to see how this finishes! If you decide to ship to the states put me on the list.

I really agree with your sentiment there. Them Shuns and Miyabi's these days seem to be more at home on a wall or in a store display cabinet than on a kitchen counter. It's why I like Dan Premdergast's knives so much, and why I never bothered sanding out them last few scratches on knives I thinned. A super duper polish also greatly discourages thinning. I once did a pattern etch on a knife I gave to my wife. On hindsight I should have thinned better before finishing but now it's sorts of too late. A simple finish lets you tinker with your knife without getting the feeling bad. Fix a tiny chip, no problem. Want that tip slightly more agressive, done. Scratched the blade sharpening that really low angle? Just shrug it off and put that beast to work. I say stay strong with your convictions and make uncompromisingly usefull your strong point.

Thanks Capt and merlijn (this guy gets me! :laugh.
I'm gonna send it out on the passaround in the next couple of days. So far the list looks like this, let me know if something's wrong:

1. Marek (Aus)
2. Nemo (Aus)
3. malexthekid (Aus)
4. Badgertooth (NZ)
5. labor of love (USA)
6. milkbaby (USA) (if not too busy?)
7. TheCaptain (USA)

If anyone else is interested, feel free to chime in!

If there's still room, I'd like to be included.

Rick

Fantastic!