Does size matter ? - Handles

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welshstar

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Hi

Apologize if this sound silly but its after a few good beers to loosen up the thought process, sometimes when the best ideas occur in this state !!

Im a big fan of smaller knives including small gyutos, i just got my petty from Mike and i love it. i am currently working with Mike to make a full size gyuto and im struggling to decide between 210-240-270. Well i was just playing with my knives !! and trying to figure out why i like the smaller knives, i have a 270 Konosuke HD which is a very good quality knife but it just seems clinical to me, well just for grins i wrapped a few layers of kitchen towel around the HD's handle and it felt 10 x better.

So my question relates to handles size, im thinking that if i pick a 270 gyuto with Mike that i should get the scale of handle increased by say 20-30 % over a smaller knife and this will balance everything out.

Am i crazy ?

Alan
 
Yes, you are crazy.

But that doesn't mean your Kono handle might be a bit undersized for your tastes. What are the dimensions of the handle?
 
I find a distinct difference in handle size from 210 to 240 and 270's even 300's have a slightly different handle size. Blade style also comes into play. A 270 Tako I used to have had the slimmest handle I ever felt but it worked with that knife. While my 300 wa gyuto has a monster of a handle and I love it. I have large hands and tend toward larger handles for the size of blade.. So I believe it's up to the user to try differend handles to see what they really like in a given blade style...

Wow that was hard to think straight about... half a bottle of wine, used the other half on a coq au vin, while cooking dinner really snuck up on me :p
 
I seem to prefer full sized handles. My Rodrigue blade is about 175mm in length with a full sized gyuto handle. As long as the balance point works for you, go with what you like.
 
I am not a huge guy, but prefer large handles. Any I get made would be to fit a 270mm knife, even if the knife is smaller. This is because of how I like it to feel
 
I am a big guy, but have smaller hands. I definitely prefer smaller wa handled knives like petty and nakiri. I have had a 270 wa and it just felt to unwieldy to me, so I sold it. If I were to buy another one, I would probably rehandle it. Currently, all of my larger knives have western handles.
 
One can make a medium size handle that will be comfortable for people who prefer large handles and people who prefer smaller handles.

Handles on Japanese knives are often not well matched to a knife (i.e. too small or too large) as they are generic handles, fit to a knife.

One can make a fixed size or be flexible on the size to put a balance where one wants it. I am somewhere in-between these two approaches. I have a size of a handle in mind for a knife I am making, but once I grind the knife and weigh it, I make adjustments on the handle's size (if needed) so a knife balances where I want it.

M

PS: I find Konosuke HD handles too small for the knife (the couple that I have rehandled).
 
I am a big dude with bigger hands. I am not a fan (unlike most around here) of fat handles, at least where wa's are concerned. For a wa, I like it to be tapered and long. Length is often overlooked, but is more important to me than girth....this just sounds wrong! lol

For a western, I do like Adams style of belly, or Mario's Shig style hook, but thats aesthetic....
 
For me it depends on what I'm using the knife for. I really only grip the knife tightly for slicing cuts or splitting large, hard objects where I need to apply some pressure. In these cases, a somewhat large-ish handle would prevent fatigue. For the rest, I'm pinching the blade with two fingers and lightly stabilizing with a little pressure on the handle. The handle size ought to be smaller in this case, for maneuverability and balance.
 
I have a Twin cermax 6 inch utility and i love it, the balance is great and the handle feels great.

Based on this i thought id try the 240 chef knife, logic would dictate if you like the 6 inch then the 9.5 inch should be good. Well it turns out it has the exact same handle as the 6 ich, now the handle seems small and the knife is not balanced.

What is going on, is it me ? or are all the bigger knives under handled ?

Alan
 
How can you come to that conclusion based on one or two makers?
 
Well you have to be comfortable and I would say a custom is the way to go.I have some very large handle,length and girth.
 
Yeah, Mario has giant hands and pretty hefty handles! But they are really, really nice :)
 
Mike

How was the fondling ?

Is the blister koa going to have the length and girth to be worth fondling ?
 
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