Let me expand. I have 3 ealys, I have two hhh ordered, I am going to get a dt, and a haburn.
That being said, I still stand by my statements. A few of the thousands of American makers that had great personal skill, who put in the work to learn, and who screwed up and learned from it, thus improving each time is not evidence that a highly technical skill is best learnd from the Internet vs the apprenticeship.
If you lumped all j knives in a pile and all American knives In a pile, I suspect there would be substantial tidally higher quality from the j knives.
My internet is out from the storms, and going into any real depth on my phone will take more effort than I'm willing to input tonight
.
To hit the key points though:
First, how many Japanese makers do you think there are? This is an honest question, because I genuinely don't have the first clue. I can't imagine there's more than a couple hundred though. Maybe not even that. As a matter of fact, in my mind I imagine it to be substantially less than that. Regardless
for argument's sake, let's say 100. Of those, I only ever hear of a handful that stand out. This is important to my point.
Now, you mention thousands of American makers. I'm pretty active in those circles, and couldn't name 1000 proficient makers. I'm sure you're right that there is, but we both know we're not discussing every last American smith here. We're talking the well known, the guys you're willing to give more than $700 to for a gyuto
the top say
100? Of those, there's more than a handful that I hear about regularly. But that's probably a matter of where I am and my exposure.
Anyhow, THOSE are the guys I'm comparing, not the general population of US blacksmiths that have banged out a knife. And honestly, very few of those guys I'm talking about have had any benefit from even being second generation bladesmiths, much less thousands of years of tradition. The fact that they're even being compared says a hell of a lot about the benefits of being free to learn and explore without the shackles of tradition. One generation of American bladesmithing tradition, and there they are, within a hair's breadth of a culture that's been producing this product since what
the 1300's?
Now, understand
I'm being the devil's advocate here to an extent. With the attention to detail, and absolute focus that's part and parcel of the Japanese culture
if they WERE free to explore things as the US makers do
wow. But the bonds of tradition (as maintained by the apprenticeship system in place) still have them cold forging, edge packing, and heat treating by eye.
I firmly believe that with the rate of improvement even the last five years have shown in high end US kitchen cutlery, you guys will be in for some real treats in the next five. You mentioned Ian's knives as one of your intended future purchases. Look at the grind on his latest tall gyuto. Pretty cool, and I know first hand that he's not the first to do it
.
Just some things to thin about.
Oh, and Charlie, you're absolutely right. Apprenticeship will push out proficiency in volume, for certain. However, I still believe that being free to learn without the binding of that system will produce a higher level of proficiency, although likely with a more limited volume.