Does this hypothetical knife exist?

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rdpx said:
Do you own a heiji, Edipis?
I am guessing you do from the thread, but I don't think you have explicitly said so.
If so, do you like it?
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I own a couple as well. Heiji semistainless is a very nice steel and I don't think twice about doing anything with it that I do with most other blades, for the most part. I would say the one shortcoming is in toughness. The steel is very hard and a bit on the brittle side so if you are going to be smacking the edge on things or your technique isn't great, you'll get some microchipping. You can compensate for this by adding a microbevel at a large angle or just not thinning your knife as much over time. My vote for something semi stainless with more toughness would be the Gengetsu semistainless.
 
My educated guess is that both Heiji and Gengetsu use equivalent or similar to A2 semi-stainless steel (5% chromium content). Depending how it is heat treated, this steel can offer a good toughness, sharpness and have an added stain resistance at the same time. There might be some benefit to sharpness by forging A2 vs using in a sheet form (factory annealed), however, it is a steel that could be heat treated for an outstanding wear resistance, i.e. it will get reasonably sharp (a notch lower than 52100, due to larger carbide size), hold an edge at that sharpness reasonably well, but then drop into a plateau of sharpness that is a notch lower than initial sharpness and stay there for a long time.

It's a great steel for a line knife, a butcher knife, a bread knife and other types where toughness and long edge retention are more important that the sharpness.

It responds very well to touchups on 8K diamond plate and stropping on 1M diamond felt. Easy to maintain the edge + long periods between sharpening sessions = long life of a knife.

One drawback, as I already mentioned, is a larger carbide size than in steels like 52100, AEB-L, etc, so the sharpness will be a notch lower. There might be ways to get around it and reduce the size of carbides by forging or during some steps in heat treating, but despite that, it's a great steel.

M
 
:nono:

OK folks.....I've deleted an offer from a knifemaker, many insults, and lots of back and forth arguing that resulted from the insult throwing. Since this is my breakfast time I'm not going to spend it sending PMs to all the players, this should serve as message enough.

Please keep the discussion civil - arguing is OK but name calling isn't. As for the knifemaker who made an offer - that's not allowed either.
 
Marko Tsourkan said:
My educated guess is that both Heiji and Gengetsu use equivalent or similar to A2 semi-stainless steel (5% chromium content). Depending how it is heat treated, this steel can offer a good toughness, sharpness and have an added stain resistance at the same time. There might be some benefit to sharpness by forging A2 vs using in a sheet form (factory annealed), however, it is a steel that could be heat treated for an outstanding wear resistance, i.e. it will get reasonably sharp (a notch lower than 52100, due to larger carbide size), hold an edge at that sharpness reasonably well, but then drop into a plateau of sharpness that is a notch lower than initial sharpness and stay there for a long time.

It's a great steel for a line knife, a butcher knife, a bread knife and other types where toughness and long edge retention are more important that the sharpness.

It responds very well to touchups on 8K diamond plate and stropping on 1M diamond felt. Easy to maintain the edge + long periods between sharpening sessions = long life of a knife.

One drawback, as I already mentioned, is a larger carbide size than in steels like 52100, AEB-L, etc, so the sharpness will be a notch lower. There might be ways to get around it and reduce the size of carbides by forging or during some steps in heat treating, but despite that, it's a great steel.

M
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i'm not 100% sure what the Heiji semi-stainless steel is, but it gets about as sharp as anything else i've used.
 
Sorry, Marko. I can't imagine Heiji semi and Gengetsu semi being the same steel and if it is, the HT is so different, the behave very differently. These steels are not close other than they have good wear resistance and they are easy to sharpen. Stain resistance and toughness are not close.
 
tk59 said:
Sorry, Marko. I can't imagine Heiji semi and Gengetsu semi being the same steel and if it is, the HT is so different, the behave very differently. These steels are not close other than they have good wear resistance and they are easy to sharpen. Stain resistance and toughness are not close.
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TK, I own a Heiji semi-stainless and am curious about how it compares to a Gengetsu which I have never tried--you mentioned stain resistance and toughness, can you elaborate?

Thanks
 
I contacted Korin to look into the Masamoto SW3124 (which appears to be a stainless version of the KS). It is apparently made with AEB-L, HRC 60. Korin can special order it: the 240mm is $385, 270mm is $420. A bit more expensive than the KS. I don't have any experience with AEB-L, but there are plenty of comments about it elsewhere on the forum.
 
panda said:
What about that new Swedish Stainless steel series from jck? looks kinda like Yusuke clone.
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That does look interesting. It's real hard to tell much about the profile from the one photo JCK posted. I also note that they only have a 240, and it's on the short side (235mm).
 
dannynyc said:
It is very expensive, and probably not worth it. Keep in mind though that I was originally on a quest for a semi-stainless non-laser version of the KS/funayuki profile and so far the only suggestion that really seems to fit is the Darth Vader Ultimatum.
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The good thing is you can probably pick one of those up cheap...then plan on doing some work to it to bring it up to speed. Sounds like you may be better off getting something custom done though since you seem to know what you want.
 
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