Mike Bender
New Member
Konnichiwa and good day fellow Japanese knife enthusiasts!
My name is Mike, I'm a 35 year old accountant from Minnesota. Together with my wife, one of our hobbies is home cooking. My love for hand crafted Japanese knives stemmed from the study, appreciation and collection of Japanese nihonto(katana, tosugo, etc) which began some 15+ years ago. I am also a practitioner of iaido which I picked up with all the spare time at home a couple years back. It is sad to see the custom and traditional forging of nihonto dying off to the point where many smiths are forced to supplement their income with kitchen ware but there is certainly still appreciation to be had here.
By now it should come as no surprise that most of my collection includes pieces hand forged from Japan, although we do still have a couple more hefty workhorses kicking around as well. I also enjoy sharpening and polishing with my Chosera stones. A couple of recent purchases as shown below include the Yoshimi Kato 240mm R2 Gyuto in bIack damascus with Sado Nishihara's desert ironwood and a Shiro Kamo 180mm R2 Nakiri also in black damascus. Next up I'm looking for a light weight laser in the 170-200mm range, possibly the Shibata Koutetsu 195mm R2 'Battleship" if I can find one but always open to suggestions!
My name is Mike, I'm a 35 year old accountant from Minnesota. Together with my wife, one of our hobbies is home cooking. My love for hand crafted Japanese knives stemmed from the study, appreciation and collection of Japanese nihonto(katana, tosugo, etc) which began some 15+ years ago. I am also a practitioner of iaido which I picked up with all the spare time at home a couple years back. It is sad to see the custom and traditional forging of nihonto dying off to the point where many smiths are forced to supplement their income with kitchen ware but there is certainly still appreciation to be had here.
By now it should come as no surprise that most of my collection includes pieces hand forged from Japan, although we do still have a couple more hefty workhorses kicking around as well. I also enjoy sharpening and polishing with my Chosera stones. A couple of recent purchases as shown below include the Yoshimi Kato 240mm R2 Gyuto in bIack damascus with Sado Nishihara's desert ironwood and a Shiro Kamo 180mm R2 Nakiri also in black damascus. Next up I'm looking for a light weight laser in the 170-200mm range, possibly the Shibata Koutetsu 195mm R2 'Battleship" if I can find one but always open to suggestions!
