I got a chance to check the knife out a bit more today. Don had a good edge on it, which would normally be more of a compliment, but that steel is just so fantastic to sharpen. I did run the bevel over a natural finishing stone a few time just to see what the blade road / 2ndary bevel looked like and it's nice and flat and even and it ended up with that wonderfully absurd edge that's both hair-popping and aggressive.
The "grind" -which is forged, not ground, is very similar to my Takeda nakiri, but considerably thicker so it's easier to see the concave section and the extra thickness behind the edge.
The shinogi could certainly be raised a bit. Even though my nakiri is thinner, the 2ndary bevel is still much wider/ higher. As is, the knife is setup to be thicker behind the edge and more robust than it really needs to be. Food release is very good, but I dont know if its remarkably better than my nakir. So, I think it could easily be thinned and gain some significant cutting performance with little to no trade off.
Still, it's a phenomenal knife. Wedging is reduced quite a bit by just cutting thicker stuff with the front part of the blade. Thats the beauty of the big honkin' santoku-like nose: you're not going to hurt it.
A lot of people talk about changing the profile on these knifes or some of the newer, narrower designs being more popular, but I think that this is a super cool knife. No, it's not like every other sab, KS, TKC, etc looking knife, and I'm glad. It's unique and it's damn good.
This is a knife that I think jaded knerds could really enjoy / appreciate/ be impressed by (I sure am) but it would also be FANTASTIC first carbon / j-knife for folks coming from heavy German knives. My GF had really grown accustom to her heavy wusty's and she likes having some extra weight to help carry momentum though the cut. She was struck by the fact that this knife is not as heavy as it looks, but it performs like a heavy knife. What she was noticing was was the blade-forward balance and the mechanical advantage of the very stiff, big, tall blade. The profile makes is a very comfortable rock chopper and a fantastic herb mincer, but there's actually a pretty big rather flat section for wailing away with rapid push-cuts. It's like the awkward looking love child of a small cleaver and a giant santoku, but looks are deceiving and it's really quite athlete. It's the big, quiet kid in highschool that didn't win any popularity awards, but ended up going to a big 10 college on a full-ride football scholarship. Takeda apparently knows something about making knives that work.
I'll post pics and more thoughts before I pass it along.
