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JPAU

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As someone fairly new to kitchen knives, I haven’t experienced the rise of a sensation or prodigy like Nakagawa, Myojin or Takada, although I have read some older, contemporaneous posts documenting this sort of thing. As a fan of Sakai carbon steel knives and, in particular, laser or thin grinds, I’m very interested to hear whether anyone has come across a sharpener or blacksmith that they think will be the next ‘big thing’. Are there any up and coming artisans in that category to watch out for? Are there any apprentices likely to break away and do amazing work in their own?

Alternatively, are there undiscovered talents (insofar as the western market is concerned) that fit the bill?
 
JPAU said:
As someone fairly new to kitchen knives, I haven’t experienced the rise of a sensation or prodigy like Nakagawa, Myojin or Takada, although I have read some older, contemporaneous posts documenting this sort of thing. As a fan of Sakai carbon steel knives and, in particular, laser or thin grinds, I’m very interested to hear whether anyone has come across a sharpener or blacksmith that they think will be the next ‘big thing’. Are there any up and coming artisans in that category to watch out for? Are there any apprentices likely to break away and do amazing work in their own?

Alternatively, are there undiscovered talents (insofar as the western market is concerned) that fit the bill?
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as far as westerners if you'd have asked a year ago the answer would be eddworks, but his popularity has skyrocketed recently
 
JPAU said:
As someone fairly new to kitchen knives, I haven’t experienced the rise of a sensation or prodigy like Nakagawa, Myojin or Takada, although I have read some older, contemporaneous posts documenting this sort of thing.
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You might have and not have known it. Plenty of "Shiraki" knives might've been made by Nakagawa, and there are plenty of situations where the makers aren't named at all and you might very well be using a Nakagawa/etc.-made knife.
 
Qapla' said:
You might have and not have known it. Plenty of "Shiraki" knives might've been made by Nakagawa, and there are plenty of situations where the makers aren't named at all and you might very well be using a Nakagawa/etc.-made knife.
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Sorry, I might have been unclear. I haven’t experienced the rise and explosion of interest in certain artisans. I have handled their knives, but (as I’ve only come to have an interest in kitchen knives recently) I did so when they were already notorious and well-regarded.
 
SwampDonkey said:
Well well well, if it isn't an opportunity to crow about my patron saint. Tosa though, not Sakai
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Not what I had in mind, but preaching to the choir. I bought a Shindo Nakiri from Chefs Edge with a custom handle, and asked for the laseriest one they had. Handle markets for more than the blade. It’s indeed very good for the price.
 
Have any of these been released yet? Would be good to see what people who have used them say before making the call that he’s the next big thing, right? Who is the forger?

I think Ren is also considered similarly promising but from what I’ve seen in person, his grinds are wildly inconsistent and not yet top tier. Early in his career though. Takada was 15+ years in before his breakthrough right?
 
Kawachi has been around a few years but his volume is low and available through JNS only

Miyazaki is getting some traction but is again a one man shop that puts out fairly low numbers. He does custom work but you’ll need a connection to get to him
 
Can I ask the opposite question mid-stream? Who were the big dogs of laser sharpening and grinding of the past? Who was big 10 years ago in the laser category like Myojin, Takada and Kyuzo are now (not counting Kobayashi, Shibata etc. who seem to mostly work in stamped blades)?
 
JPAU said:
Can I ask the opposite question mid-stream? Who were the big dogs of laser sharpening and grinding of the past? Who was big 10 years ago in the laser category like Myojin, Takada and Kyuzo are now (not counting Kobayashi, Shibata etc. who seem to mostly work in stamped blades)?
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Sakai Yusuke
 
It
jedy617 said:
Why don't stamped blades counts? Takamura would be up there, ashi of course, maybe kurosaki?
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It is not that they do not ‘count’. Apart from provoking discussion, my i suppose that the ulterior purpose of my post is to flush out some smiths and sharpeners for me to check out and perhaps try. For my own private reasons, I prefer the romance and tradition of forged knives.
 
If you watch vids of high production shops you will see there actually isn't too much forging going on, they shape them super roughly. They don't have time when they are pushing out hundreds of blanks a day. Unlike a lot of western shops or 1 man operations that shape while forging, Murray carter is an example who does like 90% of shaping while forging. The only difference between a stamped knife and a forged knife is a little bit of time under a hammer. They still need heat treatment, and grinding.
 
In relation to up and coming makers, you could do worse than have a look at Trent Hyer on Medium, especially his Points of Interest articles for January and February.
 
Back to the topic … perhaps Konosuke might pick up, discover or bring to the broader world some new star artisans as they have before? It seems like output from Konosuke has been limited to a handful of pretty standard lines (HD2, GS, WT, Yoshikane etc.) for a while now. Kosuke’s instagram posts have alluded to a reinvigoration of the brand in the future. Are there any rumours about ‘the next fujiyama’ or something?
 
JPAU said:
Back to the topic … perhaps Konosuke might pick up, discover or bring to the broader world some new star artisans as they have before? It seems like output from Konosuke has been limited to a handful of pretty standard lines (HD2, GS, WT, Yoshikane etc.) for a while now. Kosuke’s instagram posts have alluded to a reinvigoration of the brand in the future. Are there any rumours about ‘the next fujiyama’ or something?
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That’s a no from me. Baba, yauchi, masamoto sohonten (by proxy) and Aoki have the biggest grinding workshops and most importantly young people they trained themselves.
All others are dependent on independent craftsmen. That’s how konosuke went downhill, it only works and you only grow as long as you’re the only one ordering. All old school Sakai brands have failed to realize the lack of scalability of their business in my opinion. Everyone was selling more and more using the same three old men until one day suddenly everyone was maxed out and boom, everything was out of stock. Then morihiro had a stroke or something and it was game over.
 
Lurkernomore said:
That’s a no from me. Baba, yauchi, masamoto sohonten (by proxy) and Aoki have the biggest grinding workshops and most importantly young people they trained themselves.
All others are dependent on independent craftsmen. That’s how konosuke went downhill, it only works and you only grow as long as you’re the only one ordering. All old school Sakai brands have failed to realize the lack of scalability of their business in my opinion. Everyone was selling more and more using the same three old men until one day suddenly everyone was maxed out and boom, everything was out of stock. Then morihiro had a stroke or something and it was game over.
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I donno if konosuke is going down hill, but something tells me Myojin might not make as much doing a FM versus all the other knives he's been making to date. He's quite a prolific sharpener in the past year for basically every other maker...

I do like that he's doing more non-brand like stuff like the JJ x Myojins, if he never makes a FM again and just starts doing stuff on his own feel like that could be cool.

I do think a lot of people are trying to break out of the mold. I have 2 Makoto Tadokoro's and they are absolutely top of the line f&f lasers. It doesn't seem like he's getting as much attentions as western individual shops which i guess speaks to the domination of these brands, but I think I'd call him up and coming sakai.
 
DoYoon Kim said:
I donno if konosuke is going down hill, but something tells me Myojin might not make as much doing a FM versus all the other knives he's been making to date. He's quite a prolific sharpener in the past year for basically every other maker...

I do like that he's doing more non-brand like stuff like the JJ x Myojins, if he never makes a FM again and just starts doing stuff on his own feel like that could be cool.

I do think a lot of people are trying to break out of the mold. I have 2 Makoto Tadokoro's and they are absolutely top of the line f&f lasers. It doesn't seem like he's getting as much attentions as western individual shops which i guess speaks to the domination of these brands, but I think I'd call him up and coming sakai.
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Just realized i called a dude with close to 30 years of experience up and coming.... Says something about the knife industry. I think some people still treat Itsuo Doi as a apprentice to dad.
 
Relatively uneducated observations to follow.
Lurkernomore said:
That’s a no from me. Baba, yauchi, masamoto sohonten (by proxy) and Aoki have the biggest grinding workshops and most importantly young people they trained themselves.
All others are dependent on independent craftsmen. That’s how konosuke went downhill, it only works and you only grow as long as you’re the only one ordering. All old school Sakai brands have failed to realize the lack of scalability of their business in my opinion. Everyone was selling more and more using the same three old men until one day suddenly everyone was maxed out and boom, everything was out of stock. Then morihiro had a stroke or something and it was game over.
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Really interesting to think about the business of artisanal product ls with such a demand. Not that common in a world in which most goods are mass manufactured or grown. Baba and Hado (in house sharpeners, blanks from independent smiths) seems to have a pretty different approach say nigara, which has a pretty different approach to say Hitohira as a wholesaler / coordinator. Hitohira, which is going gangbusters, seems to have a pretty similar model to Konosuke’s though, no?
 
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