I just took delivery of the knife. It arrived in great shape.
What's your thoughts about it?Knife arrived safely this afternoon! Will spend some time with it this week.
Typing up some thoughts now!What's your thoughts about it?
Your spoiler make me very excitedI dropped the knife off to the Post Office on friday. I'll try to get my thoughts posted this evening.
Spoiler alert: great knife
did you sharpen/think it needed sharpening at all?My week with the knife was a very pleasant one. Lots of salads, a bit of stir fry and some chicken quesadillas.
I was quite surprised that the height wasn't an issue for me. I'm on the shorter side of things and have a tall cutting surface. With that being said, I rather enjoyed the size and felt it was balanced very well.
The blade had a nice heft to it that helped cut the various veggies that make up my daily lunch salads. I did notice the s-grind seemed to help with harder and taller ingredients. Cutting and slicing were fantastic, very sharp and had and excellent toothy quality.
Overall, I enjoyed this knife and was thoroughly impressed with the build quality. Fantastic knife, Andrei. I really think you're on to something special here
Firstly, thanks to @AB blades for organizing this awesome passaround.
I've used a couple S-grinds before, but they were never really my go to. I think for some of them, the grind of the bevel below the S-grind is left too thick and the improved food release is not worth the wedging and poor cutting feel. Or they are too light due to the removed weight from the S-grind and you have to kind of push them through product. This is not the case with the AB blades gyuto. It is properly thin BTE with a thick spine that gives it the necessary mass to get that "fall through food" feeling. The shoulders are wide enough to help push food away from the knife, but not so wide that you can feel them while cutting. The deep S-grind works excellently at improving food release and reducing stiction, so through tall, wet foods, you don't get that slow down stiction feeling you can sometimes get with tall knives with a lot of surface area on the blade face.
The profile is a little too flat right at the heel where it comes to a slightly hard stop, but this is a minor nitpick and most of the time when I'm cutting, I'm using the front two thirds of the knife and the heel doesn't quite hit the board. You would only really notice if you're chopping with the back third. In terms of actual performance, the profile is like an elongated santoku, very similar to a Wat/Toyama with a higher heel and bigger flat spot. Very good at cutting long foods like carrots lengthwise and big heads of cabbage.
When I received the knife, it was still quite sharp except for a couple of areas that had some light deflections in the edge that would get caught when cutting paper towel. I honed the edge lightly on a midgrit stone, no real sharpening and it was slicing paper towel cleanly after just a couple swipes. I can't say much about the steel because I don't want to mess around with it too much to preserve the original geometry for the passaround, but the edge holding is good after a lot of use at home and some testing in a prep kitchen, maybe about 50 lbs of onion, medium diced and some potatoes, mushroom and bell peppers. Handle is very durable and comfortable with long use. In the video below, you can see how the edge holds up after all this use, still plenty sharp, even through a very ripe tomato. On onions especially, this thing is a joy to use. The thin tip and lack of stiction from the S-grind means it absolutely flies through onions while leaving them mostly intact. The tall blade then allows you to scoop things off the board almost like a cleaver and drop them in a pan or tray. Makes prep work very efficient.
Overall this is a very fun knife to use, but also very practical and not at all "gimmicky". The geometry is very dialed in and looks like it would allow for easy maintenance thinning in the future. The fit and finish and craftsmanship is excellent and the execution of the deep S-grind is indicative of a maker who knows what he is doing.
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