Any impressions of hitohira tanaka yohei?

[Tristan]

Looking for impressions of anyone that owns one in blue steel, though if you have any other steels in this range do chip in please.

 

[ian]

I have one in White #1. It’s really nice. The steel is great - haven’t seen much microchipping yet, and it was easy to sharpen. It’s light, nimble and well balanced. It’s not a laser: there’s a fair bit of convexity in the bottom 1/3 of the knife. Has decent food release as a result.

Only downside was mine came with a nonexistent weak edge (and it was a little thick right behind the edge), so I had to really wail on it to get to reasonable steel on the first sharpening. Not necessarily a problem, but the knife doesn’t have the perfect mirror core it came with anymore. That said, I sanded it up and it looks pretty good now.

 

[soigne_west]

@ian, what’s the finish like on those? Is it the typical “beadblast” type finish you see on a lot of knives? It’s hard to tell from the pictures. I think there super cool looking. Though.

 

[soigne_west]

And FWIW I have a Tanaka x Kyuzo in blue. Completely different line but I haven’t experienced any chipping and it’s very thin behind the edge.

 

[ian]

The core is mirror, the cladding is a really textured blasted (I assume) finish. It did look really nice, but I thought it was kind of a pain, tbh. Since it was so textured, it was super reactive. There was even a patinaed on fingerprint on mine that I could have used to steal someone’s identity.... now that’s reactive. When I went to clean up my sharpening marks, I hit the whole blade with some sandpaper (starting at 1200, though, nothing coarse). It made the cladding a bit less textured, and decreased the crazy contrast with the mirror core, but it also evened out the cladding a bit (it was splotchy), lightened it in a way that I like, and made it a bit less reactive.

 

[ian]

Before:

After:

(different lighting, patina, etc may make it hard to compare...)

 

[Ruso]

Is it Tanaka Y. or Tanaka more known from metalmaster or some other Tanaka?

 

[ian]

Yoshikazu

 

[ian]

Tanaka Yohei is a potato sheepdog. Stay down, stay on that board, stay down!

 

[Tristan]

And FWIW I have a Tanaka x Kyuzo in blue. Completely different line but I haven’t experienced any chipping and it’s very thin behind the edge.

This would be the dual wide bevel with shinogi right.

 

[soigne_west]

Correct

 

[Tristan]

I have one in White #1. It’s really nice. The steel is great - haven’t seen much microchipping yet, and it was easy to sharpen. It’s light, nimble and well balanced. It’s not a laser: there’s a fair bit of convexity in the bottom 1/3 of the knife. Has decent food release as a result.

Only downside was mine came with a nonexistent weak edge (and it was a little thick right behind the edge), so I had to really wail on it to get to reasonable steel on the first sharpening. Not necessarily a problem, but the knife doesn’t have the perfect mirror core it came with anymore. That said, I sanded it up and it looks pretty good now.

Weird. Thought Yohei was a sharpener in the Tanaka Yohei equation. to have it come with non edge seems odd?

 

[ian]

Weird. Thought Yohei was a sharpener in the Tanaka Yohei equation. to have it come with non edge seems odd?

Sharpener really means "grinder". So, Tanaka forges the knife, but then the grinding is done by whoever Yohei is (presumably it's a pseudonym?). In particular, all that beautiful convexity is Yohei. But in my experience, many excellent grinders don't try to put an actual edge on the knife, since that's the user's job.

 

[A.Malcolm.ations]

I’m curious about this line as well.

 

[zizirex]

Hitohira always put a pseudonym based on 7 Samurai characters on his line, Kikuchiyo, Yohei, Kambei, Kyuzo, Manzo etc...
I know some of them but I don't know why Hokuto do that.

 

[josemartinlopez]

How does this Tanaka compare to others? Is this one of the thinner ones? I guess he is quite established so his knives are out there done by a variety of sharpeners?