Best value knives that are stone polish ready

[enrico]

Curious what you guys have tried that has stone polish ready geometry. Or knives that were very close/easy to get polish ready. Might end up being helpful thread.

Can vary in price range and western/Japanese.

Going to tag some fellas (@ethompson and @refcast) that might be able to contribute. Anyone else feel free to chime in.

Thanks

 

[SimenTh]

Curious what you guys have tried that has stone polish ready geometry. Or knives that were very close/easy to get polish ready. Might end up being helpful thread.

Can vary in price range and western/Japanese.

Going to tag some fellas (@ethompson and @refcast) that might be able to contribute. Anyone else feel free to chime in.

Thanks

In my experience, anything Tobias Heldqvist makes is stone ready

 

[gentiscid]

Komorebi B1 damascus

 

[enrico]

Heres a good example

https://tetogi.com/collections/kokkenknive-gyuto/products/cygnus-atratus-26c3-240mm-gyuto

 

[OkayMode]

Anything by Joel Black has been really good in my experience so far.

I have one knife from Simon Maillet that was stone ready, but needed some work to straighten and remove some warping.

Both were refined enough to go straight to Jnats.

Manaka bevels were pretty close but required a little bit of work before they were fully stone ready.

 

[pavhav]

Heres a good example

That looks really good for the price. Too bad they're out of stock.

 

[kpham12]

Mutsumi Hinoura’s knives use to be slight hollow grind, but I have one from a more recent batch that came with dead flat bevels. I was so surprised when I put it on the stones, but my sample size is only one. I think @ethompson has a santoku from him so he can attest further. In terms of best value, you can find them for like $200-300 shipped to your door, so pretty good. Also nice HT and some good F&F on the spine and choil for the price point.

Mazakis are usually stone ready, you just need to start on a coarse stone to get out the deep scratches. IME, wide bevel Masashi knives and some of the wide bevel Wakuis are very close to stone ready. Any low spots are usually pretty shallow and come out in like 30 minutes to an hour depending on what stone you’re using. Also, they cut like crazy OOTB. Pretty much anyone who came through Yoshikane seems to know what they’re doing.

 

[ethompson]

Hinoura are far from stone ready. I’ve yet to personally encounter a Japanese knife that didn’t need a good bit of coarse grit love.

 

[nakiriknaifuwaifu]

Mazakis are usually stone ready

Never seen one with stone-ready geometry.

Shigefusa bevels have always been easy to thin on stones, I could hit all parts of the bevel that I wanted to without much tweaking.

 

[enrico]

Hinoura are far from stone ready. I’ve yet to personally encounter a Japanese knife that didn’t need a good bit of coarse grit love.

I figured most j-knives would need some love. Was curious about some that have a generous bevel to use as a canvas for polishing. So many times I see a hammer mark that just went wayyyy too thin and pretty much negates any reason to go forward.

 

[blokey]

I’d try some single bevel from goh umanosuke yoshihiro, Miura has their B2 in stock, not the flattest but very well grounded. Gesshin Uraku are also good, you can ask JKI folks to do the initial sharpening for you too.

 

[blokey]

I find generally the same price range, Single bevels tend to be much easier to flatten than double bevels.

 

[enrico]

I’d try some single bevel from goh umanosuke yoshihiro, Miura has their B2 in stock, not the flattest but very well grounded. Gesshin Uraku are also good, you can ask JKI folks to do the initial sharpening for you too.

Gesshin Uraku was very concave. Took quite a bit to flatten

 

[kpham12]

Hinoura are far from stone ready. I’ve yet to personally encounter a Japanese knife that didn’t need a good bit of coarse grit love.

Ah, maybe I got lucky with mine. It also had some crazy nice banding in the cladding under the stock sandblast finish.

Never seen one with stone-ready geometry.

Shigefusa bevels have always been easy to thin on stones, I could hit all parts of the bevel that I wanted to without much tweaking.

I’ve had 3 Mazakis and they were all “technically” stone ready as in no low spots, but they were all a little too convex so it would be more difficult to hit every part of the bevel easily without doing some work on them first.

 

[blokey]

Gesshin Uraku was very concave. Took quite a bit to flatten

The single beveled one? The one I checked seems to be good, tho I admit i didn’t have the chance to put any to stone

 

[enrico]

The single beveled one? The one I checked seems to be good, tho I admit i didn’t have the chance to put any to stone

Double bevel gyuto in white 2

 

[tostadas]

This thread may be helpful to you. Manaka is the closest off-the-shelf Japanese one I've come across.

https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/...ble-stone-finished-knives.65713/#post-1005702

 

[ReiHamono]

Obvious ones like Fellipi and Milan.

What about Adonis or Evan Antzenberger?

 

[flow_the_pro]

I think most of the high priced western normally mention this in the description, at least i saw it in some descriptions.
Like hand sanded compared to stone polished or kasumi.
It takes some additional hours so probably worth mentioning it to justify price.

I recently bought a Mazaki for the same reason, wanted a stone ready knife. I see rough diagonal grind marks, so i think they are from stones.
Remove patina and refresh kasumi worked, but on a rather muddy stone.
Have not started the project of removing the course grind marks.

 

[jedy617]

This is an easy one, Jonas (isasmedjan) does stone finished knives in the $4-500 (or less even?) range

Something like this:

 

[jedy617]

Actually just checked his last preorder which was 190mm with stone prepped wrought iron bevels were only $365. Man that's a lot of value for all that work

 

[M1k3]

Heiji is usually pretty close to stone ready, or nearly stone ready. Usually.

 

[stumpt]

Anything by Joel Black has been really good in my experience so far.

I have one knife from Simon Maillet that was stone ready, but needed some work to straighten and remove some warping.

Both were refined enough to go straight to Jnats.

Manaka bevels were pretty close but required a little bit of work before they were fully stone ready.

My Simon's bevels (admittedly, an older piece of his work, but still under his current style) needed a healthy amount of work before they were stone ready. Looks like his bevels are a bit more polished nowadays, though.