Bizarre (to me) Japanese Knife

[Draig]

Hello! I acquired an old knife with a lot of Japanese blacksmithing tools many years ago. I sold the knife as I didn't need it and had always regretted it. A few months ago, it was offered for sale to me so I bought it back. The knife was rusted and dirty, and some one had re-sharpened it wrong and rounded the tip. The blade appears to have been forged of several layers, as I can barely see some waves from weld lines in the edge as I removed the rust. I also remember the man I bought it from (with the tools and it was in Japan) saying "It was said to be made by Tadamasa and was found in the Kanagawa Prefecture." I am not sure of the significance of this at all or if there is any. Additionally, the top of the bevel protrudes, then the cheeks on both sides are concave, making food not stick to it. It's an interesting cross section, and the overall blade shape looks a little different than any other knife I've seen. It's looked similar to some, but not the exact same.

Can anyone shed any light on this knife?

Thank you for reading and looking!


Sincerely,

Draig

 

[Greasylake]

Doesn't look like it's damascus, that just looks like nice iron banding. Also, I believe it's called a boar knife, with a shorter tip for skinning the animal and getting around bones and a deba back half for heavier work like cleaving and such. I think @refcast might be more familiar with them than I am. It's a really cool knife for sure though, and buying it back was a good call (I'm a bit jealous haha).

Also, being a deba it should have an ura, meaning the back is hollow ground, not convex

 

[Draig]

Doesn't look like it's damascus, that just looks like nice iron banding. Also, I believe it's called a boar knife, with a shorter tip for skinning the animal and getting around bones and a deba back half for heavier work like cleaving and such. I think @refcast might be more familiar with them than I am. It's a really cool knife for sure though, and buying it back was a good call (I'm a bit jealous haha).

Also, being a deba it should have an ura, meaning the back is hollow ground, not convex

Hello and thank you very much for your reply!
A boar knife? I've never heard of it! I'll have to dig into it, thank you! I've never had the chance to handle a Deba so I did not know it was supposed to be hollow ground like that!

So far as the iron banding, do you mean something like alloy banding? Or are we talking about the weld lines between layers? I don't believe it to be pattern welded for sure, but I thought maybe it was an indication of a few layers welded together like I saw in a Tachi I had restored maybe a decade ago or so.

And thank you for the compliments to the blade! I'll have to re-handle it for sure. It was also re-done via adding an actual stick on the tang for the handle which makes me really sad. I'll sure be glad to get it up and running again!
Do Deba's function ok as multi-use knives despite being mostly focused for meat? It's been far too long since I've read about all this I'm afraid.

 

[blokey]

Reminds me of a Ken Onion shun, the finish looks like wrought iron clad to me, just the natural occuring pattern due to the impurity.

 

[Logan09]

As was said, its a skinning knife. I've seen them referred to kawahagi? Somewhat similar to western skinners.

 

[Greasylake]

So far as the iron banding, do you mean something like alloy banding? Or are we talking about the weld lines between layers? I don't believe it to be pattern welded for sure, but I thought maybe it was an indication of a few layers welded together like I saw in a Tachi I had restored maybe a decade ago or so.

It is a two piece construction, soft iron welded onto a hard core. The banding is just on the iron, I guess it's alloy banding but I call it iron banding too, probably incorrectly. There isn't a lot of core steel exposed so you could thin the knife and move the shinogi up if you wanted to but I don't think it really needs to be done, debas are meant to be pretty thick anyway.

Do Deba's function ok as multi-use knives despite being mostly focused for meat? It's been far too long since I've read about all this I'm afraid.

Depends on what tasks you want it to do I guess. For general kitchen work cutting veggies and stuff, debas suck, but if you wanted a bush knife that you could take camping/hunting/fishing it would probably do just fine. I bring debas fishing with me all the time, they're very handy outdoors.

 

[Draig]

Much appreciated everyone! That's some pretty interesting stuff! I'm really excited to see what more I can find now!


I don't think I'll fully restore this knife though. The pitting is deep and I'm worried about removing too much of the iron cheeks of the san mai style construction, especially since that may remove the kanji, which is blasphemy to me. I'm not going to clean the tang either. I remember that being one of the ways swords were dated, so I'll stick with that rule just in case! So I suppose that means I'll need to work a hunk of scrap into a rough approximation to the tang, then then drill holes into the new handle stock and file them as best I can; and then using the mock up tang I'll burn the hole the rest of the way.


Has anyone else seen one of these in person?

 

[HumbleHomeCook]

Check out this posting:

https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/threads/knife-findings.38952/post-923665

 

[Draig]

Thank you!
It's interesting to me that so far any examples I've seen appear to be a bit smaller than this one I have. Perhaps this was their equivalent of some one getting the biggest bowie knife available.

 

[Lurkernomore]

I believe it’s a kawahagi knife, a skinning knife for deer and wild boar and whatever else. There are single and double bevel ones around, you got a single bevel one. Nice find. I’d leave the pitted surface as is and just regrind it starting with 220 grit.

 

[Greasylake]

One on auction, similar shape to yours

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/q1048627144