ReLeNC
New Member
Hi everyone.
I'm not usualy into forums, but I found quite a bit of useful information here, so I thought I could register to at least share the tiny bit that I have.
I don't exactly collect Knives, but I have a bunch of them, so here is my set-up (sorry for the poor quality of the picture), by chronological order of acquisition :
- Yaxell Zen 165cm santoku. VG10 core, damascus Tsushime finish. I bought it during a stopover between two flights in Tokyo 12 years ago. My first kitchen knife, I used it to prepare all my meals for more than 10 years, had its lot of chippings, a broken tip, a couple thinnings, I still use it from time to time.
- Unknown brand 13 cm Deba. SK5 steel, bought in Yokohama (with my wife, who is japanese, precisely from Yokohama) in one of the huge multistore commercial centers they have there. It takes quite a beating everytime we use it. We got it with the White stone right under the knife's box : unknown brand again, soaking stone, grit labeled as "600-800".
- boning knife. This little thing used to be a 36cm butcher knife. It was given to me by a great friend of mine, who is a butcher if needed to say, when I asked him advice for bying a good boning knife for processing game and poultry. Does a great job, I use a vitorinox dual sharpener to maintain the edge, it works like a charm. Before being a butcher, that friend used to be a cook who went to culinary school, he taught me how to up my knife skills, which led me to upgrade from my santoku, whose limitations were becoming more and more obvious (I can make a longer post about it if asked nicely
), to
- Sakai kikumori kikuzuki uzu 240mm gyuto. After realizing my santoku was not enough, I decided to go for a gyuto. Cutting feeling of the deba was exceptional, so I went for carbon steel. Aogami n°1 seemed to be great, and from what I could understand, Yoshikazu Tanaka was the Guy to go to with that steel. It took me months (even years) to find a B1 Y.Tanaka without breaking the bank (i.e. that I could order in Europe or in Japan, to avoid the custom fees and numerous taxes we have here that would have more than doubled the price of the item). I ordered the first I found that met my minimum requirements : 240mm blue1 by Tanaka San. I got it from Miura, with the suehiro new cerax 1000 3000 combo stone (bottom left of the picture). A year or so after that, I found one that met a lot more of my requirements for my ideal knife :
- Karatsu Atsuhiro B1 240mm gyuto. What had me get it was : wide flat bevel (for easy maintenance), shinogi line, heavy durable and more moist-resistant handle (ebony), not a weird shaped heel. Spine is way thicker, especially at the hell, so the balance point is (much) more towards the handle which I prefer. As I excusively use this one since I got it, I wanted to sell the other one but couldn't, so it will become a farewell gift for my aforementionned friend, who will soon depart to Australia after his butcher shop (which he was the owner of) was burnt down during the pseudo civil war we're experiencing here. I got it at saitouhamono website, together with a 135mm petty from their sg2 line : extremely thin and lightweight, shitan handle with a pakka wood ferrule. Fun fact, the 3 knives I got from them (those 2 plus a AUS10 gyuto I purchased for a colleague) were the exact samples they used for the pictures on their website (given the patterns on the cladline or the handles). Dunno if it's a good thing or not...
- finally a 205mm hagane yanagiba, given to me by my father-in-law. The thing was in a pretty bad shape, after years of storage in a drawer, and years of use and abuse before that. I could restore it to a useable state with stones, sandpaper and elbow grease.
- As a bonus I put my skinning/quartering knife, a Cold Steel VG1 Master hunter plus. Not exactly a kitchen knife, but it put so much meat on the table that it had its spot well deserved here.
To be complete, I put my flattening stone, my homemade leather strop, and some 8000 grit polishing powder. On their way, a naniwa 220 grit stone and some 3 micron diamond paste.
Sorry for the long post. If you want any info needed from all that, and aren't bothered by my approximate english, feeling free to ask.
I'm not usualy into forums, but I found quite a bit of useful information here, so I thought I could register to at least share the tiny bit that I have.
I don't exactly collect Knives, but I have a bunch of them, so here is my set-up (sorry for the poor quality of the picture), by chronological order of acquisition :
- Unknown brand 13 cm Deba. SK5 steel, bought in Yokohama (with my wife, who is japanese, precisely from Yokohama) in one of the huge multistore commercial centers they have there. It takes quite a beating everytime we use it. We got it with the White stone right under the knife's box : unknown brand again, soaking stone, grit labeled as "600-800".
- boning knife. This little thing used to be a 36cm butcher knife. It was given to me by a great friend of mine, who is a butcher if needed to say, when I asked him advice for bying a good boning knife for processing game and poultry. Does a great job, I use a vitorinox dual sharpener to maintain the edge, it works like a charm. Before being a butcher, that friend used to be a cook who went to culinary school, he taught me how to up my knife skills, which led me to upgrade from my santoku, whose limitations were becoming more and more obvious (I can make a longer post about it if asked nicely
), to- Sakai kikumori kikuzuki uzu 240mm gyuto. After realizing my santoku was not enough, I decided to go for a gyuto. Cutting feeling of the deba was exceptional, so I went for carbon steel. Aogami n°1 seemed to be great, and from what I could understand, Yoshikazu Tanaka was the Guy to go to with that steel. It took me months (even years) to find a B1 Y.Tanaka without breaking the bank (i.e. that I could order in Europe or in Japan, to avoid the custom fees and numerous taxes we have here that would have more than doubled the price of the item). I ordered the first I found that met my minimum requirements : 240mm blue1 by Tanaka San. I got it from Miura, with the suehiro new cerax 1000 3000 combo stone (bottom left of the picture). A year or so after that, I found one that met a lot more of my requirements for my ideal knife :
- Karatsu Atsuhiro B1 240mm gyuto. What had me get it was : wide flat bevel (for easy maintenance), shinogi line, heavy durable and more moist-resistant handle (ebony), not a weird shaped heel. Spine is way thicker, especially at the hell, so the balance point is (much) more towards the handle which I prefer. As I excusively use this one since I got it, I wanted to sell the other one but couldn't, so it will become a farewell gift for my aforementionned friend, who will soon depart to Australia after his butcher shop (which he was the owner of) was burnt down during the pseudo civil war we're experiencing here. I got it at saitouhamono website, together with a 135mm petty from their sg2 line : extremely thin and lightweight, shitan handle with a pakka wood ferrule. Fun fact, the 3 knives I got from them (those 2 plus a AUS10 gyuto I purchased for a colleague) were the exact samples they used for the pictures on their website (given the patterns on the cladline or the handles). Dunno if it's a good thing or not...
- finally a 205mm hagane yanagiba, given to me by my father-in-law. The thing was in a pretty bad shape, after years of storage in a drawer, and years of use and abuse before that. I could restore it to a useable state with stones, sandpaper and elbow grease.
- As a bonus I put my skinning/quartering knife, a Cold Steel VG1 Master hunter plus. Not exactly a kitchen knife, but it put so much meat on the table that it had its spot well deserved here.
To be complete, I put my flattening stone, my homemade leather strop, and some 8000 grit polishing powder. On their way, a naniwa 220 grit stone and some 3 micron diamond paste.
Sorry for the long post. If you want any info needed from all that, and aren't bothered by my approximate english, feeling free to ask.
