Octagonal vs Hexagonal wa handles

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Bensbites

Bensbites

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Hi all,

What do you think of hexagonal (6-sided) vs octagonal (8-sided) handles? I know from talking to other knifenuts and my handle clients, I don’t mind a wider array of sized handles compared to others.

I am seeing a more and more hexagonal handles on Instagram. I hope you don’t mind the market research /academic discussion.

Thanks
Ben
 
I saw a guy who did asymmetrical hexagonal. The top side facets were short, more like on an octagonal, but the bottom side facets were elongated. It made sense, and looked to be comfortable.
 
Octagonal is (generally) more ergonomic, never really seen any real purpose for a six-sided handle.
Look at something like raquet sports and you will get more realistic sense of what the design is for.

That being said, a knife handle can be a variety of shapes in part because of how you cut with it,
ie a Deba has a certain grip because of the technique, and similarly other knives.
 
Not sure racquet sports have much to do with knives. The 8 sides on a tennis racquet are there to help guide you in grip changes, and the presence of the sides also prevents the racquet from rotating in your hands after impact.

The first point is irrelevant to knives, where you don’t change grips. The second point seems not quite as important, since you’re not hitting tennis balls off center with your knives. Even an oval is usually fine for preventing rotation, and I imagine any implementation of a hexagonal handle will be fine too.

Probably it just depends what feels comfortable. Personally, the handle shape hardly matters to me past aesthetics.

Edit: perhaps I misinterpreted and you weren’t talking about function, but rather just feel when holding the handle. I’d still say that racquets are pretty different, but not having held a hexagonal handle I guess I can’t comment from experience. I would guess, though, that a hexagonal handle that mimics an octagonal handle on top would feel much like an octagonal handle. I mean, the only difference would be that your fingers would curl slightly more or less around the bottom, and can you really feel the difference? However, the contact your palm makes with the top of the handle is less adjustable.
 
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Make the 'OK' sign and start counting the segments in the 'O' of your thumb, hand, index-finger
 
I prefer D shaped handles...i think that's what they're called by in my mind are most comfortable.
 
ian said:
7, of wildly different lengths.
Click to expand...



Now, if you turn the "o" into a "c" and recount, you add basically +1
and this is how they invented the 8 sided octogon for an open-handed grip.
 
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ian said:
7, of wildly different lengths.
Click to expand...
If you split the long one you'll likely get eight... all fairly equal...still prefer in order: D shape, nogent style (kind of a cross between western and wa but w/4 sides), octagonal...i did like the SIH handles but they were a bit large for my tastes.

All that said, i believe it's overthought to a degree in that if you use a pinch grip it doesn't really matter the shape as long as the diameter is comfortable.
 
chinacats said:
All that said, i believe it's overthought to a degree in that if you use a pinch grip it doesn't really matter the shape as long as the diameter is comfortable.
Click to expand...

This.

In pinch grip it doesn't really matter, as long as the handle is not in the way. Regardless of how octagonal handle was invented, number of segments hardly matter since, at least when I hold, a gyuto each segment does not contact each facet, so their number hardly matters. One of the most comfortable Wa handles I have is Kamon and it is basically heart shaped. Dalman Wa are very comfortable too because they have heavy taper on both sides close to the blade. Properly done D handles, in general are more comfortable to me too. All of this is only true for pinch grip.
 
Thread title:

Octagonal vs Hexagonal wa handles
Click to expand...

The reason we use 8 sided handles in tennis, hammers, and j-knives (etc)
is because

1) the lower part of the grip typically forms with 4 segments (look thru your "closed C" grip)
2) octogon is roughly symmetrical which allows for clocking of the grip (see:1)
3) clocking with 8 sides is (45 degree=) more precise than clockign with 6 sides (60 degree intervals)

For screwdrives, some very good ones use three sides,
but the great egronomics of this shape use 120 degree intervals
and six sided handles don't share the good ergos of tri-lobe.

{edit} NB: the closest thing to a tri-lobe is the D handle which gives the flat
plust some oval for clocking the grip in fine gradations...

But this thread wasn't so much oval vs angular
as hex vs octogons...AFAIK
 
I must not be holding the knife correctly, but when I use pinch grip I don't use the handle itself for rotation of any sort. So for hammers, rackets, screw drivers or a knife in hammer grip I can see the benefits. For pinch grip and cutting motion with a gyuto, just don't see it. The handle for me is a counter weight and a lever of a sort, horizontal and rotational stabilization comes from holding the side of the blade not the handle. The question was hex vs octagonal, I guess for me it doesn't matter the octagon I like is taller vs wider with taper toward the blade, one of the best is what Dalman does. A hex of heart shape is great too something like the following, appropriately sized rounded and tapered Kamon like.

upload_2019-5-8_13-2-14.png
 
In viewing them I'm partial to the elongated octagonal that you posted on IG. I'm in the same boat as several others here in that I generally am a pinch grip guy and the handle is a counter weight for me. That does not hold up for the D shape handles as I'm a lefty and while I've used more than a few of that style for more than a few hours I'd rather not every buy another D shaped handle if I can help it. As you know I just really like the aesthetics of your handles, considerations of shape aside.
 
Barmoley said:
I don't use the handle itself for rotation of any sort.
Click to expand...

try to use a gyuto to filet or cut sideways without clocking your grip...
there is a reason a deba has a oval handle (not D/shinogi) by tradition...

there are plenty of times when a pinch grip is inappropriate
as a matter of technique and/or ergonomics

every time I hear "pinch grip" and "push cut"
I just think that person read this on the internet...

You want to use the correct grip for the correct cut
if you never cut sideways, cut an arc, peeled a fruit, etc

that's just weird :eek:

for all those cuts you typically clock your grip
to take the pressure off your wrist and increase
control.
 
Just want to add:

For a variety of related reasons, I don't reall care that much about any particular handle shape in terms of j-knives...
quality of execution in ergonomics is usually about size, taper and other variables ...
they generally trumps generic design decisions (any design can be screwed up by poor execution).

My comments in this thread are more to articulate why certain designs are used, not to argue that they are the only or the best shape for every knive or every person, etc. As you can see from the comments above, the hex can be made to work, but its typically done with heavy modification...so much so that I'm not really sure its a best described as "hexagon" any more... the clocking angle in a instinct type grip is closer to the 120 degrees than the 60 degrees in a normal hexagon (this is a cost of the modification)...altoght this can be over com by eliminating the hexagon/trilobe geometry toward the "pinch" par of the fore-grip (as seen in pic above).

hope this is helpful.
 
HRC_64 said:
try to use a gyuto to filet or cut sideways without clocking your grip...
there is a reason a deba has a oval handle (not D/shinogi) by tradition...

there are plenty of times when a pinch grip is inappropriate
Click to expand...


Absolutely, that's why I specified a gyuto in this shape discusion, I don't use a gyuto for peeling or filleting enough for a handle shape to make a difference. So no argument there. I've seen sushi chefs do pretty much everything with a d-handle though, so it can be done, but definitely technique and job at hand will dictate what works best. Since people around here have 50 gyutos to 1 knife of any other type.....
 
HRC_64 said:
Now, if you turn the "o" into a "c" and recount, you add basically +1
and this is how they invented the 8 sided octogon for an open-handed grip.
Click to expand...

chinacats said:
If you split the long one you'll likely get eight... all fairly equal...still prefer in order: D shape, nogent style (kind of a cross between western and wa but w/4 sides), octagonal...i did like the SIH handles but they were a bit large for my tastes.

All that said, i believe it's overthought to a degree in that if you use a pinch grip it doesn't really matter the shape as long as the diameter is comfortable.
Click to expand...

Oh, I think I understand how you're getting 8 now... it gets a little fuzzy how to subdivide near the base of the thumb. Is that really the reason they were originally made like that, though? I guess it’s true that when I hold a tennis racquet, the bevels of my index finger tend to follow the bevels of the grip, at least. Hadn’t really thought about that before. Smart. Not sure how relevant this is to knives, though, which have much smaller handles.

And sorry, @HRC_64 is of course right that you do change grips sometimes on a knife. (Re: the differences with a racquet, I was thinking about how you actually use the grip bevels as guides when you are changing grips.) However, I still don’t think the shape of the handle matters that much for that, even when peeling or filleting. Then again, I’m not doing it for 6 hrs a day...
 
Barmoley said:
...something like the following, appropriately sized rounded and tapered Kamon like.

View attachment 52828
Click to expand...
Hazenbergknives has that same shape. It looks nice and comfy, but honestly it's impossible to tell without having held one.

This topic is so insanely subjective that it will be very difficult to get a good amount of usable info out of talking about it. Even in the case of the tried and proven octagonal wa, there are subtle details that add to the overall comfort which get can get overlooked. There's a lot of variation out there for such a simple design...
 
But seriously... this is more work for handle makers, but I really like the look of the "heart shaped" handles James has at Knives and Stones:
_1900284__35131.1539580814.1280.1280.jpg

_1900330__49504.1540943721.1280.1280.jpg


But agreed that in a pinch grip, I'm cool with almost any handle because I choke up so high on it. Since I'm only a home user, as long as I can index the handle in hand, the shape is not a huge deal to me.
 
The advantage of the octagonal handle versus round or D is for in-hand work. It lets you rotate the knife without needing to grip harder.

However, many oval and D handles have less aggressive taper than most Japanese octagonal handles I see and use. I like subtle taper more, but I don't like no taper. I think that the amount of taper in say, an Ashi Ginga (which seems to be the most aggressive out there), makes a more 'rotational' friendly knife. Which is to say, if you like wrist-action, that kind of taper helps it. Whereas, less taper is more for someone who likes to move their whole arm and shoulder in slicing motions and such.

The hexagonal handle I haven't held . . . and assuming hexagon shape is where the flats line up with the sides of the knife . . . . . I actually imagine it might be a bit uncomfortable. I like having my fingers on the very bottom of the handle so it can hold up the knife weight, and I like pressing my fingers to the sides of the handles when I chop. And the top of the handle is where the force goes into my hand when the knife impacts the board. So a square shape is the most basic non-oval shape. This kind of basic square shape is what we see in typical western handles.

I guess my fingers would just go to different places. So I'm looking forward to trying it at least. . . .

-- and after making a really bad example out of paper, the shape makes me want to jiggle the knife, like left-right rotation (the kind we're not normally supposed to do with knife-board contact). I saw the shape I think in some bonito knife at JKI, so I guess that's a good case where it helps with that kind of cutting.
 
HRC_64 said:
Just want to add:

For a variety of related reasons, I don't reall care that much about any particular handle shape in terms of j-knives... quality of execution in ergonomics is usually about size, taper and other variables ... they generally trumps generic design decisions (any design can be screwed up by poor execution).
Click to expand...
This! I find many types of handles comfortable - wa and yo - though I've yet to try a hybrid oct/oval. Quite a large variety of handles work well for me but it's always down to dimensions, taper, weight, balance, grip and how all these come together, not just a particular type. Incidentally, I find D-shaped handles fitted for a lefty very comfortable too.
 
Interesting.

Working in professional kitchens, I definitely notice the difference between the various wa handles, even in a pinch grip.
I guess the long hours and repetitive actions have a lot to do with it. We can be pushing a surprising amount of force through our hands over the period of only a few hours.
 
I tend to go for hexagonal, as a maker. I like the way they feel in the hand. I tend to make my handles a bit "taller", and hexagonal suits that nicely. I also like the way they look.
As has been said, it is more down to personal preference and how the handles, of whatever section, is executed, no doubt.
 
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