Quick Review/Practice Knives: Masakane & Hisamoto

[ModRQC]

Masakane – Vintage SK (unspecified) Gyuto 210mm
344 / 215 / 215 … 46 / 39 / 25 … 1.5 / 1.5 / 0.9 / 0.6 … 0 … 158g

Morihei Hisamoto – INOX (unspecified) Gyuto 210mm
332 / 209 / 209 … 46 / 38 / 25 … 1.9 / 1.5 / 1.1 / 0.7 … -5 … 163g


This is no review per see, more of a commenting thing.

About steels: surely the Masakane is SK5, especially with the vintage association. As for the Hisamoto INOX, on Hitohira, Ai & Om, Tosho Knife Arts, for some of the knives in the lineup we can see the mention SUS 440, as for other knives in the lineup there’s only “unspecified stainless steel”. In itself, 440 means little, but surely referring to the lower grade 440A since usually when they use 440C they don’t hesitate advertising it plainly, and I seem to have gathered around here that 440B was rarely used altogether for knives.

Average boxes, somewhat cheap overall.

Average Gyuto profiles… quite similar one to another.

The Masakane handle is on par with the price, not too shabby, a couple of flaws like rivets that were partly ground to slope with the scales, uneven tang line, uneven scale fitting, cheap feeling synthetic material, but mostly it’s okay, and the bolster is even and comfortable enough. Except for scale material, this handle and bolster still have nothing to be ashamed of compared with TF…

The Hisamoto has quite a nice handle, good pakka wood, very nice fit overall, consistent grinding side to side, no welding deformation out of the bolster, which is even and smooth. You’d love a TF handle that would be as aptly done as this one – especially if you could still keep the higher quality G10 pakka TF uses.

Balance for both is in the tapering of bolster to neck. Having used both I realized that when it comes to Yo handles, I’d much rather have a heavier knife, the ballpark 180-210g for 210mm fits these better in my sense. I also prefer to have more space at the neck, which is rare with a Yo, and a bit more forward balance, which is also rare, perhaps even rarer. To date, Deep Impact 210mm and Mabs 210mm only have answered this call, the Mabs much more succulently.

 

[ModRQC]

Boring, cheap J-knife thin needle-like geometry. Masakane has pretty much a symmetrical one, and symmetrical edge, although as usual there’s some obvious righty inclination. It cuts well, in an easy and fun kind of way, but without much true spark like all knives with similar geometries. Pretty thin behind the edge OOTB.

Masakane

Hisamoto

I’m not too sure about what is the point of the Hisamoto grind, though. This was ground and sharpened pretty much as a single bevel, to the point that the left side here is almost ura-like – look at the tip.

I found the Hisamoto to indeed be quite mediocre in cutting: the edge is very decently sharp OOTB, but that odd choice of a grind for a thin overall geometry that doesn’t support or highlight it well, and that chunky shoulder over a ridiculously steep shift to an obtuse angle on the cutting side, feel like crap in exercise.

As with many Yo handles, there is some reverse spinal taper out of the handle with the Masakane – the spine gets thicker (over 2mm) after the heel, then tapers in the normal sense – with some gusto, and it’s sad in a way that it isn’t consistent from the heel, because something like 2.2 / 1.5 / 0.9 / 0.6 would have been mildly impressive for this kind of knife.

No thickening of any sort out of the bolster with the Hisamoto, typical uninteresting tapering of the spine for these kind of knives. You can see at the tip that the flat grind imparted on the left side makes it look like it’s bent.

Both knives are a bit too flexible for my liking, the Masakane somewhat more than the Hisamoto, although the latter is left worse off in cutting because its flexibility augments the steering effect of the not so fitting asymmetrical grind to geometry situation.

Still there isn’t much to fault about execution here for both cases, assuming the grind of the Hisamoto is intentional (of course it is, but I still don’t feel there’s much good achieved with it), and the Masakane particularly works pretty well OOTB. Both are nicely done enough at the price.

 

[ModRQC]

Sharpening second thoughts + some work done

In sharpening, the extra flexibility of the Masakane borders PITA whereas for the Hisamoto things are still quite fine. The Masakane experience resembles more sharpening an oversized semi-flexible boning knife than a Gyuto: nowhere near as fun nor satisfying. Although more abrasion resistant and probably softer, the Hisamoto still feels much readier on the stones.

I decided to treat the Masakane with a good thinning. It was already made quite thin, inciting me to finish that job and see. In fact, methought it could yield a quite excellent tomato and fine meat slicer. Practice knife here, so no biggie if the results don’t cohabitate well with extra flexibility: I’ll know never to reproduce the very thin/flexible combo, and it’ll get sharpened so much that it will soon be thicker enough anyhow.

The Masakane was a bit more responsive on stones now that it was thinner, although still way too flexible to be fun. I felt satisfied with this result in the end for now:

I made a bit of a bruschetta as a prep. It did very well with tomatoes indeed. Garlic and shallots went fine, even taking the root off and smashing the garlic clove despite the knife extra flexibility. Will need to test it some more. Pretty severe reactivity with the SK5 steel and all the acidity involved, I was pretty casual about cleaning as usual, finally wiping it down only five minutes after the whole prep was done. Here’s the result:

For the Hisamoto, my goal was to start working against the OOTB grind and sharpening, bringing the knife closer to symmetrical each step of the way. This first step was an interesting one in concept, reverse thinking how I’d usually keep with an asymmetrical grind, but a small one in actual change. I don’t like big changes all at once, I did that once with the Mabs, to great effect but leaving a lot of in between states that could have been interesting to experiment with before continuing down the road to ideal.

For the cutting side, a bit of thinning to remove most of the shoulder there, but keeping the original edge bevel mostly intact, just making less of a steep shift and starting to flatten the secondary bevel more in line with the flatness of the fake Ura side, incrementally lessening the overall asymmetry geometry-wise. Some extra work was done at the tip to even things out with the left side.

Then I worked on giving an edge bevel on the fake Ura left side, to a more acute angle than the cutting side. I made sure to get a burr there, since this was going to be the final edge bevel for that side. That did also just about blend the width of the edge bevel for the whole length with that at the Ura-like tip, while incrementally lessening the overall asymmetry edge-wise.

Some very easy sharpening later I felt satisfied with this result and first stage of transforming the grind:

Still have to try that one to see if I’m on the right track, and how much work exactly will be involved from there. I have a perfect prep coming for it with lots of very fine mincing and dicing of onions, celery and garlic, and lots of bacon and pancetta slicing. Might introduce the Masakane to the latter part of the prep, since I need to try it with some proteins too.

I might update this post with some more work done on the Hisamoto down the road.


Be well everyone!

 

[4wa1l]

Nice write up! Especially cool to read about the Masakane. I have a 120mm petty and I think it's a fun little knife. I'm still quite keen to try the gyuto : )

 

[ModRQC]

Thanks for having a look and replying.

The Masakane Gyuto is nice. Tonight however, I fell in love with my improved Hisamoto. A completely different experience than OOTB, now more fun and interesting to use than the Masakane. So much so it's going back on the stones tonight for the final phase of its transformation.

 

[ModRQC]

Follow-up with the Hisamoto: cutting test

Both knives are neat with proteins at hand here (pancetta and bacon) but the palm definitely goes to the improved Hisamoto.

The Hisamoto also made some more proofs with some veggies. It's such a different knife now. I thought my work would help it, but I didn't think I'd like it much still. Dead wrong.

A bit of fresh leaves went well enough. Quick dirty edges are nice for testing purpose, but here a little bit of refinement was lacking.

Largely "Americanized" Alla Matriciana.

 

[ModRQC]

Back to the stones with the Hisamoto tonight, too thrilled with results so far to wait.

Both thinning jobs on this knife were courtesy of "mystery stone" which I'm aiming to do a review about. My poor skills notwithstanding, it leaves a nice finish for how fast it works. Almost sandblasted looking, under some angles.

Here the final edge is a courtesy of Shapton 2000, which I've learned to work to a potential of refinement I would never have thought possible with it.

The progression, from mystery stone to SP2K, was NP400 to get the primary edge, and Shapton 1K. Mystery stone can also get a primary edge and deburr it correctly, it's a quite workable stone despite its coarseness, however in this case I wanted to see the becoming edge - needed to have a different scratch pattern.

This second thinning went to join the face bevel with the secondary and primary bevel on the cutting side. It would be bold to speak of convexing with this geometry, but it was pretty much the aim. I also expended the secondary bevel on the non-cutting side. We can see it wouldn't take much work from there to bring this to full symmetry, however the residual asymmetry wasn't displeasing after the first job, so still going step by step.

A bit of a spine shot shows that the original deflection at the tip, because of the Ura-like grind, is all gone. Also, that this tip was brought way thinner than the choil shot would seem to indicate.

A 15 minutes three stones progression finishing on 2K...

Can't wait to prep some more food with this one. If it proves to get even better, it may very well be that the practice knife will discreetly join the main lineup.

I was afraid it was gonna be like that when I went to purchase practice knives...

 

[4wa1l]

Bit of a gravedig but I meant to post this a while back. I actually picked up 195mm and 300mm Masakane SK gyutos. Interestingly my 195 is actually quite different to your 210 here. It is also 158g after some light thinning but for a shorter blade. Based on the choil shots it is a bit thicker too. Mine has the different logo so maybe they were made at different times? The 300 is a beast but I haven't used it as much as the 195.

The thinning really did increase the performance and I could probably take it a bit further. There's a noticeable convex on the right face with a much flatter left side. I find the steel really nice too. Seems to be at least as hard when compared to my white steel Ashi ginga, sharpens easily and holds the edge for a decent amount of time. Takes a nice patina too. Overall a great budget knife with a bit of work put in (also rounded the spine a bit). Not sure if there are so many left for sale unfortunately.

 

[ModRQC]

God man yours looks like a thinned Misono grind. I agree mine didn’t look one bit like that. It was pretty asymmetrical too but the right face didn’t look so sweet a convex.

Good work though you might have enhanced well a grind that wasn’t as sexy to begin with, too. D’you have an original choil shot?

 

[4wa1l]

Unfortunately I didn't take a pic before. It had a big 80/20 bevel and I tried my best to thin that hard edge down and blend it into the rest of the knife if that makes sense.

 

[ModRQC]

Unfortunately I didn't take a pic before. It had a big 80/20 bevel and I tried my best to thin that hard edge down and blend it into the rest of the knife if that makes sense.

It makes perfect sense to me. Bravo.

 

[4wa1l]

Here's the choil of the 300. It has a taller blade and smaller bevel but still noticeable in the pic. A bit of thinning is on the cards. This one has the kanji logo but still appears to have a similar grind.