Review: Sukenari AS 225mm Gyuto

[ModRQC]

This was an interesting review. Thanks.

I've had my Sukenari AS 240mm (not a K-tip) for a year and a bit.

I bought it with a handle upgrade- a heart shaped ringed gidgee handle with KnS's new tapered ferrule. I immediately fell for the knife because of the handle . The handle is very nice to hold, kinda just "fitting" perfectly in the hand. It's also absolutely stunning. One of my nicest handles (and I have some pretty good ones). A lot of handle for (IIRC) 200 odd bucks (over the basic KnS ebony).

As @ModRQC mentioned, the blade is not so nice to hold. If there was chamfering on the spine, it was pretty minor. The profile is reasonably flat but not Yoshikane flat. It's neither a super tall nor super short blade. The blade face was finished uniformly but fairly coarsely (maybe 4-600 grit?) And the coarse grind marks were very very prominent (but uniform) underneath. There is little taper to the spine.

I found the initial performance a little underwhelming. It struggled a bit in hard veg. Sharpening at circa 10 dps on Chosera 3k helped maybe a little but it still struggled a little in hard veg. Sharpening was very straight forward, although the steel felt harder on the stones than the Echizen AS I have used. A bit like the difference between a Wat and a Tanaka blue2. The edge was keen and retention was very good.

I decided to see how the Sukenari AS responded to thinning. I thinned on a Choserra 400, not a particularly coarse stone. I was surprised to raise a burr at my (blade flat to the stone) thinning angle fairly quickly. I can't recall exactly how many strokes but if it was more than 30, it wasn't many more. The thinning bevel was refined on Chosera 1k and 3k (I have had good experience with food release at Cho 3k on other knives) and sharpened at probably under 10dps on Chosera 3k.

The difference in performance was immediately apparent, with excellent performance in hard veg. The blade looked quite unevenly finished and I decided that I would fix that at the next Sharpening. I have used the knife as a daily driver for months, waiting for it to need sharpening. Unfortunately, every time it lost a tiny bit of keeness, this was immediately restored with a swipe or two over diamond loaded felt and this refreshed edge would last a week or so. This went on for a few months. Doubtless the best edge retention I have experienced in a carbon steel.

Last weekend, I finally decided that the stropping wasn't doing quite as good a job, so I decided to refinish and resharpen. I also took the opportunity to chamfer the spine and choil, which are now much more comfortable. The finish is a semi-mirror (p3000) which took about 90 minutes, including resharpening and chamfering. A full mirror would doubtless take several times as long and would probably result in worse food release.

My knife was quite usable out of the box but perhaps a bit under-thinned. I might have gotten a particularly thick version, perhaps? It was certainly thicker BTE than my Sukenari YXR7. It had a lot of untapped potential which was fortunately not that difficult to tap into. It was a smallish, but fun and very rewarding project.

The steel is great. I don't mind the Echizen AS but this at another level. A PM steel will stay sharp a bit longer but not THIS sharp. I've had no issues with chipping, even when thinned and sharpened at under 10 dps. Even skinning pumpkin.

Thanks @Nemo

Mine was the thinnest by far of three Sukenaris tried as said in the review I believe. And also a bit more fairly symmetrical in grind that others came to me. But as was also pointed out in my review, lenght is not run of the mill Sukenari offering and I always suspected it was a custom lenght demand where the buyer bailed out - or a KNS demand that they didn't seek to get regular might be more plausible? And I'm now suspecting Sukenari might grind their K-tips a bit more ostentiously asymmetrical than their gyutos - which would explain what I experienced for grind with 240mm SG2 and 210mm HAP, both K-tips.

The mirror core project I did since was not so much for performance than food release. Took heed of the chance and imparted somewhat of a more convex BTE while also removing the original finish marks out of that core. Compared to my HAP-40, not only this one was much thinner, but also I could basically follow the core pretty closely, and it was mostly the much more ready mud of SP2K throwing off a progression of hard Ceramics (except final core polish on a Kitayama 8K but that stone is hard enough to not stand too much at odds with the lower grits ceramics before it) to some extent. Left side sure flatter than the right side as I suspected, yet not all so flat nor so different an angle on stones neither to the right side - which I was wary it would be and would entirely throw off my trying to carry as precise and less involving work as I could. But it didn't much.

Compared to doing that one, trying the same on the HAP-40 unit was a fiasco. Even using less pressure and keeping the angle more obtuse, left side entirely took a full 20-25mm area of scratches from a few shy test strokes high to lower angle and then using the angle that seemed to work on the core well while keeping cladding scratching limited. On the contrary, right side needed a few slighly different angles to just touch the full width of the core, but then touching the upper core area/clad line was touching a fair 10mm upwards of it. Yielding fairly symmetrical scratch pattern width in the end, but the work wasn't at all. Right side took thrice as long as the left side at each step of the progression.

Not saying this is science. Just my experience and thinking about these. Right now the AS is for sale on BST, but not because I don't like it, just because I need to get back some money and made a fair split with 210mm I don't use nearly as often as I do others. I still use all fairly regularly. Also because I finally found the length and shape of Sukenaris (loved all of them) that really suits me best with their type of grind, and that is the 210mm K-tip profile. Don't be surprised when you'll see me sell said HAP 210mm K-tip. It will probably be because KnS will have made YXR7 210mm K-tips available again and I'll get a kick trying another steel from them yet. Which I think is their strongest point.

Preferences are a *****. I'd readily replace some of my favorite gyuto's steel with Sukenari AS. But where steel might very well have me BUY a knife, it rarely is the reason why I'll KEEP it - until it blends into my preferences with other things as well. Say Shi.Han 52100. That's a rare place where I could finally lock onto a maker/steel I'd readily buy again and again for their own sake just as much as all the other things that will have me KEEP it forever.