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.