I’m a bit of a Shi.han fanboy, so take my words with a grain of salt. I’ve had my Shi.han in A2 for a while and have used it a lot. I’m not one of those people who can really distinguish how a steel “feels on stones”, but I’ve used enough knives to get a feel for my preferences when it comes to steel and sharpening/edge taking and Shi.han’s A2 is one of my favorites; deburrs super cleanly, holds its initial edge very well and stays extra toothy after extended use while not being too hard/brittle. I haven’t tried his 52100, but I did a lot of research on the forum before I bought my Shi.han and saw many posts from people who’ve been members a long time and have used a lot of knives in a pro environment and they all love it.
I think the durability aspect of his knives is kind of underrated even though everyone mentions it because most people here don’t need a knife this tough. I wouldn’t hand one to someone with no experience with nice knives and let them hack away at a chicken or something, but in a pro environment where it will see some abuse or you might leave it on your cutting board and someone else can pick it up to cut something real quick, I think a Shi.han would be my first choice besides a true “beater” knife like my Dexter-Russell Chinese cleaver. I once used my Shi.han to chop up a big slab of crispy roast pork belly that still had some small rib bones embedded in it that I didn’t see. The bones been softened a little from roasting for a couple hours, but any other nice knife I owned would’ve chipped pretty badly on contact. The Shi.han went right through them and ended up with three small deflections in the edge near the heel that came out after maybe two sharpenings.
I haven’t tried a Spare, but I follow him on IG and his knives look great, I really want to pick up a cleaver from him some day. His knives definitely look thinner overall so you’re likely trading some food release for a bit of ease of cutting, although in my experience, the Shi.han cuts better than some of the choil shots suggest.
I don’t know if Spare is taking orders currently, but he seems to have a pretty high output of knives to choose from. If you don’t want to pick up a stock Shi.han, you can ask about custom specs and profile and it’s usually only a couple months wait at no additional cost.
Here’s a cutting video I took if you want to get an idea of performance. Like
@stringer and
@SilverSwarfer, my Shi.han has been sharpened and thinned some to maintain the geometry. The original grind, a slightly asymmetric convex, is slightly altered, but still mostly intact.