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Forgecraft boning knife with curly Maple
 

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This is an unknown brand 225 mm stainless yanagiba. eBay purchase from a Japanese dealer. I replaced the handle with stabilized spalted maple burl and Buffalo horn with Black and White micarta spacers.
 

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I finally got around to putting an edge on the giant cleaver. At 2.5 pounds, (more than a kilo) it was rather uncomfortable to sharpen. I wanted to get down to new steel. I didn't get all of the chips out, but it push cuts paper and can dice an onion. It's a gift and will be a wall
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hanger for a friend who collects weapons.


Test Chop
 

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Shame that's going to end up on a wall having an edge like that.
 
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I put this together today. Olde Forge 10" Chef. Similar to Forgecraft. I think it was made by the same company after the Forgecraft line had been discontinued. The profile is the same as my NOS specimen but the grind was way chunkier. I thinned it on the belt grinder. Sharpened it on stones. Sanded it to a rough kasumi finish. New handle, not sure what kind of wood. eBay bookmatched variety pack.
Peened brass pins. I'll try for a better pic when I have real light.
 
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Here are some specs for the Sabatier.

Length of blade 250mm
Height at heel 56.5mm
Original weight before grinding/sharpening/handle 404 gram
Weight (No Handle) 334 gram
Weight (With Handle) 360 gram
Width of spine at heel 6mm
At midpoint 3.4mm
At 10mm from tip 1mm
Width of edge at 2mm behind edge <.1mm
At 5mm behind edge .6mm
At 10mm behind edge 1.1mm
At 15mm behind edge 1.9mm
At 20mm behind edge 2.5mm
Tang tapers from 4mm at bolster to 1mm at butt
 
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That is some serious weight you took off! Impressive cutting and foodrelease to show for it too. Should try holding the knife at more of an angle when moving stuff around on the board though you can hear the edge scrape the wood.
 
Plywood? Nooooooo... :(

If you want to remove those scales and replace with something nicer, I'll send you kiln dried walnut or bocote scales for free!
 
The plywood is left over from other projects. It's the nice Baltic Birch stuff. Waterproof glue. Strong and durable but very light. Heavy color contrast between the plies. I got the idea from some of the budget Japanese brands. I sanded it up to 1500 grit. Oiled it with a mixture of citrus, mineral, and Tung oils. Then sealed it with several layers of CA glue and lots more sanding. Then more oil. I was envisioning a western deba style beast for splitting lobsters and chicken sternums. This fits the bill.


 
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I'm posting this one to illustrate some mistakes I have made. Maybe help someone else. This is one of the first rehandles I did when I got a belt sander. It's an old Wusthof paring knife in stainless. It had really bad recurve from someone abusing it with a steel leading to a severely hanging bolster. While I was fixing this I managed to cut a 4mm gouge in the edge about 2 cm above the bolster. I fixed it the best I could, but it was too deep to remove completely and have any knife left.

When I first rehandled it I just epoxied it, no brass pins. This worked fine for a few months, but my wife really liked the knife. So it got soaked frequently. Eventually the handle started popping off on one side, and the wood shrunk.
So I put a brass pin in near the bolster. Filled in the gaps with epoxy.

A few months later it started buckling more. So I put more brass pins in. While I was peening the bottom pin I hit a little too hard and the wood split. You can see the crack in the photo. I filed the pieces until they fit real snug and then epoxied it back together. So far so good. It's ugly but she's grown quite attached to it which I guess means I'm committed to fixing it for the long haul, even if it makes me cringe every time I see it.
 
I bought one of Dave Martell's o1 tool steel petty blanks. It's coming along nicely. I wanted to put brass bolsters on it. But it's already hardened and I can't drill it with the tools I have available. I have some spalted maple for the handle. Here's the first test chop after hitting apex.

 
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I'm posting this one to illustrate some mistakes I have made. Maybe help someone else. This is one of the first rehandles I did when I got a belt sander. It's an old Wusthof paring knife in stainless. It had really bad recurve from someone abusing it with a steel leading to a severely hanging bolster. While I was fixing this I managed to cut a 4mm gouge in the edge about 2 cm above the bolster. I fixed it the best I could, but it was too deep to remove completely and have any knife left.

When I first rehandled it I just epoxied it, no brass pins. This worked fine for a few months, but my wife really liked the knife. So it got soaked frequently. Eventually the handle started popping off on one side, and the wood shrunk.
So I put a brass pin in near the bolster. Filled in the gaps with epoxy.

A few months later it started buckling more. So I put more brass pins in. While I was peening the bottom pin I hit a little too hard and the wood split. You can see the crack in the photo. I filed the pieces until they fit real snug and then epoxied it back together. So far so good. It's ugly but she's grown quite attached to it which I guess means I'm committed to fixing it for the long haul, even if it makes me cringe every time I see it.

Natural woods and the sink are not the best of friends in the long run. Some of the things I have done to ameliorate:

Soak (submerge) the handle in a hardening oil for several days then dry for several more. Raw linseed is cheap, easily available and works well. Comes out much, much more durable than just coated.

Teach your wife not to let them soak. I succeeded with my wife but failed with the rest of the family using knives of mine.

Rehandle with linnen and polyester micarta. Had to resort to this measure twice already.

Good luck!
 
New video. I thinned the Martell Petty blank out some more. In the first video above I was at 1.6 mm thickness 1 cm behind the edge. In this video it's at 1.2. Still too thick. My goal is .8 or so. I tried some carrots. It's still a wedge monster. Pretty decent edge considering I haven't really sharpened it yet. It's mostly only seen a crystolon coarse and king deluxe 300 so far.

 
Decent middleweight. Looks good. You cut the onion sidewayswith a slice. Have you tried swiping the tip through? That cutting style requires more of the geometry than the slice. Most of my western knives can cut a decent onion with a slice but only my J-knife and heavily modified ones can do a tip swipe.
 
How I cut the onion depends primarily on the size of the onion. I can cut any
onion with just the tip of any knife, even cheap stainless house knives, because this is what I used exclusively for the first several years in professional kitchens. But in general, smaller get the tip.
Shallots, garlic, cippolini, I'll use just the tip. Medium onions I do like in the video, use the front half to slice. Larger onions I don't do a horizontal cut at all, but instead leave the onion vertical. This is way harder for me to type than show. I'll let make a video.
 
This is the thickest tip knife I own. The first and last ones I did with the tip. The second one the slice method and the third one the vertical method. To be honest, I actually use the vertical method the most. This is because I'm doing huge volume banquets and we are usually working with extra large produce. Jumbo everything. The vertical method provides you with the greatest amount of control. It lets you have more cuts than trying to the same thing horizontal. They are more precise in how deep they go.
 
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