Thin this one?

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justaute

justaute

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Hello y'all....new member and a long-time reader. Just picked this one from JCK. It's one the Fu-Rin-Ka-Zan gyutos and is a "workhorse" build with ~4.8mm thickness at heel, ~3.2mm thickness at mid-blade, and weighs 230g. I'm thinking about thinning it. Although it is very sharp ottb, it had a hard time pushing through a cabbage and a few tall carrots likely because of the shoulders.

PXL_20210919_034608309~2.jpg


Thoughts? I'm a newbie with thinning and am an ok sharpener. Might take it to a local guy to do it. For the same cabbage and carrots, my Watanabe nakiri and Yoshikane made it look easy.

PXL_20210918_164805990~2.jpg
 
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Hz_zzzzzz said:
Since you already have the Yoshi and Wat, I think you probably don’t “need” to thin the FRKZ? You can just use the Wat and Yoshi for cabbage and carrots and use FRKZ when you need heft, stiffness, and food release. Once steel is removed it’s not coming back.
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Good thinking. I thought maybe just to thin or "round" the shoulders a bit. I do want to keep it as my workhorse and not thin it too much.
 
It looks about as thin bte as it’ll go following that grind. I think it’s just the nature of it, thick and heavy. Taking off the shoulders may help but if you’ve got other options I might leave this one, unless you’re truly dissatisfied with.
 
Rather pull cuts: initiation where it's thick and follow-up where it tapers. That and additional momentum will be needed.
 
ian said:
Pretty difficult to pull cut on dense veg imo, especially with a wedgy knife. Hard to have any leverage. I assume @zizirex's point was to add some horizontal push instead of trying to go straight down, which does make a difference.
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I guess it depends. Most 240mm I used were of the wide bevel kind. I'd use pull cutting with stuff that would otherwise wedge without a problem. Most were rather blade heavy with good weight so not so much momentum was needed neither. Otherwise, using front half of the blade in push cutting worked well too.
 
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You could thin it, but being 3.2mm thick midblade at the spine with a grind that looks to go up maybe only around 15mm, you're looking at a LOT of thinning to get to the point where you're getting through tall carrots without wedging.
 
You could always go get a 220ish stone (assuming you don’t already have one) and just raise/push up the shoulders until you’re happy with the grind. It’s pretty easy with a wide bevel knife that’s already thin behind the edge like this one and you don’t have to thin until it’s a completely different knife that falls through carrots/cabbage, just until you like how it cuts better.

One of the challenges of starting to thin a knife when you don’t have a lot of experience is people are afraid of messing up the aesthetics of the knife, but the bevels look like they have a typical sandblasted finish, so I wouldn’t feel bad if I didn’t refinish them perfectly after thinning, just blend out the scratch pattern on higher grit stones. If you apply pressure in the right places and take your time, the KU finish should be fine as well.

Anyways, it’s good practice for the future when you eventually have to thin a knife.
 
I agree more with @tostadas on the fact that it implies a lot of work. Don’t think the shoulders are the problem AS MUCH as how low the bevel seems set. Shinogi is nothing so harsh there. To significantly raise the shoulders, there’s a lot of work and skills involved. However it still looks like it would cut pretty well in its category. So at least work with it a few months.
 
Without powered grinding I’d just buy a knife with a different grind
 
TB_London said:
Without powered grinding I’d just buy a knife with a different grind
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That's certainly another option. As previously mentioned, I do want a workhorse 240mm. Was just thinking by smoothing out the shoulders, and perhaps raise them a bit, the knife would perform more smoothly. I don't need this one to perform as well as my Yoshikane and Watanabe.
 
justaute said:
Really good stuff here, all.

@ModRQC I'm still relative new at this, so please pardon my being obtuse. Are you saying that the shoulders themselves don't seem to be the issue? It's just that they (Shinogi line) are too low?

fwiw...it does cut well.
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"Too" low is pejorative you see. The knife is intended to what it is, and from a choil shot I don't see anything crying out loud "I'm bad". I do see a low shinogi. Wedging with such a knife in hard/dense, taller produces is a given. However it'll separate meat well, dice onions without having to wipe the blade much, etc.

So it's not "too" low. But it is on the lower side. We guesstimated 15mm. Could be 14, could be 18. In my experience, below 20mm wide bevels are wedgier than I like. That being - me.

Work with it for a coupla months. You'll see what it's good for. And if it fits you well in stance but you find yourself still wishing for less wedging overall, by then it will be due for a full sharpening, and with wide bevels that means thinning and raising the shinogi a bit too, but in your case you could decide to attack the shoulder more directly and raise it more than maintenance requires. Or may decide not to still in the end. There will be a next time, if it stays. If you're to just dislike and sell it in the end, better do as little as possible towards messing the aesthetics. By then, you'll know what it is - keeper or BST stuff.

Edit: BTW, I don't know the kind of edge you have. So in a first full sharpening, if you love the knife but have minor quibblings about wedging, I would advise for a regular maintenance thinning first and working more towards giving it the best edge you can. Good edges can't erase wedging, but it alleviates it as well as other undesirable symptoms knives can carry OOTB.

Double edit: let's suppose you measure apex to Shinogi at 18mm, and regarding my post, think "Hey it's only 2-3mm I need to raise it". Only 2-3 mm is a LOT of work to raise a shinogi AND preserve a wide bevel geometry. Maintenance thinning would require raising about 1mm thinning down the edge at most - so to give space for a typically 0.5-1mm new edge bevel. It's not just bevel height by then, but directly thickness you're eating into.
 
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ModRQC said:
"Too" low is pejorative you see. The knife is intended to what it is, and from a choil shot I don't see anything crying out loud "I'm bad". I do see a low shinogi. Wedging with such a knife in hard/dense, taller produces is a given. However it'll separate meat well, dice onions without having to wipe the blade much, etc.

So it's not "too" low. But it is on the lower side. We guesstimated 15mm. Could be 14, could be 18. In my experience, below 20mm wide bevels are wedgier than I like. That being - me.

Work with it for a coupla months. You'll see what it's good for. And if it fits you well in stance but you find yourself still wishing for less wedging overall, by then it will be due for a full sharpening, and with wide bevels that means thinning and raising the shinogi a bit too, but in your case you could decide to attack the shoulder more directly and raise it more than maintenance requires. Or may decide not to still in the end. There will be a next time, if it stays. If you're to just dislike and sell it in the end, better do as little as possible towards messing the aesthetics. By then, you'll know what it is - keeper or BST stuff.

Edit: BTW, I don't know the kind of edge you have. So in a first full sharpening, if you love the knife but have minor quibblings about wedging, I would advise for a regular maintenance thinning first and working more towards giving it the best edge you can. Good edges can't erase wedging, but it alleviates it as well as other undesirable symptoms knives can carry OOTB.

Double edit: let's suppose you measure apex to Shinogi at 18mm, and regarding my post, think "Hey it's only 2-3mm I need to raise it". Only 2-3 mm is a LOT of work to raise a shinogi AND preserve a wide bevel geometry. Maintenance thinning would require raising about 1mm thinning down the edge at most - so to give space for a typically 0.5-1mm new edge bevel. It's not just bevel height by then, but directly thickness you're eating into.
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Fantastic. Much appreciate the context.
 
@justaute,

At the end of the day, it is your knife... the only correct answer is what you choose to do with it (assuming you don't regret the decision 😉). The most useful advice given so far is that thinning the knife without powered tools will take a lot of effort. It is doable if you are willing to dedicate several hours of repetitive labour to the task. Whether or not that is worthwhile depends on what you value.

As a general note... what you are seeking is not really thinning - or at least, not 'maintenance' thinning. You are really talking about regrinding the bevel. As a middle ground, you could change the way you sharpen the knife. Rather than using your usual angle, place the bevel flat against the stone and aim for a zero grind. If you apply most of your pressure to the shinogi while you do this the shinogi line will creep upwards slowly during the lifetime of the knife. After each session you can apply a small secondary bevel to make the edge more durable.

But I say; if you have the stones, if the price of the knife didn't hurt, if you are generally curious... have a go 😉. Honestly, it is pretty hard to stuff up. If you are worried about the kuro, just tape it up. If you get bored you can stop at anytime... even five minutes in. Thinning the knife isn't going to instantly render it unusable. The most likely 'worst' case scenario is a scratched bevel and some wasted time. Whilst you wont get that time back, you can repolish the bevel. If you give it a go for half an hour, you'll see what a big job it is!
 
Yeah I agree with others; if you already have other knives with different performance parameters I don't see a strong reason to try and make this perform exactly the same as the ones you already have. Just play around with it, use it on every different thing you normally eat, and see where it shines. You might find out that in it's current form there's some things it does better than your other knives.

As mentioned above, you'd have to do some drastic work to really make this perform different since it's not the thickness right behind the edge that's the problem.
 
Luftmensch said:
@justaute,

At the end of the day, it is your knife... the only correct answer is what you choose to do with it (assuming you don't regret the decision 😉). The most useful advice given so far is that thinning the knife without powered tools will take a lot of effort. It is doable if you are willing to dedicate several hours of repetitive labour to the task. Whether or not that is worthwhile depends on what you value.

As a general note... what you are seeking is not really thinning - or at least, not 'maintenance' thinning. You are really talking about regrinding the bevel. As a middle ground, you could change the way you sharpen the knife. Rather than using your usual angle, place the bevel flat against the stone and aim for a zero grind. If you apply most of your pressure to the shinogi while you do this the shinogi line will creep upwards slowly during the lifetime of the knife. After each session you can apply a small secondary bevel to make the edge more durable.

But I say; if you have the stones, if the price of the knife didn't hurt, if you are generally curious... have a go 😉. Honestly, it is pretty hard to stuff up. If you are worried about the kuro, just tape it up. If you get bored you can stop at anytime... even five minutes in. Thinning the knife isn't going to instantly render it unusable. The most likely 'worst' case scenario is a scratched bevel and some wasted time. Whilst you wont get that time back, you can repolish the bevel. If you give it a go for half an hour, you'll see what a big job it is!
Click to expand...

Appreciate the adventurous spirit, Luftmensch. It's just a knife...right? :)
 
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