Toyama 240mm gyuto bought from JNS is not straight

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doudou

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I write this thread on behalf of my friend who purchased a toyama stainless calding Blue2 240mm gyuto from the JNS in the end fo the January.

The knife arrive at his hand in the middle of Febuary and the body of the knife came in curved condition. also the core steel is biased near the heel of the knife.

My friend tried to write email to JNS to report the situation, unfortunatly there's no reply at all. Now he is very upset and regret that he paid 100% of the value but got a substandard knife from JNS.

Is there any one met such kind of situation before?
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here's the new update.

My friend said thought it's hard to tell the spin of knife is not staight, but he is trying his best to prove it.

so he put the knife onto the cut board for both side. and you can see the situation.

acutally Toyama is not the only san mai knife in his collection, but also Mazaki, Teruyasu, Kato. he compared those knife and make such a conclusion. for compasion, you can check the performace of TF and Mazaki, especially the Mazaki which is also a thick choil knife.

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I got some more information about the story of this curve knife.

today I contact one of my another friend who met the same situation about his Toyama knife purchased from JNS. This friend is located in Canada and he purchase the Toyama on black friday, after he received the knife he found the knife was bent at the tip side . so he took picture of toyama 7, 8,9, listed below and talked with maxim for months, and then return it back on January 2020.

Then, the holder of this knife in China placed the order to JNS and got the same one in Feb.

I think is very easy to tell the tip side is bent if you look picure toyama 7 and 8.

the evidence that they purchased the same knife is picture Toyama9 and 4, you can find out that the pattern of the cladding is exactly the same.

I think Maxim did some fix job on this knife, but the job was not perfectly done.
 

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I'm no expert, but is the one side of the blade flat and the other side curved? From what I seen, that is common in the way they hand-forge out the knife.
No, the spine is curved here
 
Tell you friend that he should write to Maksim again - Maksim said it repeatedly that he at times has hard times to go through all emails. I am 100% sure he will get the situation resolved. By now that emails is way too back to be found. He can also try Messenger or IG.
 
I'd try contact Maksim via IG DM, through his website and KKF. Eventually he will respond
 
I'm no expert, but is the one side of the blade flat and the other side curved? From what I seen, that is common in the way they hand-forge out the knife.
It is indeed forged that way because of the thicker steel at the handle and tappers very quick at the choil it will look that way with straight line, then all Shigefusa is bend as well :D if you lay ruler after the forged spine you will see that it is straight :D i attached same picture Just with a blue line


Second of all i did not get any email about it just double checked my email and spam.
 

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Tell you friend that he should write to Maksim again - Maksim said it repeatedly that he at times has hard times to go through all emails. I am 100% sure he will get the situation resolved. By now that emails is way too back to be found. He can also try Messenger or IG.

thanks for your advise. the reason why I wrote here is because he sent both email as well as InstaGram message with no reply.
 
OP have your friend check the straightness of the edge against a flat surface (both sides). There should be no deviation, even if the spine shows a bit.
 
Knife also looks fine to me. I would recommend that your friend not buy sanmai knives with forged distal taper if something like that bothers him. Even if the spine is bent (really, pretty hard to tell from the photos) the degree to which it's bent looks easily fixable. I would be much more concerned about the straightness of the edge and whether there is recurve in the profile of the knife as a result of grinding the knife while warped.
 
The handle looks like its installed a little crooked but the blade looks fine. Hard to really tell with the pictures though.
 
I thought the same when mine arrived. Maksim was kind of enough to pick me the tallest one he had but if you look at it closely you see it just looks that way because of the steel around the spine by the choil and handle. Also maksim answered my emails pretty quickly. Check the edge and make sure it is straight
 
That looks pretty damn straight to me, but I can't say for 100% certainty though. This is a feature of Sanjo knives called a distal taper. Also for Toyama, both faces of the knife will also be asymmetrical. Please don't declare a product "substandard" if you aren't absolutely sure it is. It is very misleading to other people who read this.
 
That looks pretty damn straight to me, but I can't say for 100% certainty though. This is a feature of Sanjo knives called a distal taper. Also for Toyama, both faces of the knife will also be asymmetrical. Please don't declare a product "substandard" if you aren't absolutely sure it is. It is very misleading to other people who read this.


thanks for your reply and appreciate tht you share your opinion.

If the knife is danm straight , then there will not be this thread.

as for my friend, he also purchase Masaki from JNS, ans also he have Kato 240mm which are both thick machi knife. the Mazaki do not have the problem as well as the Kato.

because thre's true problem exsit, he let me help him to send this post for help. i already post the new picture for the mazaki , later on he will send the picture of Kato.
 
thanks for your reply and appreciate tht you share your opinion.

If the knife is danm straight , then there will not be this thread.

as for my friend, he also purchase Masaki from JNS, ans also he have Kato 240mm which are both thick machi knife. the Mazaki do not have the problem as well as the Kato.

because thre's true problem exsit, he let me help him to send this post for help. i already post the new picture for the mazaki , later on he will send the picture of Kato.

That just looks like a slightly curved spine which could be bent back into place. More important, as I mentioned before, is if the edge itself is straight (not against a straight edge, you need to make sure there are no acute curves or warps in the edge) and whether the profile of the knife has recurve/over-ground spots in it. By profile, I mean checking the knife along the edge. Hold in your dominant hand and turn it back so that the tip faces your eye, then turn the knife so that the blade is parallel to the floor, then look down the edge and look for an over-ground spot. The profile of the knife should flow in a continuous arc. If the edge itself is straight and the profile is good, then the spine is a total non-issue, as that's easily fixable.
 
That just looks like a slightly curved spine which could be bent back into place. More important, as I mentioned before, is if the edge itself is straight (not against a straight edge, you need to make sure there are no acute curves or warps in the edge) and whether the profile of the knife has recurve/over-ground spots in it. By profile, I mean checking the knife along the edge. Hold in your dominant hand and turn it back so that the tip faces your eye, then turn the knife so that the blade is parallel to the floor, then look down the edge and look for an over-ground spot. The profile of the knife should flow in a continuous arc. If the edge itself is straight and the profile is good, then the spine is a total non-issue, as that's easily fixable.


From my newest information, JNS received the returned knife which has bent tips and then he fixed the knife by himself and then sell it to my another friend. so the resason of the curve is that maxim did not fix the knife perfectly.

Originaly, th knife has bent at the tip and he tried to make it straight, but make the knife bent at another siede.

you can see my udpated pictures, that will tell the whole story.
 
I understand from the pictures that your friend have a San-mai that is slightly bent, which to my understanding is normal and very easy to fix just bending it with your hands?

I find it not to my taste to not communicate directly with Maxim. Your friends could well themselves reach out through the forum if they cannot contact him through IG and email or even phone. This thread seems a bit much like trying to paint a bad picture instead of trying to solve a problem.
 
From the photos where the knife lies flat on a table my personal impression is, that the knife is not bend, but rather there is some asymmetry in the distal taper towards the handle. Is the cutting edge straight? It is usually hard to bend the spine but keep the cutting edge straight.
 
In the first batch of photos you upload the D handle was mounted 180 degrees rotated as your friend is left handed and he requested that when ordering the knife. Your new photos show that the handle has been re-mounted. Just something that caught my attention.
 
I get that you've now transitioned to "bad vendor trying to sell the same knife again" but really, you haven't answered the real question we have which is if there's anything wrong with the edge itself. Regardless of whether we agree with Maxim or not, that's a more important consideration. If your friend never plans to use the knife and just wants to hold onto it for collecting or to sell BNIB later, then of course this is a huge deal [emoji849]. But if he plans to use it, the edge itself is going to be much more important. Are you more concerned with just bitching about a slightly bent spine and helping your friend **** on Maxim in public or are you more concerned with actually fixing the issue?
 
This thread can actually be informative for other what is straight really i mean surly no knives can be 100 % straight and defiantly not a spine, plus there is many factors to consider that can be misleading specially curves tappers and grinds as it vary trough out the knife, how do you in the end check for straightens ?
Most important as @Barclid said is straightness of the edge ! In this particular knife was asked to re-handle it for left hand user, when i do that i always check for straightens and sharpen the knife before shipping, on slightly bend knife you will see on the edge if its bend, if edge have a problem it will show uneven sharpening points and will never be shipped.
Some also send me video on when knife is flat on the table it wobble when it pressed on the tip thinking that knife is bend, also they do not take in consideration that tip part is much thiner then the base or tip part was tapered more extreme then the base of the knife.
So again you can not just take and compeer it to other knives as all knives forged ground different, so if your other knives is not like that dont mean that this one is bend it just have different geometry
 
I get that you've now transitioned to "bad vendor trying to sell the same knife again" but really, you haven't answered the real question we have which is if there's anything wrong with the edge itself. Regardless of whether we agree with Maxim or not, that's a more important consideration. If your friend never plans to use the knife and just wants to hold onto it for collecting or to sell BNIB later, then of course this is a huge deal [emoji849]. But if he plans to use it, the edge itself is going to be much more important. Are you more concerned with just bitching about a slightly bent spine and helping your friend **** on Maxim in public or are you more concerned with actually fixing the issue?
I can only tell you he is not concerned with looking like a total plonker
 
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