Usuba

[JBroida]

You know Dave, I hate to argue because you have a heck of a lot more experience than me, but I suggest going cheaper ($80-150). This is because it is such a hard knife to learn, and many people get frustrated and sell theirs. Imagine dropping $300-400 on a nice one and having to sell it. They aren't popular, so not many are going to jump at it. But what do I know.

jason, i really see where you are coming from here, but i have to disagree. More often than not, i dissuade people from buying usuba for similar reasons to what you stated. But if you do buy one, and you go with a cheap/bad one, the problems you often find make the blade much more difficult to use, sharpen, care for, and learn on. That alone can make people give up on learning the knife. You dont have to spend $400-500 on one, but i would say somewhere around $150-200 is the least i would ever spend on one. Twisting, bending, bad grinds, etc. show up big time in these knives due to their relatively thin nature.

 

[AFKitchenknivesguy]

jason, i really see where you are coming from here, but i have to disagree. More often than not, i dissuade people from buying usuba for similar reasons to what you stated. But if you do buy one, and you go with a cheap/bad one, the problems you often find make the blade much more difficult to use, sharpen, care for, and learn on. That alone can make people give up on learning the knife. You dont have to spend $400-500 on one, but i would say somewhere around $150-200 is the least i would ever spend on one. Twisting, bending, bad grinds, etc. show up big time in these knives due to their relatively thin nature.

Hey, we didn't disagree, we both said $150!

 

[Ontravelling]

I've been curious about this for a while now as I've often heard that these knives are a little difficult to learn. Why is that? I can see where the learning to sharpen it may be challenging, I'm just unclear on how using it would be. Can anyone help me out here?

 

[JKerr]

I've been curious about this for a while now as I've often heard that these knives are a little difficult to learn. Why is that? I can see where the learning to sharpen it may be challenging, I'm just unclear on how using it would be. Can anyone help me out here?

I picked up my first usuba a few years ago after curiosity got the better of me reading threads on FF. At the time I thought "Pfft, how hard could it be. A knife's a knife. Right?" God, was I wrong. I pretty much destroyed any vege I tried to cut with it and caused an equal amount of damage to the blade. It just wedged in a lot of food and wanted to steer badly so to "counter" this I'd be applying excessive force when cutting and holding it pretty darn tight to try and prevent it steering; this only seemed to make things a lot worse. I then continued to make things worse when I'd try and sharpen it, cause back then I didn't really know the proper technique for sharpening single bevel knives so I really messed it up badly.

So the poor thing sat in the drawer for a good few months until I decided to fix it up (thankfully I was slightly better versed in single bevel knives by then), needs a bit more love, but it's good shape and gets the odd session at work. While I feel a bit remorseful for what I did to the poor thing, it was a good exercise in learning the limitations and strengths of such a knife. It'll probably never be the first knife I reach for if I need to dice a sh*t load of brown/red onions but for smaller/soft items like garlic, ginger, chillies, tomatoes, cucumber etc...I love using it.

Curiously, I've since added a Tadatsuna usuba to my collection which feels completely different. Taller blade, MUCH thinner behind the edge and the steering isn't particularly notable as with on the Mizuno.

Frankly, I reckon most people while have a trial and error period with their first usuba (hopefully not as catastrophic as mine), but they are fun when you get use to them. I'm still picking it up bit by bit. I think KC said something about not forcing the usuba and keeping a relaxed grip is essential and it certainly makes a difference to the steering. The vids from Japanese knife society and also great learning tools on this subject.

Hope you can make sense of my ramblin' :yammer:

Cheers, Josh

 

[Gator]

Funny, I had pretty bad experience with Tadatsuna kamagata usuba, gave it away. Aritsugu, the same style, works for me just fine. Can't claim to be anywhere near required levels of usuba cutsmanship, but no destroyed edges or veggies. Learned couple relatively fancy things from Nozaki's book, whenever I am in the mood for that or training, it's fun. And for ultra thin slices it works very well. OTOH, katsuramuki remains a challenge. One day it works ok, another day I have troublez... Still no use for all the daikon mangled in the process. Trying to make more use of another, azumagata usuba, kitaeji from Shigefusa. That thing is a beauty though...

 

[JKerr]

Out of the box, my Tadatsuna was very fragile, pretty much unusable in terms of the edge looking like a saw after a few veges. I tinkered about with it and ended up sticking a tiny micro bevel on it which seems to have done the trick. Can happily get through a couples days worth of prep before having to hit the stones (and that's to sharpen, not repair).

Speaking of Shigefusa though, Aframes has a 21cm kasumi azumagata available at the moment.....

Josh