What knife purchase do you regret?

Find deals on amazon
Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
deardorff8x10 said:
Yes, I bought it due to beauty, but don't often use it -- it sits in a drawer, sadly :confused:
Click to expand...
I feel you. What steel is it? I assume white 1 or 2? Do you know the sharpener?

I haven't had the heart yet to use my ikeda ironwood honyaki, but I really should. Have it listed for sale, but I really don't want to let it go, very conflicted
 
jedy617 said:
I feel you. What steel is it? I assume white 1 or 2? Do you know the sharpener?

I haven't had the heart yet to use my ikeda ironwood honyaki, but I really should. Have it listed for sale, but I really don't want to let it go, very conflicted
Click to expand...
It is white, but not sure if 1 or 2. I got it from Korin at their Suisin event, so maybe they had something to do with it.
 
enrico l said:
I always get a little disappointed when I see all these Honyaki’s brand new with their mirror polish still fresh.

Use those bad boys and lets see some patina 🙂
Click to expand...
I got you, definitely get use out of my blue 1 togashi x tosa...need to use it more though.

blue1.jpg
 
I was bummed by a Y. Kato 210 AS gyuto. I have his ginsan santoku and I thoroughly enjoy it so I wanted to try a gyuto of his and ended up with a SS clad kurouchi model.

It looked lovely and the f&f was excellent but I just didn't like the profile one bit. The rear end had an abrupt stop but there wasn't enough of a flat spot to use like my other flat profile knives. The belly was odd too, not enough of it to be flowy and fun but enough to make me lift the back end fairly high to begin the cut then drop in to that abrupt stop. The knife felt like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be so did neither well. I had some fatigue after a big batch of etouffee which was a first. Then the steel itself was a little chippy which surprised the hell out of me.

I kept coming back and wanting to like it but just never jived with the profile and all my other gyutos outcut it so I sold it. Just a bummer for a ~$250 knife and I had high hopes since his ginsan santoku is perfectly balanced, beautiful to look at, fun with multiple cutting styles, and I like the steel.
 
Yoshida Hamono "Wide" HAP-40 240mm Gyuto.

I was head over heels with this knife because the vendor (somewhere in Europe I believe) put on this gorgeous handle and I wanted something that could provide some more spice. (I use a Wusthof when things are hectic so I don't have to spend the extra time drying down my other knives.) This was the knife on paper since HAP40 apparently has god-like tier edge retention but it soured on me fairly quickly. Namely, there was way too much curve to the profile for me (zero clue as to what I wanted at first) and the feedback was abysmal. By abysmal, I mean that I could not feel much of a thing (compared to the Wusthof or my carbon knives in general) when doing any kind of cut (barring a rock chop I guess). There isn't really any other way I can describe it besides feeling as if the knife died inside and gave up.

I have long since sent it to a new home... never again.
 
Hinoura Ajikataya, my first 'real' knife, and my only ku knife.
The knife is great, zero complaints at all, but it's super impractical to maintain the finish.

Nowadays I use 'hairline' finished knives on a daily basis, no worries anymore. A spot of rust? Just polish the entire thing with some flitz or similar and be done with it :cool:
 
miggus said:
Interesting. I always considered KU finishes amongst the most easy ones, even eith iron cladding. What do you find so impractical about it @Chopper88 ?
Click to expand...
I find that most cleaners used to clear rust like BKF will degrade the KU finish, so it can be a bit annoying to have to carefully avoid that part of the knife if you're trying to clear rust. It's even worse if there's rust on the KU (which has happened to me before) because it means you're probably gonna lose some of it, and there's not really any way to bring it back (short of gun bluing the knife).
 
Ah, yeah that's true of course. This is not how I thought about KU finishes, hehe. That is indeed something one should factor in - they won't last if the knife gets significant use. I found that my Moritaka Nakiri just has gotten prettier with every year!

Moritaka.jpg



And in order to write something on topic too: One knife I wasn't so keen on was the Moritaka AS 240 Kiritsuke. The profile was dead straight, and I really had no idea on how to use it. If I can lift the handle up 1-2 cm, I'm happy already. This knife didn't do that.

But frankly, I sold it quickly for what I had paid for it, so there were not many genuine regrets :D
 
miggus said:
Interesting. I always considered KU finishes amongst the most easy ones, even eith iron cladding. What do you find so impractical about it @Chopper88 ?
Click to expand...

What Ocanada said, but also the fact that it's ku with a kasumi polish that will be destroyed once it's sharpened a bit more often, and especially once it needs thinning.

I know they're just tools, and this is bound to happen at some point, but I just never thought about it when buying 🤷‍♂️
 
SwampDonkey said:
I was bummed by a Y. Kato 210 AS gyuto. I have his ginsan santoku and I thoroughly enjoy it so I wanted to try a gyuto of his and ended up with a SS clad kurouchi model.

It looked lovely and the f&f was excellent but I just didn't like the profile one bit. The rear end had an abrupt stop but there wasn't enough of a flat spot to use like my other flat profile knives. The belly was odd too, not enough of it to be flowy and fun but enough to make me lift the back end fairly high to begin the cut then drop in to that abrupt stop. The knife felt like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be so did neither well. I had some fatigue after a big batch of etouffee which was a first. Then the steel itself was a little chippy which surprised the hell out of me.

I kept coming back and wanting to like it but just never jived with the profile and all my other gyutos outcut it so I sold it. Just a bummer for a ~$250 knife and I had high hopes since his ginsan santoku is perfectly balanced, beautiful to look at, fun with multiple cutting styles, and I like the steel.
Click to expand...
I kinda feel the same about my 240 nashiji AS, the profile and grind just feel meh to me. Definitely a knife I should have sold, but I'm too far gone in trying to thin and reprofule it to sell it for anything close to what I paid, so I guess I'll just keep it around to practice thinning, despite the large hollow on one side of the kireha.
 
Brakedeezbohnz said:
I kinda feel the same about my 240 nashiji AS, the profile and grind just feel meh to me. Definitely a knife I should have sold, but I'm too far gone in trying to thin and reprofule it to sell it for anything close to what I paid, so I guess I'll just keep it around to practice thinning, despite the large hollow on one side of the kireha.
Click to expand...
I was wondering if the 240s were long enough to realize that flat spot and belly without failing at both like the 210. Glad to hear your experiences before I fell for the pretty pictures again
 
SwampDonkey said:
I was wondering if the 240s were long enough to realize that flat spot and belly without failing at both like the 210. Glad to hear your experiences before I fell for the pretty pictures again
Click to expand...
I get better edge retention and overall performance out of my matsubara 240 in blue 2, and the matsubara doesn't have so much hollow grinding in the kireha that would be impossible to thin out. The Kato has gone thru hours on a 140 grit diamond plate and still has deep hollow parts, and now the nashiji is scratched up and the shinogi line on one side is basically nonexistent.
 
The only one I really regret was a 240 Tanaka Kyuzo B1. It was a fine knife. The steel is great. It looks beautiful and performs well. But honestly I only really bother polishing my single bevels and that iron cladding was not pretty after a hard day on the line.

It was a lot of money and I genuinely don’t have time to keep it looking pretty after using it in a commercial kitchen. Considering the abuse I put it through I couldn’t even get half the value from it if I tried to sell it. I ended up gifting it to a colleague who was opening a restaurant of his own because the upkeep wasn’t worth the hassle. Fwiw, I tend to rotated between watanabe and kintaro for my work gyuto.
 
Ochazuke said:
The only one I really regret was a 240 Tanaka Kyuzo B1. It was a fine knife. The steel is great. It looks beautiful and performs well. But honestly I only really bother polishing my single bevels and that iron cladding was not pretty after a hard day on the line.

It was a lot of money and I genuinely don’t have time to keep it looking pretty after using it in a commercial kitchen. Considering the abuse I put it through I couldn’t even get half the value from it if I tried to sell it. I ended up gifting it to a colleague who was opening a restaurant of his own because the upkeep wasn’t worth the hassle. Fwiw, I tend to rotated between watanabe and kintaro for my work gyuto.
Click to expand...
I don't have a Kyuzo but a similar Kagekiyo with iron cladding and I share this sentiment. It's just a ton of work to keep it looking nice if you are going to use it regularly. I cut lots of acidic vegetables and bright orange patina just doesn't look that good. Iron clad works way better as a show piece/protein slicer if you care at all about how it looks (and they do look nicee when polished).

Staineless clad gets hate since it feels gummy on stones but I really like it for the convenience.
 
Ochazuke said:
The only one I really regret was a 240 Tanaka Kyuzo B1. It was a fine knife. The steel is great. It looks beautiful and performs well. But honestly I only really bother polishing my single bevels and that iron cladding was not pretty after a hard day on the line.

It was a lot of money and I genuinely don’t have time to keep it looking pretty after using it in a commercial kitchen. Considering the abuse I put it through I couldn’t even get half the value from it if I tried to sell it. I ended up gifting it to a colleague who was opening a restaurant of his own because the upkeep wasn’t worth the hassle. Fwiw, I tend to rotated between watanabe and kintaro for my work gyuto.
Click to expand...
Good thing now they have a Stainless cladded version, Hado also have a stainless cladded white #1. Tho the Hitohira is quite expensive. BTW is the Kintaro from JKI? I'm kind interested, but there are also quite some advice against Y. Kato in this thread.
 
blokey said:
Good thing now they have a Stainless cladded version, Hado also have a stainless cladded white #1. Tho the Hitohira is quite expensive. BTW is the Kintaro from JKI? I'm kind interested, but there are also quite some advice against Y. Kato in this thread.
Click to expand...
The Hado is pretty nice and I think performs at the same level from what I can recall. The Hitohira is prettier though.
 
blokey said:
Good thing now they have a Stainless cladded version, Hado also have a stainless cladded white #1. Tho the Hitohira is quite expensive. BTW is the Kintaro from JKI? I'm kind interested, but there are also quite some advice against Y. Kato in this thread.
Click to expand...
So the Kintaro is from JKI. It's a thin knife. Probably one of the thinnest I have left in my collection. Despite that it's decently tough.

I will say that there are low spots all up and down the blade face. The plus side is that the food release is pretty good. The down side is that if you try to thin it you're going to eff up the finish. I lent mine out to a chef who gave it back chipped and tipped (because he thought it would be fine for lobster), so I ended up having to thin mine and as a result the finish looks pretty rough. It still performs great though and because it's stainless cladding it's still pretty easy to care for.

But here's the thing: it's not a tf. You don't need to thin it to get good performance. It's already got good performance. Unless you sharpen at a super high angle, the average home user probably wouldn't get any wedging for years. TBH I don't think this knife was designed for people who would think to thin their knife. I think it's designed for the average person who thinks to sharpen their knife once or twice a year.

To boil it down: it's a good, no frills performer. Keeping it looking nice is easy so long as you don't thin it and it's thin enough that most people shouldn't have to thin it.
 
My first “real” knife purchase taught me a lot about the importance of research and specs. After reading some fluffy article about old Sabatier knives, I picked up a random 270 Sab sight unseen from Thebesthings.com before I knew anything about sharpening or even different styles of chef knives. I figured a big long knife would do everything, but it ended up being very short, way too chunky slicer that wedged with just about everything. Really bummed me out. Then I carved a big holiday roast with it and realized what it was actually good for—nice clean slices and a bright blue patina.

After some actual research I learned it was a Jeune Garanti, and once I started sharpening at home I found it took a good edge and was super easy to touch up. I don’t use it much anymore—kind of makes me sad to see it languishing on the magnetic block at home but I can’t bring myself to sell it. It gets some use around the holidays for about 45 seconds every year now.
 
ampersandcetera said:
After some actual research I learned it was a Jeune Garanti, and once I started sharpening at home I found it took a good edge and was super easy to touch up. I don’t use it much anymore—kind of makes me sad to see it languishing on the magnetic block at home but I can’t bring myself to sell it. It gets some use around the holidays for about 45 seconds every year now.
Click to expand...
That's still more usage than some of the other high-end knives see around here... ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top