Why all the Shun hate?

Japanese Knives - by Tokushu Knife
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I don't get all this Shun steel hate. I mean, hating chippiness I can understand, but all these mediocre stainless steels feel in basically the same ballpark to me when sharpening. Globals seem to be softer steel: 56-58 HRC vs 60-61 for Shun, so I guess they're probably a bit easier to sharpen. But you're probably going to have to sharpen the Shun less than the Global then. And I can understand having a preference if you're sharpening like 20 of them in a row, but if you're a home user like (I think?) @spaceconvoy is, what difference does it make if you spend 10 seconds more sharpening the Shun than the Global?

Says the guy who basically only buys knives he likes sharpening. Hypocritical much? I guess I buy carbon knives to have a nice sharpening experience, and just "get through" sharpening stainless.
 
ian said:
but if you're a home user like (I think?) @spaceconvoy is
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Correct, a home user who's used to sharpening a lot of mediocre stainless.

Truth be told, I've had a Shun in my possession this whole time, a BNIB classic paring knife that I had been planning to sell on ebay. I calculated the amount I'd make on it minus the hassle involved was worth the opportunity to test the steel and perhaps save myself from buying a new knife. Or maybe I was just bored.

I can't understand why people say it's difficult to sharpen. Compared to my other stainless (CCK, Misono moly, Sugimoto moly, Sukenari ginsan, and Herder K series) it felt more abrasion resistant and slower to cut, but I found deburring to be easier. Definitely not terrible, just a different tradeoff than I'm used to. For reference I used an SP1500 and finished on an Ikarashi from Watanabe, both of which I find well-suited to stainless.

Haven't tested the edge very much because there's only so much you can do with a 90mm parer. The steel feels like it has more bite than basic moly but isn't as fine as ginsan. I bought it April of this year if that makes a difference. Maybe I'll notice poor edge retention or chippiness after a while, but it's certainly not a pain to sharpen. So either Shun's quality control is terrible, or there really is bias against them.
 
I admit that my Shun hate comes from only one knife, a Chinese cleaver, and part of the hate is not fair, I just hate the shape of the thing. Chinese cleavers should not have such a pronounced curve to the edge. It's as though it was shaped to cut a single juniper berry.

But there is something about the steel, not just the shape, and it comes from my actually enjoying sharpening. It's a recreational activity to me, and I notice a lot when it's fun, and when it's just a chore. Mostly, it's fun. Really, almost all the time, it's fun, for a wide variety of steels. For some stainless, especially the kind that likes to hang on to a burr so persistently that you want to throttle it, it's a chore.

Global and Shun, though, deserve their own categories of not-fun. Global, I just can't get any feel on the stone. Any skills I might have acquired go out the window, and I'm just flying blind. And they do like hanging onto a burr, though not as much as crap stainless does.

My Shun cleaver seems hard. Quite hard. Not hard in a good way, like a TF Denka. Hard in the same way as a Nakiri I bought 20 years ago, and threw away because I hated sharpening it so much. I don't know how to describe the experience of sharpening these, quite. Like sharpening concrete? There is no feel, and something about the edge you get when you finally succeed is unsatisfying. I'd like to say there's something wrong with the steel, or the way it was treated, but I am a long way from expert enough to say something like that. So I just have to settle for saying I hate everything about sharpening it.
 
Hate is a strong word but they're won't be a Shun in my house because they're designed to appeal to the western housewife.

They've got a lot of belly cause housewives are rockers. Hell even santoku are bastardized into a rocking profile for the housewife. Geometry is made to be pull through sharpener friendly - can get a sharp enough edge but will grow into a fatty faster than a new bride with wedding cake. Can't thin the thing (something no housewife even knows about) without scuffing up the faux dammy finish.

They're difficult to sharpen but not impossible. I have a friend that is all Shun and I sharpen hers with the Gesshin diamond plates. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am.

They're designed to go on the wall and impress the neighbors. Cutting is secondary.
 
I have only one Shun, and that has an SG-2 core. Sharpens just like any other SG-2 knife and works fine. I admit that this is the odd one out though. It seems that pretty much all the other Shun's are made with VG-10/VG-Max.

I sharpen VG-10 fairly regularly (not Shun though). It's not a lot of fun, and quite slow. But nothing I couldn't live with.
 
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Repaired & sharpened quite a few shuns. Can get a good edge on them.

Think here folks get spoiled with really fine knives, why bother with cheap stainless. More so in production kitchen ease of sharpening & touch ups is important.

As retired home cook use most carbons & stainless clad carbon core. Have a few mac's in the drawer never get used.

At school where Shuns were cheap I repaired a teacher's shuns, chips & broken tips. I kept one as payment it had worst chips so lost some of its height. Used it for breaking down Costco roast chickens.

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Used this to carve turkey last couple years. Pre ww2 blank Sabatier.

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