jason183:
that is a beautiful, beautiful knife. thank you (and gorillagrunt, again) for the picture and showing the profile so clearly on the board. the profile of the cutting edge looks really neat. when you mention the super-flat one, it reminds me of some others, including a lot of kiritsukes, that are super flat and make me think i would find too weird. ... which is actually funny to say, because there was a five-year stretch when i used a chinese cleaver almost exclusively, and that was almost perfectly flat except for a subtle arch along the whole length. regardless, thanks for the beauty shot -- and, if i may ask, can you tell me if that mirror finish is how it came or did you do the polishing?
daveb:
thanks again. i appreciate your concern. no offence taken.
i am avoiding white steel because, regardless of knife-maker / heat-treat / profile / etc, even lovers of white steel admit its lack of corrosion resistance causes the edge to degrade quickly just from the food being cut; as i say, i'm not remotely good enough to constantly maintain anything like an impressive edge on white steel, so that is one i'm specifically counting out for now. (yes, i should learn to sharpen. that's not going to be possible anytime soon.) i have about four months' experience with two different borrowed sg2 knives which had frighteningly sharp edges and which, no exaggeration, maintained those edges with little change the entire time i had them. (i am not remotely a professional cook, either, so the amount of home cooking i do isn't massive, but even with the modest amount of everyday cutting, i am used to seeing edges last nowhere near that long. also saw no micro-chipping in my use.) i have two aeb-l knives which have been quite good but very different from those sg2s, to begin with and over time, so just for the next purchase i'm not interested in that kind of thing either. i would be fine with a number of different steels, depending on the knife and maker. there just don't seem to be too many ~truly ks-profile knives in the first place, and following the dedicated thread(s) on this, the shibata kashima comes out at or near the top very consistently -- and the same when the conversation is about lasers or near-lasers.
i'm not particularly chauvinistic toward sg2/r2 super-specifically but, having spent way too much time reading all the resources you grizzled pirates always direct people to, there are certain groups/classes of steels that clearly do better than others in terms of edge retention, toughness, and potential sharpness -- assuming, as you say, a decent knife-maker and proper heat treatment. that means, if something that gets as much praise as the shibata kashima were made in aogami 2/super or 52100 or sg2/r2 or hap40 or hd2 or a number of a half-dozen semi-popular such steels, stainless or semi- or not, i'm sure i would be equally happy; but if someone said the shibata kashima was 440c or aus8 or vg10 (the latter of which i do have, and is killer sharp, but i find myself always babying for fear of chipping and tipping, which sg2 doesn't require) -- or white/shirogami, which i was mentioning -- then i would keep looking at it. i didn't think i was saying anything different, really, than what many of the salty old characters say here, including the ones who love (and love to sharpen) white steel. i understand heat-treatment, the knife-maker, the grind, etc, can all trump the alloy/metallurgy itself -- but i started off my question by asking specifically about a knife from mr takayuki shibata, who, from many comments here, i understand to be well respected; many people swear by his kashima and even more so his koutetsu (which i would find too flat and cleaver-y). speaking of profile: you're totally right about needing to use a knife to see whether the profile is right, and (more in the past than recently) i've been instantly disappointed when trying out various ones that looked ok -- likewise because of balance and other mechanical factors, too; regarding the ks specifically, i've not had the pleasure but have found that its profile (not just based on photographs but on one or two outlines / cut-outs available) is very remarkably similar to a couple of no-name, cheapie euro-style knifes i spent many many years using. (not the top/spine profile, but the cutting-edge profile.) (to some extent, though not exactly, the herder 1923 ~9" could be similar, too, but i'm having trouble finding a source for a new one at what most forum members seem to indicate would be the baseline price.)
it was kindof a revelation, actually, to see that -- when i was really inspecting some of these no-name cheapie knives that, while being kindof crappy and boring (and not much past 50-something hrc, thick behind the edge, etc, etc), work for me very very well _mechanically_ (because, obviously, i've used them / similar ones so much). so, i know i'm not going to buy a ks, because it's more than i can afford, the new grinds are different anyway, and the white steel... well, see above -- but when i see that kind of cutting edge profile, i have good reason to think it'll be ok. ... and it might matter that the first time i saw one (totally anonymously appearing, unmentioned, on a a cooking-show camera's bird's eye view of a counter-top -- not some shill's overblown hype machine) it quite simply _looked_ right, in a way that few knives do, and that, i think, is also hand-eye intuition that probably isn't way off the mark. (e.g., hate to insult anybody's tastes here, but look at the zwilling pro 10" chef knife and tell me you don't get the opposite feeling -- a rectangle blade with a half-rounded corner. it may as well be a weird long cleaver.) certainly the devil's in the details -- the exact angle(s) of curvature, the exact height of the tip off the board, etc, but i know that what works for me is much closer to what we call a ks edge profile than, e.g., flatter kiritsukes or cleavers or much more curved (and never flat) profiles, like one being discussed very recently with respect to a western gyuto that was on sale. the latter is what c k t g's photo of the shibata kashima blade made its profile appear to be, at least of the blade-only ones that were still available until just a day or two ago -- all curve and/or possibly even with a curve upward again ("relief"?) after the flat spot back toward the heel -- and which i'm grateful to gorillagrunt for clearing up so nicely.
if i'm not able to get a new shibata kashima anytime soon, i definitely have thought, as you nicely suggested, of asking either the swashbuckling hsc or the mad scientist kippington if they would not be too insulted if i ask for an exact ks-profile clone in a steel like sg2 or blue 2/super or zwear -- which i have been reading about a lot (zwear, i mean), but not sure of price-wise -- or even 52100 at ~61hrc. in fact, if that happened, i would start by asking hsc or kippington their advice, first, about their preferred and most familiar steels, than to go in all pushy about one or another too specifically. the problem is (besides possibly insulting a real artist by asking him to make a profile-duplicate of the most overhyped profile of all time) the price, more than anything, and if somewhere in japan mr shibata is already creating the profile i (think i) am looking for in the steel i (think i) am looking for at a price that is, frankly, in the _low_ range for such a knife, then i would be doing the right thing to not bother either hsc or kippington with my request. the only thing is, though, that... sigh... mr kippington in particular... the idea that he could create something that follows his buckaroo frankenstein idea of a chunky-chunky spine at the neck/heel, then going swiftly into a freakishly thin distal taper as well as a freakishly-thin-behind-the-edge grind yet with leprechaun-like food release -- that seems to me a few dizzying steps up from having a laser-thin neck, where i pinch grip. still, price-wise -- and please-don't-bother-hsc-/-mr-kippington--wise -- i think i would be doing the right thing for now to start with the ready-made, ~$250-or-less kashima.
anyway, i wanted to be sure you knew i appreciated your taking the time with your comments and that they actually line up very well with what i have been quietly absorbing here for a long time now, even though without the opportunity to buy / try too many new knives and have real experience on these same japanese knives/steels/profiles being discussed, mostly because of the budget situation and for being in canada, which makes some of the easy/cheap buy/sell/trade try-it-out activity more cumbersome and expensive. ... and, of course, the shibata kashima is only available through one u.s. vendor, which means there's a big shipping fee (something like +15% of the knife itself), sometimes customs/duty, and trouble if a return/exchange is necessary, so i wanted to be as close to sure as i could be before buying. unfortunately, i waited just a couple of days too long; sold out.
... and if you read all of that, I hereby certify you with the official KKF "Too Long, Yet Did Read" badge of staminous erudition, if you didn't get one already from the 60-page treatise on edge retention (hereafter, "the bible") or the various threads on "everything you wanted to know about distal taper but were afraid to ask", "the care and feeding of your convex grind", and other hits.
