A proposal for an American gyuto.

K

Knife Outlet

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Jan 4, 1999
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The image below shows 4 240mm Japanese gyutos which are the Japanese equivalent of our chef knife.

240gyutos.jpg


I've had a debate with Cliff Stamp on the general forum because I called them the best chef knives on the planet. To summarize, I explained that I have found kitchen knives made by North American custom knife makers to be disappointing. He challenged me to have a knife made that would equal the performance of the Japanese gyuto. I accept the challenge, if one of the makers on this forum would like to accept it.

These are the characteristics of the gyuto.

1. Thin hard blades. The knives above are made from (L to R) Hitachi shirogami carbon steel (RC 64-65), Unknown Swedish tool steel (RC 59-60), VG-10 (RC60-61), unknown Japanese powder steel (RC 62-63.) I don't need to explain the reasons for thin hard blades to this group. These blades are all 240mm or around 9 1/2" in length.

2. Perfect balance. By this I mean that the knife should be balanced for the standard pinch grip as taught in culinary schools. If you pinch the blade just in front of the bolster, you should encounter the center of gravity. That balance is usually achieved with tangs that are thicker than the blades or with a bolster. All but the second knife have a stainless bolster forge welded to the blade which was originally blocked. The second knife actually has a nickel silver bolster that I assume is pinned to the blade.

3. Traditional gyuto blade profile. The blade, designed originally for beef butchery, has very little belly. This helps reduce the amount of hand motion required to lift the heel enough to get the food underneath it. It has enough belly, though, to do an effective job of chopping. The tip is problematic on the gyuto but not an issue with a 9 1/2" blade. The knife is really too large to make much use of the tip anyway.

The scales on the first three knives are resin impregnated laminated wood and the one on the right has resin impregnated snakewood burl scales. The best gyutos have eased edges not only on the scales but on the blade spine.

So would someone like to take on the challenge of making a knife that performs like a gyuto? It could have a blade of S30V, perhaps, or one of the high chromium tool steels. The handle scales could be wood or micarta or nearly any other material that appeals. Balance would have to be as described whether it is achieved with a bolster or with a thick tang. The blade profile would be open to negotiation as long as it had less belly than a European chef knife and had the feel of a gyuto. The final product shouldn't weigh more than 8 1/2 to 9 oz. with a 9 1/2" blade so this knife is light by comparison to most Western chef knives. Comments?
 
Interesting idea, but I'm not clear on a few details:

1) Are you sponsoring the challenge - i.e. - if they make it, will you buy it? (I imagine that if I "challenged" a bunch of makers to produce my idea of the perfect bowie and send me an example for nothing in return but my frank assessment of their work, I'd have few takers ;) )

2) Who is the final arbiter of whether the knives produced meet or exceed the performance of the Japanese knives?

3) Just what is your idea of the proper performance charateristics of a chef's knife?

4) Will the maker(s) accepting the challenge get to inspect the knives they are supposed to beat?

5) In what ways exactly have you been disappointed in the past with North American chef's knives?

Roger
 
Fair questions.

1. Of course I'll pay for it.

2. I'm the final arbiter of the performance of the knife. Since I've tested over 200 chef knives and reviewed nearly 70 of them, I feel I have the experience to determine performance.

3. Thin hard blade that allows for an acute bevel angle, balance as described in the proposal, pain free surfaces that won't contribute to chef's callouses, a blade profile that requires no more hand motion to lift the heel than a Japanese gyuto and an overall blade length and weight as described in the proposal.

4. I would anticipate sending a gyuto to the maker that he can test.

5. Weight, balance and ergonomics. The knives I've tested have been too heavy, too blade-heavy and/or designed to be gripped like a hunting knife, not a chef knife.

The custom makers seem to me to make knives of outstanding quality and appearance. I'd like to marry that to a design and materials that perform like gangbusters in a kitchen. There you go. Fair enough?
 
there are makers on these forums who can do that... Pinoy Knife (Matt Cook) does these in S30V now and could probably make either the traditional french style or the traditional gyuto...

And if I can remember my notes from home, there was a maker here in Seattle that specialized in culinary cutlery who is world renowned for making traditional Japanese cutlery and European style stuff... however, when they tore the old King Dome down, he lost his shop to make space for parking! :mad: So, if I remember to, I'll bring his name and any old contact info...
 
nifrand said:
Murray Carter????????????
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Murray Carter makes great knives but not Western style. He makes traditional Japanese knives like yanagis, debas and usubas. His products are very well respected among Japanese cutlery enthusiasts. I've done a lot of business with a custom maker in Japan as well who is outstanding but, like Murray Carter, doesn't make Western style knives. Take care.
 
Kohai999 said:
http://www.bladesmiths.com

Makes Japanese as well as European styles. These are forged high carbon steels, no stainless afik.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
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Steve, I haven't met you yet, but from what I've read, you're pretty familiar with the Northwest makers scene - Bob was the guy I was trying to remember...

He's not only a good maker, but he's a great guy to talk with as well.. I was really bummed when he had to give up his shop downtown - the closest public knife shop and maker to Seattle that I'm aware of - I could walk there at lunch and either watch or talk shop... He's missed around here!

Thanks for pointing his work out!
 
"Steve, I haven't met you yet, but from what I've read, you're pretty familiar with the Northwest makers scene - Bob was the guy I was trying to remember...

He's not only a good maker, but he's a great guy to talk with as well.. I was really bummed when he had to give up his shop downtown - the closest public knife shop and maker to Seattle that I'm aware of."

It was on Pike and Boren from 1994 to 1997. Customs galore and great prices, too.

I would hope that I am familiar with the Pacific NW scene, as I lived in Seattle from 1989 to 1996, and just missed this years' OKCA show for the first time in 11 years. Hope we get to meet someday!

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
Fred drop Phil Wilson an email and see if he has any free time, you might want to ask Tichbourne directly as well. As a side note it is surprising that so few makers would respond.

-Cliff
 
Guys, this is a neat idea.

There are prolly a lot of makers who can do this...

I find that many of the top guys simply do not spend a lot of time on the computer. If they do it is for pretty specific reasons. Time management being what it is...they may not know of your challenge...and if they do they are too busy trying to pay the bills.

Looking forward to seeing the outcome. Good luck to all who participate.

Shane
 
shane justice said:
I find that many of the top guys simply do not spend a lot of time on the computer.
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It would actually look pretty odd if it took the top makers to actually do this, considering the actual competition are production blades. Note this isn't a challenge as in some kind of competition that the makers pay to enter, Fred actually wants to buy a knife, he just has specific requirements. I assumed that he would have no problem at all finding someone fairly quickly especially since the price points of some of the competition are decently high.

-Cliff
 
I have worked out an order with Matt Cook. The real problem I have is the Custom makers want to have an application specified and then be left to do what they do. What I want is more specific than that because there are a lot of issues with ergonomics - issues that I have not seen handled by custom knife makers. The knife has to have a 9 1/2" blade and the blade needs to be thin enough so that the knife only weighs 8 1/2 oz. finished. It needs to balance at the point that culinary schools teach students to grip the knife and it has to have a blade profile that puts the fulcrum of the lever while chopping as far from the heel as possible with there being sufficient belly at that point to ensure accuracy of cut. Gyutos have a blade profile that is fairly flat from the heel until a couple of inches from the tip where it begins to have some curvature. The difference in the amount of work needed to chop onions with this knife when compared to a Wusthof, Henckels etc. is immediatly obvious to the user - at least to all the users I've had test the knives.

In other words, the knife I want has to perform like gyuto even if it doesn't have to look like one. The custom makers tend to take European ergonomics as an inspiration because European knives are the most popular in the U.S. and Europe. The result is knives with too much weight, improper balance and too much belly to the blade. These are the things I can say about European knives in general, no matter who makes them. I'm not picking on the custom makers. Matt and I are going to make a knife that outperforms all the European knives because it is based on criteria that the perfectionist Japanese knife makers have developed over the past few centuries and chefs all over the world have certified as being superior. Matt appears to be willing to take the direction and I've sent him a gyuto to test and evaluate. He's confident he can meet the criteria.

The typical European forged chef knife has a thick heavy blade that requires a large, full bolster to get it close to balancing where it should. That bolster gets in the way of sharpening the knife and has to be ground away as the knife is sharpened over time, changing the balance point. Because they have thin, hard blades, the Japanese knives don't suffer from this problem because they need only partial bolsters to balance them properly. The thin, hard blades also allow a more acute bevel angle (sharper) to the edge and are lighter, producing less effort and less fatigue in use. Understand that a commercial prep cook will use a chef knife for 8 or more hours per day. I'm not a commercial prep cook but I appreciate good tools just like that prep cook does.

At any rate, that's where are with the project. So when we get done, I feel confident Matt might be the man you want to go to if you're looking for a high performance chef knife. He'll have some different perspectives and experiences that not all knife makers have with kitchen cutlery.
 
Cliff Stamp said:
This is just an example of kind of the thing I was thinking of when I was mentioning high end western cutlery :

http://www.bladegallery.com/knives/knife.asp?knifeid=3611&pics=small&alt=one

It would strike me as insane if Barker could not trivially duplicate a production Japanese gyuto.

I would assume he could make a better one if you had suggestions on how to do so.

-Cliff
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Thanks for the link, Cliff. The blade profile of this knife is really pretty good. Because it doesn't have much belly, the fulcrum is close to the tip. That means the user needs to use less hand motion to lift the heel of the blade enough to get the product to be cut underneath it. I'd be willing to bet this knife is a little blade heavy. I would guess the center of gravity is too far back. I think it would need a bolster to move the center of gravity forward probably an inch or so. It might have a thick tang, though. I can't tell from the image. The blade is a little too thick and the knife is a little too heavy but close and it looks pretty good. It wouldn't take much to tune up this design. I think it's a good one. Notice how little it looks like a European forged knife. Take care.
 
As a side note it is surprising that so few makers would respond.
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I've been following this thread for a while and here's my opinion on this:
1) Not too many people like to copy other knives outright, especially one for a competition. If you're doing a head-to-head on some knives, from a maker's point of view you want to know what you're doing because it's going to be judged and that knife represents your work. Not exactly the time to do a style of knife for the first time ever.
2) The competition is being set up right from the get go that the evaluator doesn't think an American knifemaker could possibly make a knife that is as good as a gyuto. Maybe the makers are worried that no matter what they put forth will be judged as inferior, no matter what.
3) This is posted in the custom knives forum, not the knifemaker's forum.

I think one way you could make this evaluation a little more objective, possibly, would be to insure that neither knife is marked in any way, and send the knives to someone who has very little experience with this style of knife. In fact, I would be a good candidate, if you're interested. My wife and especially I cook tons, but I don't have a ton of experience with a wide variety of chef's knives. If there was a way to prevent me from outright knowing whose knife was whose, I would be willing to throw my 2 cents in after a week or so of using the two knives. But, to have one person set up a head-to-head and be the sole judge I think most makers would shy away from it.
 
i think this will be a fun project . after talking to Fred i understand that he want's something very specific and i don't have any problem whatsoever making a " True Custom " for someone from time to time . i make what the customer design's period . if someone out there say's oh look it is a (copycat ) i say show me a knife that has never been used by someone in design from the start of time till now . in other word's grow up . i guess i could call all the custom boy's over in Japan for permission to use their design . ill accept Fred's challenge im not afraid of a challenge their fun .
Fred maybe you could send this knife out to other's after you have evaluated it just for the "Un biased " opinion . Just a thought ill go back to work now
 
I don't think one could call the gyuto any one person's design. It's just a historical blade style that hasn't changed much in hundreds, if not thousands, of years, unless I am mistaken.

That being said and having read some of his kitchen knife reviews, I think that Knife Outlet knows kitchen knives like probably very few people alive. That I know of anyways. I can't wait to see what his design and Matt Cook's artistry result in.

Should be one heck of a blade!
 
I don't think one could call the gyuto any one person's design.
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When I said that most makers don't like to copy knives outright, I didn't mean specifically in this case, but rather when there are strict parameters set forth on what a knife should be, if you've never made a knife like that it can be a pretty daunting task.

Also, I'm not accusing Knife Outlet of setting anyone up or purposefully trying to set it up so that one person fails, but after using tons of kitchen knives the gauntlet being thrown is that no western maker can do as good as a Japanses maker in this style of knife, so it seems somewhat skewed to begin with. If I said "The Military is the ultimate folding knife and no other company can create a folding knife as good..." and that's my mindset going into it, how likely will it be that Benchmade sends me a knife and I all of a sudden think it's better than the Military?
 
Pinoy Knife said:
Fred maybe you could send this knife out to other's after you have evaluated it just for the "Un biased " opinion
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Fred's origional arguement was that for the performance he wanted, Japanese styled knives were the best he has seen. It would be of little use to have someone else evaluate the knives to support or contend this arguement.

In the origional thread I already pointed out that several of the features Fred saw as optimal I did not. The point is simply can a western maker fill Fred's needs as well as a Japanese one. I would argue that they could as long as he is very specific on what exactly he wants and he has been.

I don't see how you can argue Fred is biased either, read his posts, he prefers Japanese knives because of the performance, that doesn't make you biased. I am confident if Cook delivers a knife that is to the same standard of performance or superior Fred will say so.

Knife Outlet said:
I'd be willing to bet this knife is a little blade heavy.
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Yes, I doubt the balance is where you would want it, mainly I used it as an illustration of what can be done. Just look at that design and consider if the same maker could not craft what you wanted, I think it is obvious they would be able to do so.

Glad to see someone felt they could do it Fred, you might want to consider sending him one so that he can see exactly the balance and edge issues, it doesn't have to be the high end steel ones because that is irrelevant to the balance and edge curvature.

If it was me I would make the first model out of 420HC has it is easy to machine and it would keep the costs down and the turn over high. Once you had that one and checked out the balance and other issues Scott could fire one off in a really hard steel to match the Japanese blades edge holding.

-Cliff
 
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