Is 0.125" thick stock OK for chef knife/stock removal?

The answer is... it depends :) I see no reason to go any thicker than .125" with plenty of taper, and prefer to use .110"... and still taper it quite a bit. If you get up to 3/16" or thicker, it's no longer really a chef's knife. You're getting closer to cleaver territory. IMHO, YMMV, etc.

Grind one out and see if you like it for the way you want to use it. The nice thing about steel is, you can always grind more off... putting it back on is a bit more problematic. ;)
 
.125 is fine but thicker gives more options when grinding the bevels. There are Japanese kitchen knives (Kato, and others) that are around .25 thick at the spine. They cut great because they are still very thin behind the edge and are aggressively distal tapered, so they still function like a chef knife despite the thick spine. The first one I used, I was very pleasantly surprised how well it cut and would have not guessed that outcome when I took it out of the box.


In the kitchen knife "lingo" the thick ones are called "work horses" and thin blades are called "lasers". Like most things, some prefer the extremes on either end but most fall somewhere in the middle.
 
I like thin and slicy myself for most knives but I made myself a Deba once..I used .200 thick O1 I believe and at that it was thinner than most Deba..Urasuki on the back ground pretty thin on the edge and it cut very well, better than I expected to be honest..Makes short work of fish and small critters..
 
I have seen some deba's listed as 7-8mm at the spine! Thats .277 to .319!!!!!! They apparently work as advertised, but they are also a somewhat specialized tool.
 
If you can make a deba that "thin" that works as intended, things get kind of interesting with this new batch of .196 AEB-L on the market now.
Kentucky said:
I like thin and slicy myself for most knives but I made myself a Deba once..I used .200 thick O1 I believe and at that it was thinner than most Deba..Urasuki on the back ground pretty thin on the edge and it cut very well, better than I expected to be honest..Makes short work of fish and small critters..
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jdm61 said:
I have seen some deba's listed as 7-8mm at the spine! Thats .277 to .319!!!!!! They apparently work as advertised, but they are also a somewhat specialized tool.
Click to expand...

Yea they are..The one I made is on the smaller side that's why it works in that thickness I guess..At least it works for me on smaller fish and small critters..I know its really a fish knife but something about the design intrigued me..Ive seen several factory ones that are over .300 thick.I know of one right off the top of my head that is 9mm thick!.big beasty knives for sure..
 
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