- Joined
- Nov 16, 2002
- Messages
- 9,948
Due to luck, fate, fortune, and persistant nagging, I was able to buy a santoku-style kitchen knife from Larrin Thomas at the end of a passaround knife review. The knife is just over 11" long and its blade is just over 6.5" long and 2.125" wide at its widest. The edge is 0.01" thick near the ricasso and thins to about 0.006" near the tip and the spine is just over 0.09" thick near the handle and 0.025" near the tip - that's as thin as some edges!
The steel is Bohler Uddeholm AEB-L heat-treated to RC63 and the handle is made from green linen micarta. The spine is eased and the handle is very comfortable. Please excuse the reflection of my stove's ventillation hood in these pictures:
Note that the blade has more belly than most santoku knives may have. Just like on Shun's Elite 8" Chefs Knife, this lets you get more cutting area out of a small amount of blade space. Coupled with my small arms, it works very well for me. Oh, here's a picture of it with a chef knife:
The chef knife in question is called a Nenox S1 240mm gyuto and its blade is the standard for thinness in stainless kitchen knives. Larrin Thomas' santoku is slightly thinner!
As I said, when I first got the knife, it had been in a passaround. One of the folks was a sharpening expert/addict/guro, one was a professional chef, another was a sharpening expert/addict/guro-to-be, one was Nick, and there may have been more. The knife was steeled, chopped hard, and then subjected to all manner of high-grit waterstone and uberhigh-grit lapping film for over a month before it saw me. The result was that I got a knife sharper than I sharpen, but it had fatigued steel on the very edge. So that dulled quickly (in the middle of dicing a bag of onions! Not fun!) and needed its edge reset.
Remember how I told all of you that its spine is as thin as most edges near the tip? While setting the edge with a coarse benchstone, I bent the tip. It's fine now, but the temptation to mail the knife back to Larrin along with every other knife I own (and any sharp pencil) was strong due to my act of stupidity. Yes indeed. The tip is now straight, the knife is now sharp, the finish is now scratched - the knife is now mine.
Some things I really really like about this knife are how it glides through everything without effort and lets me perform precision work. The green linen micarta handle was expertly executed and its grip improves when it's wet, so that's a big bonus, too. Whether it's trimming fat off steak and peeling potatoes or making pineapple Christmas trees, it's a true champ.
I think Larrin Thomas makes one heckuva knife and hope he makes more. Your hands hope he does, too.
Thanks for reading
Disclaimer:
Larrin Thomas's heat-treatment of AEB-L to a hardness of RC63 is very labor intensive. Do not expect the maker of your favorite $40 folder to heat-treat the same steel in the same manner without the price-tag rising to well over $200 for the same $40 folder to cover all of the extra labor. AEB-L is generally, and specifically as Larrin Thomas heat treats it, a fine-grained steel with fine carbides which make up a small percentage of the steel's volume. It takes and holds a very finely polished edge at a small angle. I've seen SG-2 steel do the same thing at a similar hardness despite it being the polar opposite. The place where the theories become reality involves angles of about 5-6 degrees per side with polishes exceeding 8,000 grit and no microbevelling. At that point, sharpening becomes insanely time-consuming and the ability of a low-carbide steel to work better in those tight parameters than a high-carbide steel are necessary only so far as preventing suicide from the thought of resharpening is concerned.
The steel is Bohler Uddeholm AEB-L heat-treated to RC63 and the handle is made from green linen micarta. The spine is eased and the handle is very comfortable. Please excuse the reflection of my stove's ventillation hood in these pictures:
Note that the blade has more belly than most santoku knives may have. Just like on Shun's Elite 8" Chefs Knife, this lets you get more cutting area out of a small amount of blade space. Coupled with my small arms, it works very well for me. Oh, here's a picture of it with a chef knife:
The chef knife in question is called a Nenox S1 240mm gyuto and its blade is the standard for thinness in stainless kitchen knives. Larrin Thomas' santoku is slightly thinner!
As I said, when I first got the knife, it had been in a passaround. One of the folks was a sharpening expert/addict/guro, one was a professional chef, another was a sharpening expert/addict/guro-to-be, one was Nick, and there may have been more. The knife was steeled, chopped hard, and then subjected to all manner of high-grit waterstone and uberhigh-grit lapping film for over a month before it saw me. The result was that I got a knife sharper than I sharpen, but it had fatigued steel on the very edge. So that dulled quickly (in the middle of dicing a bag of onions! Not fun!) and needed its edge reset.
Remember how I told all of you that its spine is as thin as most edges near the tip? While setting the edge with a coarse benchstone, I bent the tip. It's fine now, but the temptation to mail the knife back to Larrin along with every other knife I own (and any sharp pencil) was strong due to my act of stupidity. Yes indeed. The tip is now straight, the knife is now sharp, the finish is now scratched - the knife is now mine.
Some things I really really like about this knife are how it glides through everything without effort and lets me perform precision work. The green linen micarta handle was expertly executed and its grip improves when it's wet, so that's a big bonus, too. Whether it's trimming fat off steak and peeling potatoes or making pineapple Christmas trees, it's a true champ.
I think Larrin Thomas makes one heckuva knife and hope he makes more. Your hands hope he does, too.
Thanks for reading
Disclaimer:
Larrin Thomas's heat-treatment of AEB-L to a hardness of RC63 is very labor intensive. Do not expect the maker of your favorite $40 folder to heat-treat the same steel in the same manner without the price-tag rising to well over $200 for the same $40 folder to cover all of the extra labor. AEB-L is generally, and specifically as Larrin Thomas heat treats it, a fine-grained steel with fine carbides which make up a small percentage of the steel's volume. It takes and holds a very finely polished edge at a small angle. I've seen SG-2 steel do the same thing at a similar hardness despite it being the polar opposite. The place where the theories become reality involves angles of about 5-6 degrees per side with polishes exceeding 8,000 grit and no microbevelling. At that point, sharpening becomes insanely time-consuming and the ability of a low-carbide steel to work better in those tight parameters than a high-carbide steel are necessary only so far as preventing suicide from the thought of resharpening is concerned.
For the record I can't get a knife near as sharp as those guys either. Lots of practice and stones left to buy first.
