misen

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cash2006

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Jan 24, 2007
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Saw article this am about misen being the best 8" chef knife . Has AUS 8 steel.
Price will be $65...
anybody have thoughts?
 
Definitely not. Not only is there no objective best knife with as broad of a category as 8" chef knife - also, Aus8 is an entry level steel. It's very forgiving steel and much better than X50CRMOV or whatever Wusthoff uses, but certainly cannot hold a candle to high speed tool steels or high grade carbon steels.

It's definitely a good value for the money compared to most western chef knives, but you can do better with Tojiro DP, at that price point (which, incidentally, is on the low end of the spectrum. True performance typically comes with a price tag of six times that amount.)
 
It's worth noting that the article I believe you are referencing says that this knife is the best inexpensive knife, not the best knife period. That is a pretty big qualifier, and it's hard to say exactly what "inexpensive" means. It is unquestionably not the best 8" kitchen knife ever, but it certainly looks like there are far worse ones.
I hadn't heard of this knife before this thread, and I still don't know much about it. But I can say that what little I know about it seems to be good. The design looks sound, and I particularly like that they kept the feel of an integral bolster without taking it all the way to the heel of the knife. Most knives that sport bolsters like this do bring it to the heel, and I think this is a huge design flaw. I also like the research they appear to have done to make a good knife that people would actually want to use. I can't tell you how many knives I have seen that clearly weren't designed by anyone who uses a knife.
I don't think I've ever seen AUS8 used on a kitchen knife before. It's not a steel I particularly care for, but it is an improvement over a lot of other steels that are used in production kitchen knives. I don't know why they made this decision, but I suspect cost was a factor.
I wouldn't buy one of these, but I'm curious to see what it's like.

Chris
 
Hesparus said:
I don't think I've ever seen AUS8 used on a kitchen knife before. It's not a steel I particularly care for, but it is an improvement over a lot of other steels that are used in production kitchen knives. I don't know why they made this decision, but I suspect cost was a factor.
Click to expand...

One example you may have seen is the Suisin INOX western knives. They deliver great bang for the buck, but they aren't what I would call "best knives ever" by any stretch of the imagination :)
 
An interesting concept. A well priced item with allot of thought put into it. Aus8 isn't a great steel but not bad either. Its all in the heat treat regardless. Good price point. Considering a Tojiro DP 8" is under $60.00 with better steel but a different profile they may do well. I'll pick one the Misen knives just for fun. Ya never know.
 
So is is basically a 440B type steel? Meh. Better than the base model stuff used by the Germans but nothing thrilling. Likewise meh on the thick bolster. With that said, if the current total is correct, they have already sold over 13,000 of them. Pretty good for a knife made in Guangzhou, China, no?
 
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I think for the average person, considering the lifetime sharpening, and I think I recall reading in another article they pushed the RC as far as they could, it should do the job for most home cooks. If you read what they set out to do, I feel they hit it pretty well.
 
8.2"
AUS8 at 58-59
TPE handles
Lifetime sharpenings

Not bad for $65.
I'm not a fan of bolsters but this one is heavily tapered and recessed so it doesn't interfere with sharpening. So I might give it a shot.

Hard competition in the TojiDP line and entry level Macs.
 
Tojiro, located in Tsubame City, a historical sword and cutlery center, has been making cooking knives since 1953.
'Misen" was just created by cloudfunding and manufactured in China.
I don't see much competition other than perhaps sales to first time customers who are in the ginsu-knife category of cutlery knowledge.
 
KenHash said:
Tojiro, located in Tsubame City, a historical sword and cutlery center, has been making cooking knives since 1953.
'Misen" was just created by cloudfunding and manufactured in China.
I don't see much competition other than perhaps sales to first time customers who are in the ginsu-knife category of cutlery knowledge.
Click to expand...

Yea I'd take the Tojiro's any day.
 
Heavy promotion and a good review from a popular food blogger Kenji Lopez-Alt, primarily the recommendation by Kenji, are what blew this thing up. For all of the talk abut "food professionals" and "industrial designers" coming up with the design, I still haven't seen a mention of a knife maker being involved in the project.I guess that kind sorta stealing a Henckels pattern was good enough. ;)
 
Stealing, seeking inspiration, kickstarter is all about new mousetraps. the trick is to actually produce a product, get it to market and not loose money. I figure, more power to them, at the end of the day its buyer beware. I avoid buying any product based on long term service from the the maker, unless the product stands well on its own, and the company has a very solid rep, but at the end of the day, companies go away, policies change.

But for a lot of people, its not that big a deal. Cutco is doing pretty well, and they have a very similar market proposition.
 
This knife received a glowing review from Serious Eats based on a prototype. It blew up he internet and sold 13,000 units and raised $1.1 million with its Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign when the original campaign was only looking to raise $25 000. It got all kinds of press mostly because of the success the guys had raising money. Most of those media outlets assumed the product was as advertised. So here we are, almost a year later and as of last week, none had been delivered. IIRC, their premised delivery date was March. They are several months behind schedule. promising September delivery and people seem to be a bit unhappy. Is this par for the course for these crowdfunding campaigns? I have heard of a couple of others that raised a lot of money and ended up not really delivering. I have looked at the lis of attempted knifeman projects on Kickstarter and the vast majority fail to fund. Do any of you that this might kill off that particular funding option for knife makers?
 
just looked at the site. deliveries will be this fall ??? more details if you give them your email address. as far as life time sharpening, the site says more details at a later date.
scott
 
Bulat just funded 707k of his 25k kickstarter goal. Hes selling mass produced san mai blades with VG10 cores i believe.
 
But is he DELIVERING those knives? That is the problem so far with Misen and you can't get "updates" unless you have already given the money, so no real way to tell what they are saying other than reading stray customer comments. It appears that Bulat is only making that info available to "pre-paid customers" too. I hope he is able to deliver in a timely fashion so that the crowdfunding option isn't queered for other people.
gabe4183 said:
Bulat just funded 707k of his 25k kickstarter goal. Hes selling mass produced san mai blades with VG10 cores i believe.
Click to expand...
 
IDK I thought about doing kick starter but i was like.. what if i get 5000 orders.... thats a BIGGGG jump in production! lol Could you imagine start to finish doing 13 knives a day for a full year with no days off? lol
 
Yeah, that would suck. LOL With that said, if you do try something like this, you had better have a plan if it blows up. Most of the knife related campaigns that I have seen never get off the ground, but a couple, including some that REALLY make me scratch my head, have apparently succeeded to varying degrees.
gabe4183 said:
IDK I thought about doing kick starter but i was like.. what if i get 5000 orders.... thats a BIGGGG jump in production! lol Could you imagine start to finish doing 13 knives a day for a full year with no days off? lol
Click to expand...
 
all very interesting, considering i had a project denied because it was a knife. (weapon) even though i explicitly stated it was for culinary use. I was just experimenting using that platform to keep track of group buy/builds. Turns out its a heck of a lot easier just using your own forum.
 
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