Please critique my work

J

joedhiggins

Joined
May 31, 2016
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485
Folks,

Here are my first kitchen knives that I am reasonably happy with. Please let me know what you think. Thanks for any input.

1084 Chef's knife in African Blackwood and Bloodwood, with hamon:









1095 Nakiri in Bocote and Ironwood:



 
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The mork is very good.

My only suggestion would be that the blade on the chefs knife should have a straight edge to the heel. It is curved all along its edge as-is, which makes many cuts difficult. While many cuts start with a rocker stroke, they usually end with a straight push cut.

Same goes for the nikiri. It should be laser straight right up to the tip end, where it can round up if desired. It looks a little curved. Nikiri are mainly used for slicing and mincing vegetables, which requires a perfect contact with the cutting board all along the edge.
 
I agree with stacy points with the chef. the nakiri looks pretty straightr to me and there is something about it...you nailed the aesthetic and proportions very well atleast to me thats what i want in a nakiri. I wish I could use it right now ! hehe
Only other thing you should consider is the angle of the handle in relation to the blade. I dont mind a handle that is parallel with the straight part of the edge or preferably 1 or 2 degree elevated, but you handles appear to drop a little, Ive found this makes it more difficult to use the heel section of the edge.

Most important though, how do you like using them? What types of cuts do you like to use?
 
Your Mork is nice how is your Mindy?
 
I approve.

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Gents, thank you very much for the advice and critique.

The Nakiri edge is flat from the heel to about 1 inch from the tip, where the curve begins. It seems to cut very well, and I enjoyed using it. Alas it was a present for my little brother so I shall need to make another for myself. I think the handle on this one ended up parallel to the cutting edg,. I will try doing one with a very slight upward slope and see how I like it. Thanks.

As to the shape of the chef's knife, I think I will likely agree with the straight edge, though I just completed it and haven't really cooked with it yet. I probably should have just made a more traditional blade profile, but I own a couple very nice Deba style chef's knives, and just thought I would experiment a bigger belly on the blade to see how I liked it (aesthetically, I do). On this one, I can definitely see that the edge to handle angle that you are referring to timos.

From a cutting standpoint, I rarely if ever rock the blade at all. Which leads me to use Nakri style blades for nearly all my cutting. My thought with the belly was that since I generally cut against my left thumbnail with my thumb resting on top of the food, I could instead cut with my thumb on the cutting board and with the extra curve it would put the forward portion of the blade over the food. I just tried this out, and while it worked well, it was not really any better than the way I had been cutting before, just different. The chef's knife seemed to perform well on cuts less than about 3" long. the longer cuts were more inconvenient than they would have been using a Nakiri because of the need to push the slice much farther forward because of the additional curve of the blade.

In the following photo, I liked the way it cut the mushrooms with all the various cut styles. It wasn't any worse than a good nakiri on the short french cut green beans (though I don't think it would work nearly as well on a full length bean). For the chopped and diced onions, it was great, for the julienned onion, the curve was a bit excessive and a Nakiri is definately be preferable. For the pepper, I was very pleased. Overall, I don't think it quite as versatile as a more traditionally shaped blade, but I do like it for cutting smaller things. The handle feel is good, but I like octagonal Wa handles, so that is unsurprising. Probably my favorite thing about it is the height of the false tang, which gives a really nice grip for delicate work.

 
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One more question for you folks, I have tried searching for this, and can't find a good answer. My experience with cooking knives has been almost entirely with double bevel styles. I have some interest in making a Usuba or Yanagiba style single bevel knife. My understanding is that these are generally ground with a single 8 degree bevel (and sometimes with a steeper micro bevel?). Based on the apparent height of these grinds, I am guessing that the blade thickness above the grind is about 3/16". This seems very thick. I am assuming that the blade has no taper from spine to the start of the primary bevel, or the spine would be enormous. Even so, it is generally about 3 times thicker than I generally prefer for my standard knives. Am I missing something here? Is the tall bevel actually a secondary bevel at something like 3-4 degrees, with an 8 degree micro bevel? Thanks.

Also, thanks for correcting my stupid spelling error.
 
3/16" is about right for the spine on a big Yanagi-ba, but I mainly use 1/8" stock.

Just grind the primary bevel to the height desired and when sharpening put on a tiny micro-bevel at 15° as the secondary.

If you have the specialized wheels or platens, adding ura-saki to the back side is good, but you can just flat lap that side if you wish.

Usuba look nice with traditional kata-kiri-ha, but are just as good with a double bevel. I probably sell more with the double bevel. They are usually thin, with 1/8" being the max, and 1/16" being not too thin. I use .07" and .10" stock.
 
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