I was raised by a child of The Great Depression, so I have the stench of cheapness about me. I'm not a bad person, but I have a perverse attraction for functional low-rent things that are bright and shiny. And by low-rent, I mean cheap!
This Xin Cutlery "Kritsuke (sic)" has an 8.25"/210 mm. blade of Sandvik 14C28N steel, and it weighs 159 grams. The primary grind is about 2.44 degrees, which is pretty thin by my standards! The edge is pretty straight until it gently sweeps up toward the tip. There are no fancy grinds, the spine is even in width until the tip. The spine has a good crown. The choil has a comfortable radius as well, which is handy as that surface can be tough to smooth out if you don't have the right size tools and the steel is hard. The first 4" or so of the edge were sharp, the rest not so sharp. I don't care about that as I like to sharpen but someone else might.
The Xin petty knife has a 120 mm. M390 blade. This one cost a little more. The blade was very sharp out of the box.
But Holy Cow, the handles were so bad, it caused you to wonder how these knives got out of the factory without another half-hour to get them from unfinished to sweet. The handle was good quality rosewood, with nice light buffalo horn ferrules and end caps and nickel silver spacers. The problem was the NS spacers were a lot larger than the other parts, and they stood out like railroad ties, all the way around the handle. I can't imagine many folks keeping these things, It would be normal to return them as "They missed the last few finishing stations!" They didn't do any leveling after assembling the handle, which couldn't take more than a few minutes in a factory, and would have completely solved the problem. I rarely ever return anything, and I thought about returning these knives.
But I could see these as killer knives for the price if I could just grind the NS spacers flush, then polish everything up and re-finish the handles. So I got out the Atoma diamond plates and went 140/400/600/1200. I lubed with water, and stayed on the 140 until I saw rosewood dust in the swarf. The 140 actually took a while as the NS parts were so far oversize, but the following grits went quickly under the diamonds. Flat surfaces, easy work.
I polished them up with 2,400/3,200/5,000 paper and used some dark brown alcohol-based dye to light up the rosewood. I sealed the wood with three coats of gunstock oil and a coat of oil-wax cutting board oil. The next time I break out the water stones I will put a fine edge on the k-knife.
All told, about three easy hours tops, and it could have been half that if I were not so fussy about the final finish on the handles. The handles are beautiful once you get them flat, but unless you have the tools and are okay with this kind of work they should be a hard pass!
The big one has fine, kitchen-proven Swedish steel, the petty is hard German M390. I hope! Both are made in China with the common Japanese traits of very thin, relatively hard blades with wa handles, but they show divergence from the traditional pattern by using simple mono-steel construction with stainless steel, and maybe slightly more straight profiles. The QC problem is confusing to me because they got so many things right on these knives, I don't understand how they could have missed something so obvious as the unfinished handles.
This Xin Cutlery "Kritsuke (sic)" has an 8.25"/210 mm. blade of Sandvik 14C28N steel, and it weighs 159 grams. The primary grind is about 2.44 degrees, which is pretty thin by my standards! The edge is pretty straight until it gently sweeps up toward the tip. There are no fancy grinds, the spine is even in width until the tip. The spine has a good crown. The choil has a comfortable radius as well, which is handy as that surface can be tough to smooth out if you don't have the right size tools and the steel is hard. The first 4" or so of the edge were sharp, the rest not so sharp. I don't care about that as I like to sharpen but someone else might.
The Xin petty knife has a 120 mm. M390 blade. This one cost a little more. The blade was very sharp out of the box.
But Holy Cow, the handles were so bad, it caused you to wonder how these knives got out of the factory without another half-hour to get them from unfinished to sweet. The handle was good quality rosewood, with nice light buffalo horn ferrules and end caps and nickel silver spacers. The problem was the NS spacers were a lot larger than the other parts, and they stood out like railroad ties, all the way around the handle. I can't imagine many folks keeping these things, It would be normal to return them as "They missed the last few finishing stations!" They didn't do any leveling after assembling the handle, which couldn't take more than a few minutes in a factory, and would have completely solved the problem. I rarely ever return anything, and I thought about returning these knives.
But I could see these as killer knives for the price if I could just grind the NS spacers flush, then polish everything up and re-finish the handles. So I got out the Atoma diamond plates and went 140/400/600/1200. I lubed with water, and stayed on the 140 until I saw rosewood dust in the swarf. The 140 actually took a while as the NS parts were so far oversize, but the following grits went quickly under the diamonds. Flat surfaces, easy work.
I polished them up with 2,400/3,200/5,000 paper and used some dark brown alcohol-based dye to light up the rosewood. I sealed the wood with three coats of gunstock oil and a coat of oil-wax cutting board oil. The next time I break out the water stones I will put a fine edge on the k-knife.
All told, about three easy hours tops, and it could have been half that if I were not so fussy about the final finish on the handles. The handles are beautiful once you get them flat, but unless you have the tools and are okay with this kind of work they should be a hard pass!
The big one has fine, kitchen-proven Swedish steel, the petty is hard German M390. I hope! Both are made in China with the common Japanese traits of very thin, relatively hard blades with wa handles, but they show divergence from the traditional pattern by using simple mono-steel construction with stainless steel, and maybe slightly more straight profiles. The QC problem is confusing to me because they got so many things right on these knives, I don't understand how they could have missed something so obvious as the unfinished handles.
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