What makes a great kitchen knife

[Justin Schmidt]

Hey all. So I would like to try my hand at forging some kitchen knives. Was wondering what you experts look for in a good kitchen knife. Steel type, blade length, handle length, wa handle or full tang, heel height, spine thickness etc. I wanna make a great product but I don't know any chefs to bounce ideas off of.
Thanks in advance

 

[jc57]

People look for different things in a kitchen knife, depending on what they are going to be using it for, and how they like to use their knives. All of the features you mentioned can vary from knife to knife, even with the same owner.

I would suggest looking at some of the web sites that sell Japanese kitchen knives and look at the wide variety just within a single style, such as a gyuto, which is the equivalent of a general purpose chef's knife. Korin, MTCKitchen, JapaneseChefKnife, JapaneseKnifeImports, ChefKnivesToGo are all places to browse and see what is already in the market.