strategy9
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- Apr 27, 2015
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A tale of 2 knives: one retailing at $100+ and the other right around $50
So... my wife got me a Katz Kagemusha w/ gut hook for my birthday (12/12), as something I was looking for as a new work knife. A knife with a gut hook, using the gut hook to pull through the plastic wrapping around palletized glass.
Now mind you, made in Japan, (purportedly better then made in China right), the overall form and function of the knife has been great. The gut hook works awesome for what I intended it to do, taking a lot of the "extra" usage away from the main blade. The mainblade then is primarily only used to cut through the wrap over the cardboard corners of said pallets. So the edge does drag through that abrasive cardboard medium...
Anyways, I've used the Katz exclusively as my work knife since receiving it 12/12. I work 7 days out of every 14, and had nearly 2 weeks off between Christmas and New years. I shelved it about 2 weeks ago until I can get around to sharpening it, probably today.
Katz uses a proprietary steel known only as XT80, and most often it is compared to a "propietary version of 440c".
So anyways, long before I owned the Katz I carried my Kizlyar Supreme Vega as my exclusive work knife. Made in Russia using good ol' actual 440c according to them, (of coarse, but for all intents and purposes there's really no reason to lie about it s it is not a special or exclusive or hard to make blend, it's just old school stainless steel by today's standards. Sure some unscrupulous manufactures may claim 440c but actually use 440b or a, or 8cr13mov, but I digress), This knife is the one I went back to after shelving the Katz.
Now, 1 mos. of classroom, reading SOP's aside, I've been at this new job for 5 mos. now. Both knives doing the EXACT SAME JOBS, both roughly the same sized blades with very similar hollow grinds, (the Katz having a bit more belly), and while the Katz was shelved after only one month, with more then half that time off due to my schedule, the Vega I have owned for over a year, (since my days at the steel foundry), and which has only gotten the edge touched up once, (quick, a year ago). and was also used as a work knife when I went back onto a roofing crew this past summer, it has also seen 4 mos. of work exclusively doing the exact same job as the Katz.
Also keep in mind that with the Katz, the gut hook did a lot of the "extra" work pulling through the plastic, whereas the Kizlyar does all the work, so a longer time period doing a little bit extra;
let's see how their edges compare:
I'm willing to at least for now, consider the possibility of the Katz factory grind possibly "burning" the edge a bit, leaving it weaker then the steel behind it? I'll certainly find out after I sharpen it, as I'm going to have to remove a lot of metal to get those chips out, but I do know the "quick touch up" that the Kizlyar's factory edge recieved, after cutting nylon straps, plastic pallet wraps, and opening sand bags and such at the steel foundry, was not even near that chipped up, and it was only the edge of the edge that I touched up with a bit of a micro bevel.
Let it be noted also, the Kizlyar is also currently shelved until sharpening, just this past weekend, and I am currently using my Real Steel Gerfalcon in 14c28n at work... I wonder how it will hold up after a month or 2???
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