u/AdhesivenessOwn4017

Hi there TCK, so this is a big one for me, since my calls into BST have been answered and summoned a knife that I was hoping to hold in my hands for quite a while. And what better to share this, then on Tanaka Tuesday.

I don’t think it needs a lot of introduction here. Forged by Y. Tanaka and sharpened by N. Myojin (Izo), it’s a stunning piece of knife making. I’m in love with pretty much everything about it. The excellent Tanaka profile and clad line with quite a few islands as well as the amazing grind and finish from Myojin. I tried my best to capture all of it in the photos.

Thanks to u/donobag, who was kind enough to pass it on to me, it arrived in excellent condition (essentially BNIB) and with a super sharp edge put on.

I will folllow up with some thoughts on performance later. For now the lacquer is off, knife is ready to be put to work.

Thanks for looking.

Below some detailed specs:

Brand: Hitohira
Smith: Y. Tanaka
Sharpener: Izo (N. Myojin)
Profile: Gyuto
Size: 240mm
Steel: Yasuki Blue (Aogami) #1, Soft Stainless Clad
Handle: Ziricote & Buffalo Horn Ferrule Octagonal
Total Length: 391mm
Edge Length: 235mm
Handle to Tip Length: 245mm
Blade Height: 52mm
Thickness: 2.8mm
Handle Length: 146mm
Weight: 182g

Hi there TCK,

Long time no see, if been caught up with work and family, so I couldn’t share as much lately as I would have liked too. Also today I will keep it on the short side, but I wanted to share with you an amazing knife that came my way a little while back.

Meet my Manaka x Xinguo Honesuki, 150mm long, made from ATS34, sporting Manaka’s unique tsuchime and that insane grind and mirror kasumi polish from Xinguo. It comes with a hefty rounded spine (4.7 - 2.7mm) and a beautifully chamfered heel. For its size it’s heavy (213g), but that’s a good thing.

Why did I buy such a niche knife as a home cook? Because it looks badass and I wanted to get into taking apart chickens, specifically spatchcocking. I’ve already put it to the test, I have nothing to compare it too, but it performs great, very precise, very sharp, very sturdy.

Enjoy the photos and let me know your thoughts.

So long ✌️

What’s up TCK,

Back at it with a new knife for the cutting board, this time one that I’ve been after for a while. Meet the Tetsujin ginsan kasumi k-tip in 210 mm. Forged by Tamura Toru and sharpened by the one and only Naohito Moyjin.

I’ve had this one since a while now and got to use more and more over the last month. Long story short it’s great, the blade is thin, the grind amazing. It cuts through produce with a very elegant cutting feel. There is some stiction going on, but personally I’m not bothered by that, as long as I can easily wipe everything of the blade, that’s fine by me.
So for me it delivers what I was hoping for a very accurate, effortless cutting feel. I get now why Moyjin sharpened knives are in hot demand.

It’s also my first k-tip gyuto, I do like the profile. Since I anyway do more push / pull cutting then rock chopping, the flatter profile at the tip works. The k-tip does add a nice amount of precision for detail cuts.

Fit and finish is fantastic, everything looks clean, crisp and precise. The treatment of the spine and choil are top notch and make the blade very comfortable in hand. The kasumi finish is wonderful, it’s full with little details and textures that really make it come alive. Arguably one of the nicest kasumi finishes if seen so far. If anyone knows how they do it, I.e. sandblasting, natural stone finish, etc., I would be keen to hear about it. The clad line is beautifully executed as well. The polished stainless cladding right above really highlights the line as such on the blade. Depending on the light the clad line appears white or sometimes black, which makes it intriguing to look at.

The lacewood handle with the dark horn ferrule pairs well with the knife, the craftsmanship here is also excellent. The machi gap is done really well, they really have figured out the best proportions for those.

Regarding the ginsan steel, this has performed very well on the board so far. I haven’t had the need to sharpen it yet, so I’m curious to see how it holds up against my carbon steel knives. Being my first and only fully stainless gyuto, it’s a nice addition to the knife drawer, since you don’t have to pay so much attention to it in terms of keeping it dry.
Especially when you have guests over and have a chat while cooking, or running after your toddler because he found the power outlets again.

So yes amazing knife and excited to be part of the Tetsujin gang now!

Thanks for reading and happy cutting!

PS: If you want to read about how I managed to stain my brand new knife handle and cleaned it up again you can do that here.

Edit: Forgot to add some specs, so look no further:

- Profile: K-Tip Gyuto
- Size: 210mm
- Steel Type: Stainless Steel
- Steel: Yasuki Silver #3 (Ginsan), Soft Stainless Clad
- Handle: Taihei Lacewood & Buffalo Horn Ferrule
- Total Length: 352mm
- Edge Length: 217mm
- Handle to Tip Length: 201mm
- Blade Height: 47mm
- Thickness: 2.8mm
- Handle Length: 132mm
- Weight: 161g
- Hand Orientation: Ambidextrous
- Hardness: 63±1HRC

Edit 2: Realized I forgot a choil shot will add this later in the comments

Hello there TCK,

Today’s a first for me and I’m quite excited about it! I decided to change the handle on my Ittosai Kotetsu Tanaka 240 B1 extra tall. I had that idea for a while, after seeing a couple of others here do the same. A while back I also asked for your opinion on which handle to choose. Back then though the handle didn’t fully convince me, so I kept looking. I recently found a beautiful sugi cedar wood handle, with a nice cream colored and marbled horn ferrule, made by Riisgaardcraft, which I thought would fit well.

Today was finally the day that I decided to face the daunting task of the handle replacement for the first time.

Starting with the fact that the handle was epoxied, which meant I had to break the handle open. Easier said than done, I had to first figure out how to set this up properly. For starters I tried to hold the blade in a vise, but starting to hammer with a chisel into the wood, I was afraid to damage the blade, or have it slip out of the vise. Instead I tried to lay it flat on a piece of wood, pressing the handle down with the chisel, so the blade would hover sideways above the wood piece and then chisel into the handle. This worked well and from that point on it was pretty straightforward.

Next was cleaning up the tang, I started scraping off the epoxy with my higonokami, which didn’t work well, so I took the chisel and carefully scraped the epoxy off. This worked quite nicely. Sharp flat edges are the superior choice for scraping in the end.
Once the rough stuff was gone, I cleaned up the residue with acetone and diamond paste (1.5 microns). After all I needed the top part of the tang looking its best for the machi gap.

After that I started to file the hole larger so I could fit the tang well. I used a flat and a round wood rasp for this. It went relatively quick due to the softness of the cedar. But it still took a while since it was a constant back and forth between filing and checking the fit by inserting the tang, and then looking where to adjust the hole for a better fit. I finished with a quite tight hole, where the tang would fully insert but a tiny bit of pressure was needed to go fully in.

Once that was done, I moved on to glueing the blade into the new handle. With a hot glue gun I made small strips on a piece of aluminum foil to pull off and shove into the hole, to then melt it with the heated tang. Worked well but next time I’ll just cut off some small chips of the glue stick, will probably work the same, be less messy and much faster. I heated the tang with a gas torch got the end a bit redish, and held the blade very close to the tang to see that the temperature on the blade itself didn’t get to hot. Once hot in it went, the hot tang burned the hole a bit more open.

Alignment, this was trickier than I thought, the first try I botched because I couldn’t see the blade or the handle well enough due to the protective wrapping. So once the whole thing was solid and the wrapping was removed, I noticed alignment was way off in both axis. Not good, so it went into the oven at 95°C for 10 minutes to soften the glue and get the blade back out. I noticed that I had to file the hole larger, which was quite messy with the glue inside. Back in the blade went after a little heat from the torch and this time I waited till the glue was slightly set and adjusted the alignment in hand. Worked well enough.

There it was, my first handle replacement. I’m super happy with the outcome and am stoked how well the handle fits the blade and also its patina. But more than that it was a great learning experience and somehow got me bonded closer with my knife.

I also want to thank everyone here who gave me advice when I asked or in general shared their experiences and insights to read and educate myself on. In addition I want to give Bo from Riisgaardcraft a big shoutout, he helped me a lot in preparing buying the right tools and giving me great advice on how to do it. He’s a pleasure to work with and makes beautiful handles. Notice how the horn ferrule goes over the end of the tang? Special stuff you don’t see everyday.

So that’s it, mission accomplished. Thanks for reading and till next time!

Tl;dr: I put a beautiful new handle on my blade.

Hello TCK,

It’s a NKD for me and quite the one, with a Hitohira Ashi 210 W2 gyuto. It was a lucky find over on kitchintools a while back, and I finally got it out of its box onto the board.

Long story short, all that’s written about Ashis is true! This thing is performance, performance, performance. It whispers through carrots, onions, potatoes, protein, with almost no food sticking (at least not in such a way that you need to pry off the produce).

It’s really one of those knives where you do your first cut, stop and take a short moment to realize what just happened. Only other knife I had that with was my Tanaka x Kyuzo B1 210. In this case though the combination of the monosteel W2 and the Ashi grind works wonders. It’s light and nimble at 141g, but comes with great feedback and presence on the board. The balance point is right where the blade meets the handle. This version is quite a bit heavier than its Swedish stainless ho wood handled counterpart (107g listed), but I personally don’t mind that, on the contrary.

The only little qualm I have is that the tip hovers over the bench when laying on the counter. That means if you accidentally push it, it starts to spin into the next best thing close to it. Not ideal if the edge hits into something hard.

In terms of looks it’s simple yet elegant. It matches the aesthetics of a precision tool. The plain brushed finish of the vertical mikagi, the barely visible Hitohira kanji and missing steel stamp, give it a ghost like appearance. The translucent horn ferrul on the ebony handle compliments this well, it fits the blade.

Let’s talk patina, here the monosteel really comes to shine. I mean just look at those blues. That’s after slicing a hot rib eye, and letting it sit for some minutes. Here the minimal blade becomes a canvas for the most gorgeous patina I have in my collection.

So Overall it’s really a fantastic knive and I would be pick up a 240 version without hesitation. Make the steel B2 and there’s a grail knife for me.

Since there are many knowledgeable people here, could someone explain to me the difference between monosteel and honyaki. I understand honyaki and its differential heat treatment, but monosteel eludes me. Does it have anything to do with the knives being stamped?

Here are some specs:

Size: 210mm
Steel: Mono White 2
Handle: Ebony & Buffalo Horn Ferrule Octagonal
Total Length: 357mm
Edge Length: 202mm
Handle two Tip Length: 214mm
Blade Height: 42mm
Thickness: 2.2mm
Handle Length: 140mm
Weight: 141g

Thanks for reading and till next time! 👋

Tl;dr: fantastic knife go get one.

Hi there TCK BST,

I’m looking to sell this bnib Hatsukokoro Shinkiro that I bought from Meesterslijpers a while back. It’s a great knife and I can see why so many people have it in their collection, but it didn’t click for me. And since I’m not a big fan of keeping knives without intend to use them, I thought it’s better to find it a new home.

The knife comes without the the Hatsukokoro kanji which is a nice touch imo. Makes it look quite clean.

Since it’s bnib, I would ask 400€ + shipping. Payment via PayPal G&S.

Let me know if you have any questions.