# Boning / Fillet or Boning & Fillet



## jayeeeteeess (Mar 18, 2012)

I'm looking at acquiring a boning knife and a fillet knife or a dual purpose boning / fillet knife. The type of boning that would be done is primarily small chickens and trimming, while the type of filleting would be smaller fish like branzino and red snapper as well as removing skin off of striped bass or salmon fillets, but nothing too crazy. I'm looking at the Shun Classic line and here are what seem to be the 3 choices:

4.5" Honesuki

The Honesuki looks like a little beast and appears that it would be very helpful when breaking down poultry. I use a much bulkier knife in the same fashion as the honesuki is intended, but the honesuki looks extremely efficient and durable.

7" Flexible Fillet Knife

I had a hard time finding information / reviews / videos compared to other Shun Classic knives. Other than a video demonstration of bending the blade to illustrate its flexibility, there doesn't appear to be any videos of it in action.

6" Gokujo (Labled in various places as a boning knife or a fillet knife or a combination boning / fillet knife). By looks along, the extremely skinny tip would worry me to use it as a boning knife, but it did appear to be useful for trimming ribs, racks and larger cuts of meat as well as removing silver skin. I couldn't find any video evidence of it being used as a fillet knife.

Ideally I would like 1 all purpose knife, but it seems that I most likely would be winding up with 2 of the 3 listed. (I would like to avoid getting all 3 if possible.)

Any input would be great!


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## chrisscratch (Nov 25, 2014)

I love this knife here that my wife bought as an anniversary gift. It's a henkels. Has a nice flexible blade and holds an edge for a long time... Just a few strokes on the honing steel and it can split hairs.





  








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chrisscratch


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Nov 25, 2014








Here is a video of this knife actually in use...


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## spoiledbroth (Sep 25, 2014)

considering what you're going to be doing with the knife, get a honesuki or just buy a twin pro boning knife. At least that's what I buy. They're 20 bucks at my local shop and I usually sharpen a few times before binning them. I beat the hell out of my boning knives though.


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## millionsknives (Apr 25, 2014)

I use a honesuki and a deba now. I'm blocking the fish for sushi cuts though. Flex boning knife is probably good for most people and has a lower learning curve.


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