Chef's Knife 210mm Japanese Aogami steel Damascus Double Bevel Gyuto

First, it's shipped with an edge which is not really defined. That's pretty common for knives made for the Japanese market. So you are going to need to either sharpen it yourself or have someone else who's experienced with hand sharpening of Japanese blades to sharpen it. That means staying away from anyone with a motorized grinder.

Second, it's Damascus. Unless you want to spend an extreme amount of time and effort polishing and re-etching the blade to highlight the Damascus cladding every time there's a scratch, it will look awful after a bit of use. Personally, I wouldn't want to bother with Damascus. San mai construction (3 layer) is fine for me, but nothing more elaborate.

Third, that's an extremely flat blade profile. At 210 mm (7 sun), it looks more line an oversized santoku, rather than a gyuto, at least to my eye.

Fourth, there's no mention of who the maker is. You don't know how good the heat treatment is. I'm not a bladesmith, so I'm not sure how forgiving Blue No. 2 steel is when heat treated (annealing, quenching tempering).

Galley Swiller

 

Japanesenaturalstones.com

Itinomonn or munetoshi lines. 15% off sale, today is the last day

 

About the only regular Aogami cored knife I have is a JCK Original Kagayaki Blue No. 2 steel clad 240mm gyuto (this being a house brand knife from japanesechefsknife.com). They run $$114 for a 210mm blade and $138 for a 240mm blade, with shipping being $7 world-wide. That works out, including shipping, to 102.85 euros for the 210mm and 123.25 euros for the 240mm (at a current exchange rate of 0.85 euros to the dollar).

This is the web site: https://japanesechefsknife.com/coll...to-180mm-to-240mm-3-sizes?variant=29165073987

Of course, these are western-styled, riveted handles. The blade is somewhat asymetric, so you will need to choose whether you want a right handed or left handed knife and sharpen it accordingly. If you are looking for a wa-handled knife, it will probably cost you more for an Aogami steel blade.

I do have and much appreciate several Hiromoto Aogami Super gyutos (also acquired from JCK), but those are long gone from the marketplace, due to the retirement of the head of Hiromoto knives.

GS

 

Why aogami? It's a little irritating to sharpen, and seems unhelpful in a knife like this. Do you have some particular reason to go for that steel?

 

It's not shirogami, but in the grand scheme of things, all carbon steels are easy to sharpen.

 

Jon of JKI considers AS the best tradeoff between sharpness and edge retention. In that category I personally am a big fan of SRS-15

 

Fair enough!

 

wait, what? I like blue #1 for that... blue super is edge retention at the cost of all else. Its honestly not my favorite steel, though there are a few options in that steel i like. However, I tend to prefer other steels.

 

Sorry for misquoting you there Jon, write it off to creative memory.

 

no worries... who knows, i might have said something like that at some point, but of course opinions change over time... for quite some time i've felt like blue super is not my favorite. but what does that really mean? Its not a bad steel by any means. Especially with a good heat treatment, its very capable of being a great performing steel. For me, its just a function of personal preference. I hope people dont read too much into it