Holy freakin Christ, Kaleo.
Did you just make this post ?!?
No fist fight, no knife fight, no samurai fight - you just made a post I 110% have to agree with from start to finish. Holy crap, I’m positively surprised.
I think you may be right on this. For reasons I’ve never understood, high end knives become status symbols, not unlike designer clothing and accessories.
Well, all I can say is that, if you’re competent with freehanding knives on stones, you’re in a quite small percentile of the buyers we’re talking about. Harder blades do feel different, but few people sit down to the stones just to compare A-B.
I’ve dabbled in all sorts of fixed-blade knives, largely culinary, utility, working, woodcraft and camp knives. I’ve done some forging, but most of my work was stock relief. I worked in my father’s packing plant, so I’ve been around knives for over 50 years. Profiles, steels and grinds were always left to clients. My personal preferences are for wooden scales, convex edges and steels like 52100, ATS-34 and D2. I’ve never set out trying to emulate a Japanese look.
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2 examples (mostly to augment the discussion between @Claus og @ShDK, but also for anyone else following along) of gyutos with yo (western) handles and blade steel exhibiting preferred characteristics:
The first is a 218mm long blade with a Purpleheart wood handle.
Handle length: 130mm.
Blade height, heel: 45mm
Width of full tang: 3mm
Width of spine above heel/middle/1cm from tip: 2.3mm/1.8mm/1mm
Weight: 150g.
.
The second is a 243mm long blade with a Caribbean Rosewood handle.
Handle length: 130mm.
Blade height, heel: 50mm
Width of full tang: 3mm
Width of spine above heel/middle/1cm from tip: 2.5mm/2.2mm/1.2mm
Weight: 200g.
The spines on all of my knives are rounded for comfort, and the blades incorporate a distal taper, symmetric tapered cross-section, and convex edge.
The steel on both knives is D2 stainless tool steel, hardened by a specialist heat treater to 61 HRC.
Since it’s a tool steel, D2 has the ability to be simultaneously hard (for narrower edge creation) and tough (for chipping resistance). It’s also extremely wear and abrasion resistant, which means it holds its edge for a longer time than most other knife steels. This wear and abrasion resistance creates the single biggest complaint of D2: that it’s difficult to sharpen. Also, it has less rust resistance than other stainless steels, and that bothers the folks who want more of a “maintenance-free” knife. So, besides D2, I’ve added S35VN to my raw stock options. It’s definitely more rust resistant, and it retains the ability to be both hard and tough. Also, most folks feel it’s easier to sharpen than D2. I haven’t noticed much (if any) difference from D2 on the shaping and grinding side of things.
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Showoff!
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Both of them are really beautiful knives💪
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There is a wide range of kinds of snobbery…
Look at my knives. They all match. Plus the handles are red.
Look at this knife. It cost more than the monthly payment on my Porsche Carrera.
Look at this knife. It was made by someone I found in an alley in Japan. You’ve never heard of him.
Look at the sheer beauty of this knife. I’m almost afraid to use it.
Look at this knife. It lets me do this kind of cut (which I never actually use) to perfection.
Look at this food. Hard to believe I knocked it out with this old Dexter, huh?
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LOL, sorry, I wasn’t trying to compete! I just wanted to add some examples of knives with western handles that were durable and lightweight; “laser-like” cutters without the associated fragility.
One of my first customer knives was dropped on its tip, onto a tile floor. The customer contacted me to say the only damage was a small flat on the tip, and was easily repaired with a few passes on a 1000 grit water stone. More recently, a local “celebrity” chef I had given a knife to commented back to me that he was amazed at how long it held its edge – far longer than any of his other knives.
I know you’ve talked only a little about the knives you’ve made, but I’d love to see any examples you might still have hanging around! 
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I have seen plenty knife chipping – Western style knives or Japanese style knives or any. Most of the time the cause is simply misusing the knives. Misusing in a way that most knives would suffer. In that spirit, one also say carbon steel knives are more “fragile” than stainless steel knives. I have seen many knife damages done by soaking knives in sink or putting them into electric dish washer when they should not be.
Just recently, I help fixed a knife which has several pitting and chippings along the edge due to sitting in water too long. What is that the knife edge started pit/rust and weaken, and then the little chipping started to occur. By the way, not all stainless steel knives are equally stainless, I think that is what make many Henckels and Wusthof knives stand out being more rust resistance than many other knives.
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In my experience. What makes a knife more or less prone to chipping is mostly grind and geometry. I’m not saying that steel type has nothing to do with it. But it’s not the main cause.
As you point out. All knives can be damaged if the user is careless enough.
I think the myth that carbon steel is more chippy then stainless comes from most carbon steel knives being made thinner and harder. This makes them potentially sharper and easier to maintain on a stone.
But a ksab carbon or a windmühlenmesser carbon, both made from c75 are no more chippy then a Zwilling or wusthof
You should be showing off! I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: You have "“The Eye” when it comes to blade profiles.
Everyone else take note: you can’t teach The Eye.
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My experience is similar to yours. I have a CCK thick cleaver, a Japanese style deba and honsuki. All are made with relatively harder steel and all are designed to handle semi tough jobs like cutting through fish and chicken bones. None of them has chipped so far.
I think the assertion that ‘Japanese harder steel knives are easier to chip’ is a mix of multiple things. First, many hard steel Japanese knives have thinner grind and sharpened to a steeper angle.
Not a soul alive who can taste a finished dish and identify the knife used to prep the ingredients. And the knife used rarely makes a difference. Basically none.
Nothing more pretentious than cooks prepping meals for four (20 minutes work) going into a long harangue about handle comfort, edge longevity, and a discourse on knife steels.
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Examine all knives, food processor blades, etc. used in prepping a meal before setting the finished food on the table.
I have seen expensive Japanese knives lose a quarter inch chunk of steel and a chef/owner turn white as a sheet. Don’t think it can’t happen. It can.
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I agree… nothing prevent you from making great food with a cheap knife. If it makes you happy to use expensive knives, do it. It must be up to the user to choose the tools he prefer.
And I have repaired broken tips and big chips in the edge of Fdick, Zwilling and wusthof knives. All knives can be damaged if you use them foolish enough.
I’m not a pro chef. I simply like to cook.
My profession is certified truck mechanic. And I can say that even for the simplest of handtools. There is a big difference in quality and function. A 22mm wrench can actually be worth 3 times the price of another 22mm wrench. But when the truck leaves the shop, the costumer can’t tell what wrench I used.
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Same here
Same can be said about everything too. One can get from point A to point B with an inexpensive or expensive car. Same for any cookware really.
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The point I’m making here is this: where did the steel go from that chunk gone from the knife?
The uninitiated see a pretty knife that’s expensive and assume is usable for all things in the kitchen. It may or may not be.
I can tell within five strokes on a honing stone whether I’d be comfortable putting a knife through bone.
I always want an edge to fail by rolling. NEVER by chipping.
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Reliability may be better on the less expensive car. Then there’s the issue of repairs. If your Veyron or your Maybach breaks down in Borger, you may be SOL.
Yet the mechanic may. And probably will have a preference.
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Agree. The mid range price cars tend to have better reliability. The really inexpensive and expensive ones have their reliability problem. The more expensive cars tend to offer better performance (not necessary reliability). In this sense, I think the mid range stainless steel knives are most reliable. You can soak them in sink and put them in dishwasher, use them to open boxes and maybe kind of use it as a make-shift screwdriver. So I am thinking about Victorinox, Dexter all the way up to Wusthof and Henckels.
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