None of the European manufacturers have petty knives or utility knives. The 6" olive handle Sab at Flotsam and Fork is a Chef’s knife with that profile. The German knives do the same thing.
My Shun 6" utility profile is different from the Shun 8" gyuto profile–completely different. It’s narrow. The Sakai Takayuki 6" petty knife has the same profile as their gyuto. In that way, it’s sort of emulating the Europeans throwback approach.
Neither of them would fit in my fusion oriented batterie.
A petty knife in a Japanese lineup is essentially a knife that is smaller than a gyuto and larger than a paring knife but has the gyuto profile. You may call the 6" Sab a small chef’s knife, but it is in essence the French version of a petty knife as Claus’s example provides the German alternative.
All the European manufacturers make 6" knives, but the profile and the steel used is different from a petty or even a Japanese utility knife. I’ve tried to explain above.
If your Kai is the utility, it has a narrower profile and does not align with what the Japanese would consider a petty. If it is their 6" chef, it fits. Petty, from the French petite, is a shortcut for petti naifu, appropriation by Japanese of English and French to designate a smaller version of a gyuto.
A petty does not need to have a specific steel - as others have pointed out it’s just a shape. And then even the shape can be different among Japanese makers, from very narrow and flat, to a petty with more of a curve.
I have two Japanese petty knives, one flat and narrow and the other more like a mini gyuto.
In fact the Sabatier Tim is suggesting is - like the Robert Herder I always go on and on about - a very fusion knife. As it has the typical gyuto narrow shape (in fact it’s likely some Japanese makers took the Sabatier profile as the blueprint for gyutos).
Amen! It is a skewed view of Japanese petty knives, or Japanese knives in general, as being exclusively made of the very high hardness so often touted. What were they made of before Aogami and VG10? Probably other common steels, including somewhat softer stainless and carbon. The notion of a utility knife is also being twisted a bit. Are the oval blades with deep serrations on one side utility knives, or are their makers engaging in false advertising? To me it is simply a knife between a chef or gyuto and a parer, something in the middle that can handle larger jobs and smaller jobs but not as deft as a parer designed for fluting mushrooms or a chef’s knife that is used to cube a shoulder for a braise or stew. Interestingly, while they are often evocative of Japanese knives, Shuns are often traditional western knives in reality. While I am on this reverie, I find calling a serrated blade a single bevel, even if it is, odd. It is first and foremost serrated. It cuts nothing like a true single bevel deba or yanagiba. It is made to chew, not glide, through things.
In my head, I do consider an utility knife very similar to a petty knife. The main difference for me is that: most utility knives have little knuckle clearance, and most petty knives have knuckle clearance.
Despite the length, I think an utility knife as a longer version of a paring knife. Whereas, I think of a petty knife as a shorter version of a chef knife.
If this is true, then my Zwilling 14 cm utility knife is indeed a petty knife, as it has a little knuckle clearance and looks like a mini chefs knife, in fact more a mini Gyutoh knife if you ask me.
