Japanese folding knife

[katanas]

jc57, thanks for costing me a few more bucks (I felt the shun was too much $). :grumpy:

 

[jc57]

jc57, thanks for costing me a few more bucks (I felt the shun was too much $). :grumpy:

Well that was not my intent. The Shun version is made in Seki City, Japan with VG-10. The KAI is made in China with 420J2. So you are getting what you pay for. The Shun might be worth the price just for the QC of the main factory. Just a little higher than I would want to pay.

I don't have personal experience with either product, I just happen to be rather familiar with that company's product lines.

I'm a heathen and use a Case Trapper if I need a better knife than the restaurant has, but then I am not often going out to expensive steak joints where I need to maintain the proper decorum with my dining companions.

Now to be honest, if you are cutting steak with it on a ceramic plate, the 420J2 might fold and dull a bit whereas VG-10 might tend to chip. 420J2 is easy to sharpen back up so it might actually be a better choice for a personal steak knife.

I have a few of the KAI branded, Chinese made kitchen knives (the brightly colored ones with plastic handles) in some unknown stainless and they aren't bad knives, especially for the price I paid. They do dull when cutting on ceramic plates, but they also respond very well to a simple kitchen butcher's steel and are nothing to sharpen on basic stones.

Pardon any derailment of the search for the ideal Higo no kami.

Edited to add: POM handles on the KAI, Pakkawood on the Shun. Both are apparently covered by the same standard limited lifetime warranty with factory sharpening (though no longer free, they charge you $5 per knife plus you pay to ship to them). Also - both have liner locks so not the true friction-folder of the traditional Higo where you have to keep your thumb on the tab when using it.

 

[Lapedog]

The Shun one is truely beautiful. They make such a nice little knife. The f&f was amazing on the 8 copies I saw at the store. Admittedly I only looked at 2 of them very closely. Both of them were just gorgeous. They remind me more of those long thin folding fruit knife than a steak knife.

 

[jc57]

Shun does a good job on the fit/finish and bling, no doubt about that. We have some of their kitchen knives and they are quite pretty.

 

[HSC ///]

Here's a friction folder I just finished up, in the higonomaki style
Still trying to learn how to size up stag properly

3" of 1095 steel with gray parkerized finish. heat treat to 62 rc.
Purpleheart, leather and stag. Stainless steel liners.
Sharpened on 1000k japanese waterstone

Harbeer

IG - Hsc3.knives

 

[palonej]

Very nice looking work HSC!! Too cool!
[emoji106][emoji106][emoji106]
Joe