KS initial impressions

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Kit Craft
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Kit Craft »

Remember I have no patience and mine came direct from Japan. I remember years ago people saying when they got them off of Rakuten or some ebay sellers, no saya also. It must just depend on the vendor. Ya'll are not missing a lot. It is friction fit but it is just a basic $20 ho wood saya...

As for the lacquer question, yes, acetone and a paper towel will work fine. It takes a bit more elbow grease than you might think. Mine came off as yellow gunk! However, once the blade no longer looks like a rainbow in the light, you should be done.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Eversor13 »

Any other chemicals that would work or is acetone the main go to? Also, I don't have any acetone at the moment, would my girlfriends nail polish remover work or would the additives mess the blade up?
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Kit Craft
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Eversor13 wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 9:00 am Any other chemicals that would work or is acetone the main go to? Also, I don't have any acetone at the moment, would my girlfriends nail polish remover work or would the additives mess the blade up?
I use nail polish remover. Mine says acetone but it is marketed as polish remover. I think it is scented and only like 85% acetone but it is 85 cents and it works well enough for me. Has never harmed any of my blades.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Kalaeb »

Your girlfriends nail polish remover will work good. I even use my wife's makeup pads to apply and scrub, lol

After I remove the stuff I followed with a metal polish just to make sure everything was smooth and consistent.
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Kit Craft
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Kalaeb wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 9:28 am Your girlfriends nail polish remover will work good. I even use my wife's makeup pads to apply and scrub, lol
Hah, I have used 2x2 gauze.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Eversor13 »

Great, thanks for the tip! I'll probably attempt to post something here about the blade when I've gotten familiar enough with it.
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Kit Craft
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Eversor13 wrote: Fri Feb 09, 2018 10:25 am Great, thanks for the tip! I'll probably attempt to post something here about the blade when I've gotten familiar enough with it.
I think the initial thoughts are just as interesting as a review after a years use. So share your first impression too, please!
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Re: KS initial impressions

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For sure, will do. I got home late last night, so I only had enough to time open it and go "Sweet!... huh, there's some weird gunk on the blade.... is it missed glue or lacquer? Ah, lacquer, thank you CKTG forum." I'll be able to cut something this weekend and I can post something.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Kit Craft »

Mine had some extra epoxy on the emoto too.
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Re: KS initial impressions

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I should have posted some time ago, I have only managed to cut some apples and some onions with the knife, it goes very cleanly through both. Very nimble tip, very interesting the way the distal taper affects how the knife "feels" depending on where in the length of the knife you use it. As this knife exemplifies, the nimble tip is interesting, but not my favorite. I seem to prefer the shape of tip from Takefu village, similar to the Kurosaki R2 or the Anryu Blue #2 knives. I've found that, especially when going through onions or such with the tip, the extra height above the cutting part of the tip allows the onion or to stay together much better.

Overall a good knife, I have a Shibata Kashima as well... which I haven't compared the KS to yet. From memory, I believe that I prefer the KS over the Kashima. Something with the extra thickness in the blade near the handle gives the blade a much more confident feeling, pretty much what everyone has said. I may update with a more thorough review later. I know I haven't added too much to the discussion here, not enough experience or attention to the different performance minutia to be able to give a fair comparison. Overall a good knife, if they become more common I'd recommend all to get one.
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Great to get opinions from all sides. I think the tip is what made me fall in love with this knife though! I have loads of Takefu knives and the tip is too low for me. Great knives though. As much as I like to point out its flaws I still keep my Yuki in rotation to this day!
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Kit Craft wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:59 am Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Great to get opinions from all sides. I think the tip is what made me fall in love with this knife though! I have loads of Takefu knives and the tip is too low for me. Great knives though. As much as I like to point out its flaws I still keep my Yuki in rotation to this day!
Do you find the ks tip to be higher than takefu knifes? The ones ive experienced/own have higher tips than my ks. My ks is a pretty low rocker, im digging the knive though.
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Re: KS initial impressions

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Cutuu wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:29 am
Kit Craft wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:59 am Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Great to get opinions from all sides. I think the tip is what made me fall in love with this knife though! I have loads of Takefu knives and the tip is too low for me. Great knives though. As much as I like to point out its flaws I still keep my Yuki in rotation to this day!
Do you find the ks tip to be higher than takefu knifes? The ones ive experienced/own have higher tips than my ks. My ks is a pretty low rocker, im digging the knive though.
Maybe I am visualizing this wrong but none of my Takefu knives have tips that come up high at all. Some are pointed and some are rounded but all of them stay low to the board and the spine comes down to them. My KS on the other hand has a sweep at the tip where it comes up and the spine comes down and they meet in the middle.
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Re: KS initial impressions

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To clarify, it's no so much the height of the tip that I was pointing out (which I do enjoy on the Takefu village knives...) but moreso the overall profile. I know many call out the nimble tip of the KS as a defining feature, but I tend to enjoy the more santoku style tip on the Takefu village knife. Specifically the extra blade height/width at the tip tends to keep an onion together better. It also makes it feel less like you're going to break it off in use, but that's also part of getting comfortable with the knife.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Cutuu »

Kit Craft wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:38 am
Cutuu wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 9:29 am
Kit Craft wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 8:59 am Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Great to get opinions from all sides. I think the tip is what made me fall in love with this knife though! I have loads of Takefu knives and the tip is too low for me. Great knives though. As much as I like to point out its flaws I still keep my Yuki in rotation to this day!
Do you find the ks tip to be higher than takefu knifes? The ones ive experienced/own have higher tips than my ks. My ks is a pretty low rocker, im digging the knive though.
Maybe I am visualizing this wrong but none of my Takefu knives have tips that come up high at all. Some are pointed and some are rounded but all of them stay low to the board and the spine comes down to them. My KS on the other hand has a sweep at the tip where it comes up and the spine comes down and they meet in the middle.
While i would agree kit proportionally the tips on the takefu style knives might be lower, the actual tips are higher off the board in my experience. I will admit i did not compare the ks to the makato, kanehiro(memory gives me a sense they were better rockers) that ive used, but i did compare it to the anryu and kurasaki laser. The anryu' s tip was a little higher off the board offering more height for rocking. The kurasaki was more dramactically higher than the anryu and easily the best rocker. The kashina and ks point were identical height.
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by mauichef »

I agree Ramon.
Just talking KS...I also found the tip to be on the low side too which is a French Profile trait is it not? That is one reason I'm passing mine on. Plus I kept stabbing myself with it :oops:
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Re: KS initial impressions

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How do you end up stabbing yourself? Stabbing a prep bowl I get, but yourself...lol.

I see where you guys are coming from. I too am going from memory for some of these knives. However, my Yuki does in fact have a lower tip than my KS, noticeably. I just double checked. Mind you, it is a 210 and I am sure that plays a part. But as I told Jeffry before, I am a bad judge of things that include rocking because I don't do it. :P
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by mauichef »

Me no rock either Kit. Stab yes! I guess it is so long...oh shit...I don't know how...but I must have done it 3-4 times in the 5 minutes I used the damn thing :?
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Re: KS initial impressions

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mauichef wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:17 pm Me no rock either Kit. Stab yes! I guess it is so long...oh shit...I don't know how...but I must have done it 3-4 times in the 5 minutes I used the damn thing :?
Sounds like good ground to get rid of ray.... @kit it totally makes sense if you were comparing it to 210 versions. I was comparing it to 240s, which is... Uh... Kind of more appropriate :lol:
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Re: KS initial impressions

Post by Kit Craft »

Cutuu wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:26 pm
mauichef wrote: Mon Feb 19, 2018 5:17 pm Me no rock either Kit. Stab yes! I guess it is so long...oh shit...I don't know how...but I must have done it 3-4 times in the 5 minutes I used the damn thing :?
Sounds like good ground to get rid of ray.... @kit it totally makes sense if you were comparing it to 210 versions. I was comparing it to 240s, which is... Uh... Kind of more appropriate :lol:
Harder for me to do though. Remember, I just started getting into 240s again after a long, long time. Most of my experience is with smaller knives. I guess that is why my experiences are different from many other regulars who always use larger knives.

As an aside, that does make me wonder if some knives that I so wanted to love but couldn't might be more suited for me if I tried them out in 240. I have come to the realization that I like a 180 gyuto as a petty and a 240 as an actual gyuto but an not big on the standard 210 size for whatever reason. It took me a long time to get there though...lol.
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