Goko or Takeda Sasanoha?

[cedarhouse]

"The 210 classic I sampled was a tree trunk."

No kidding. I've only handled two Takedas but they were both lasers.

...interesting.

[jdbennett101]

"The 210 classic I sampled was a tree trunk."

No kidding. I've only handled two Takedas but they were both lasers.

...interesting.

Same here... I would be highly interested in trying that tree trunk, if by chance it is still floating around somewhere.

[sharp#]

Thank you all for your responses!

@Jsgillis86, I've actually been on a spiral the past couple of days, obsessively reading about different knives and watching reviews. I have limited access to the interwebs, so my apologies for the slow response.
In the end, I fell in love with the Anryu Blue #2 240mm and decided to pull the trigger... I was torn between the Anryu and the Ogata White #2, but ended up going with the former. I know it contradicts my original post as I stated wanting an AS, but I was sold on the tall blade, SS cladding, relatively flat bottom, and its ambidexterity. And that hammered finish...

Once I try out the Anryu and get the hang of it, I do plan on purchasing another gyuto in the (hopefully) near future. I will look into getting an iron cladding with an AS or W#1/#2 steel for my next purchase. Gotta recharge the piggy bank in the meantime.
One I was eye-ing at was the Masakage Koishi. What are your thoughts on the blade? Beautiful knife... Hell, they're all beautiful. This site is driving me nuts..!

[Jsgillis86]

@cedar & Bennett...

http://www.chefknivestogoforum.com/take ... 11661.html

...Check out the pics at the end of my review. That one was stacked to the hilt with muscle. Still a great performer to boot.

@sharp, you did well. The Anryu is a workhorse I've never been able to outgrow. I keep a 210 in my roll at all times for those days when I got a list full of tough shit to cut and don't have the time of day to fret over it.

My Anryu review...
http://www.chefknivestogoforum.com/anry ... 10495.html

My Koishi review...
http://www.chefknivestogoforum.com/post ... ml#p108147

I think the Anryu is a superb training tool you'll keep around for those days when you don't wanna pay as much mind to the Koishi as she's worthy of. In fact, the two make quite the pair.

Keep it up man. You seem to have a good grasp on things. And don't forget to come back and tell us what'cha think of her!

[desol]

On the other hand, some find iron cladding tedious, pointless even. Why would one bother when one isn't gonna thin said cladding for ten years? Why would one not want to worry about just the exposed core steel at the edge?

It's my suspicion that with stainless, mill provided, pre-laminated blanks(which most stainless clad knives tend to be, I'm pretty sure), you're getting a knife that is limited in terms of what the smith may be capable of... Kinda like buying a big mac...vs a real handmade burger. Soft iron cladding allows and has allowed more options and more customization within the craft; it allows the smith to fully express their capabilities. Stainless cladding is limiting due to the environment needed to produce it reliably, but of course more appealing to those that want something easier to maintain. Also, stainless knives that have 3mm or less of core will not last ten years imo, and stainless sucks to sharpen. .02

[Jsgillis86]

Ya know I've wondered the same thing about the forging process, but I'm never gonna make the things so I've not found it worth my time to explore.

For reference, ten was just a number, and I covered iron being easier to sharpen in the paragraph previous to the one you quoted.

[desol]

There's still a shroud of uncertainty(at least for me) behind who's doing this themselves and who's not, and for me that matters quite a bit. Although, I'm not really looking for any knives at the moment. I think Takeda said it took them two years or more to find a way to laminate reliably. I'm not sure what other people may or may not be doing. If I'm paying five or six hundred bucks for a knife, it better be pounded by a guy from start to finish in the traditional way; no pre-laminated material allowed. Or, that's what fascinated me about the swords; the finished product, the difficulty, the intention. I'll always prefer the real thing made the real way. Anyway, kind of off topic...

[halfdana]

There's still a shroud of uncertainty(at least for me) behind who's doing this themselves and who's not, and for me that matters quite a bit. Although, I'm not really looking for any knives at the moment. I think Takeda said it took them two years or more to find a way to laminate reliably. I'm not sure what other people may or may not be doing. If I'm paying five or six hundred bucks for a knife, it better be pounded by a guy from start to finish in the traditional way; no pre-laminated material allowed. Or, that's what fascinated me about the swords; the finished product, the difficulty, the intention. I'll always prefer the real thing made the real way. Anyway, kind of off topic...

I'm not absolutely sure, but I seem to remember Takeda saying in that Springhammer 2 film that he gets the steel pre-laminated. That it was more cost efficient and consistent.

I know T. Fujiwara does the forge welding himself. I even heard from what I would consider a credible source, at least someone who's spent a lot of time with the man, that TF and his father were the ones who pioneered the technique of forge welding stainless and carbon steel.

I've often wondered how being in control of the whole process from start to finish affects the final product, vs starting with a prelaminated blank. For example, how much of the performance of his white steel is mainly due to his heat treatment, and how much of it has to do with earlier steps in the making of the blade?

Another point of pure speculation on my part is that perhaps the difficulty of the initial forge welding is one of the reasons for the large jump in prices between the medium and the larger sized blades he makes. Also between the prices of the white steel vs Aogami super for that matter.
To be very clear, I'm just guessing on these last points here.

[salemj]

My understanding was that even pre-laminated steel had to be heat-treated and ground. The main different, then, is the "strength" that the steel develops from forging, and not from the heat-treatment.

I also remember Takeda very specifically discussing how long it took him to develop a technique to use stainless, and that it involved a lot of trial and error. Whether this was related to actually forge-welding the steel or to just getting the heat-treatment right is another question, though...

I'm agreeing with most of the above, of course. My sense was always that it was much easier to heat-treat iron-clad steel...not necessarily because it IS "easier," but because that was what everyone was trained on. This is one of the reasons T-F was special a while back. Things have changed a lot, even in the last 5-10 years, of course, not only due to the range of PM steels in stainless, but also because it seems as if more and more people are working with forge-welding stainless and developing better techniques for doing so.

My guess is that one reliable way of telling the difference in the tang. It is difficult to imagine a pre-laminated blade having a thicker tang. So, if you compare two knives by, say, Kurosaki, we all know that his forge-welded blades always have thick tangs, so if he makes a knife that DOESN'T have a thick tang, that should cue on in. Of course, most of the makers I like purposely THIN the tang (Fujiyama makers, for example, Nubatama, Y. Ikeda, and others), so that is not reliable all-around...it would only be a "clue" when you know the smith's tendencies to begin with.

[halfdana]

When I differentiated between pre-laminated and forge welded blades I didn't mean to imply that the former was anywhere near a finished product, or that it didn't require as much skill from the blacksmith in every aspect of the process except the initial forge welding(I really don't know much about what actually goes on..).
When I think of pre-laminated, but still hand forged blades, I think of something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjATV5f3jw0&t=235s

The blade shape and thickness, including the tang, is altered to whatever the maker wishes from a bar/billet.

When it comes to forge welding stainless and carbon steel by hand, and the blacksmith actually making the billet himself in a normal forge, my understanding is that this is extremely rare even today because of the apparent difficulty of it. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRJvEvXCxlI&t=119s

That's why I think TF is still pretty unique.
Whether or not that initial process actually enhances performance noticeably or at all is another question. From a romantic point of view I hope it does. Maybe his white steel would be just as good with a pre-laminate. I just really like the idea of a craftsman that has had complete control of the steel from start to finish, and my belief is that this is what you're paying for with his knives.

[desol]

A hand made item for me, means made from start to finish by hand, in a shop, according to a tradition.

If it's bought laminated or heat treated in a plant, it's not handmade, by a craftsman. If there's any steps skipped out of shop, it's not handmade, in a shop. It's now a modern altered version of a tradition for the sake of cost and/or a lack of skill.

[salemj]

A hand made item for me, means made from start to finish by hand, in a shop, according to a tradition.

If it's bought laminated or heat treated in a plant, it's not handmade, by a craftsman. If there's any steps skipped out of shop, it's not handmade, in a shop. It's now a modern altered version of a tradition for the sake of cost and/or a lack of skill.

Or precision. Don't forget precision. Sometimes machine steps are considerably more precise in ways that allow any smith to achieve what s/he desires more precisely (or certainly more CONSISTENTLY) than any person could, regardless of skill or cost. It seems really close-minded to assume that is must always be negative or always a form of compensation for a lack (of skill or money).

[desol]

I didn't say it was negative, I said it was due to a factor involving cost and/or a lack of skill, which it is. They don't have the skill(or equipment) to laminate stainless steel reliably in their shops, so it needs to be outsourced. Why do they need to be stainless steel? ...because people don't have the time or the inclination to maintain the blades the way they have been for a very long time. Did people ever get sick from these blades being used on food...no. The blades of the highest value, made with the best skill, lacking any compromise and offering the highest in artistic merit, were made close to a thousand years ago. They were able attain levels of perfection and expression unattainable today.

But like I said, I'm not interested in any knives at the moment, I'm interested in the craft. And I'm not really interested in how precise a machine can be other than when it comes to brain surgery.

[Kalaeb]

A hand made item for me, means made from start to finish by hand, in a shop, according to a tradition.

If it's bought laminated or heat treated in a plant, it's not handmade, by a craftsman. If there's any steps skipped out of shop, it's not handmade, in a shop. It's now a modern altered version of a tradition for the sake of cost and/or a lack of skill.

Way off topic...Very few knives readily available from Japan would fit this criteria. (Especially Konosuke/Sakai based manufacturers). Not saying it's a bad thing or that the knives are inferior. But if hand made/craft means alot to you it's going to take some serious searching. One of the reasons I started looking at US MS or JS bladeamiths is all the work, start to finish is done by the maker. There is no guessing who ground, heat treated, forged or sharpened a knife.

[desol]

A hand made item for me, means made from start to finish by hand, in a shop, according to a tradition. If it's bought laminated or heat treated in a plant, it's not handmade, by a craftsman. If there's any steps skipped out of shop, it's not handmade, in a shop. It's now a modern altered version of a tradition for the sake of cost and/or a lack of skill.

Very few knives readily available from Japan would fit this criteria. (Especially Konosuke/Sakai based manufacturers).

I'm not really interested in readily available knives. I'm interested in items similar to the ones I purchased, which are no longer available...which they refused to pump out to the masses. I'm interested in the highest quality, that take the longest to construct, made with zero compromise according to a traditional way of doing things.

Back to the OP:
For knives with a good feel and decent height I'd also point out these two:
Iron clad: http://www.chefknivestogo.com/mawh1gy24.html
Stainless: http://www.chefknivestogo.com/gibl2gy24.html

I especially like the look of the Matsubara. Good height, nice steel, buffalo horn ferrule...rigid, hand engraved kanji, in stock..etc. Nice blade imo.

[sharp#]

@Jgillis, very much enjoyed reading your reviews. Do you have a list that you've done by any chance? If so, i'd love to read them.
Haven't had the chance to try out the Anryu yet, but will follow up when I do.

It's my suspicion that with stainless, mill provided, pre-laminated blanks(which most stainless clad knives tend to be, I'm pretty sure), you're getting a knife that is limited in terms of what the smith may be capable of... Kinda like buying a big mac...vs a real handmade burger. Soft iron cladding allows and has allowed more options and more customization within the craft; it allows the smith to fully express their capabilities. Stainless cladding is limiting due to the environment needed to produce it reliably, but of course more appealing to those that want something easier to maintain. Also, stainless knives that have 3mm or less of core will not last ten years imo, and stainless sucks to sharpen. .02

@desol, I picked up some cheap SS knives (dollar store, literally) over the weekend to practice sharpening on my 400/1000 grit waterstone, with mixed results... I was on the 400 for what it seemed like forever, and the thing hardly budged.

I know it's the wrong thread for this, but i'm looking into developing a patina. I've read people using vinegar, mustard (?), apples... Seems like everyone has their own remedies. I'd love to hear you guys' opinions on this. Hell, I think i'll just leave it out in the rain for a couple of days.
/s

[desol]

SS while being a soft matrix, can contain large chromium carbides which are very wear resistant, resulting in 'difficult to sharpen'. I personally do not allow my knives to develop excessive oxidization(patina), but I don't mind a little on the core material itself(speaking of polished, carbon knives). With Kurouchi finish, there is no need for patina, as you regularly sharpen the sides of the knife anyway, which constantly cleans the knife when you sharpen it.

[Insnekamkze86]

What do you guys think of the goko 240 vs a harukaze as 240 gyuto?

[Thin Man]

The Takeda is a legendary knife, the Goko is not. It depends what you are looking for.

If you go with a Takeda, you may be better off with the standard Takeda 210 as @mauichef recommended.

[Jeff B]

What do you guys think of the goko 240 vs a harukaze as 240 gyuto?

The biggest difference between these two knives is the thickness and weight. The Goko is thicker, heavier and taller at the heel. It has more the workhorse feel where as the Harukaze is more nimble and laser like. Both are excellent performers.