When choosing a Japanese kitchen knife, it is inevitable that its steel becomes a part of the consideration. There are a few kinds of steels that are commonly used in modern knife making, and I will cover some that are widely available in stores.

Carbon Steels

The types of carbon steels used…

In Sakai city, there are craftsmen who specialize only in the knife handle making. A good knife should not cause fatigue after prolonged use; this owes to the handle (柄 e) that introduces good balance to the knife.

The Japanese knife handles are usually made of materials like Japanese cypress…

We have covered the terminologies on the different parts of the western and Japanese kitchen knives in a previous article. Let’s talk about the blades.

Single Bevel vs. Double Bevel 片刄と諸刄

Modern kitchen knives can be roughly categorized under either Single-bevelled (片刄 Kataba) knives and Double-bevelled (諸刄 Moroba) knives. When you look at the the cross-section…

Let’s get aligned on the terminologies before we continue any further.

Western Knives

Japanese Knives

A Bit of History

Sakai city of the Osaka prefecture is known for its forged knives (aka. 堺打刃物 sakai-uchi-hamono). …

Your knife may have the crazy expensive Japanese steel in its blade, have been sharpened with perfected skills and have been used with extreme care, but you still find it getting dull quickly. Why is that? …

Note: This article is not about `rust-lang` but the actual rust that develops on knife blades

Your kitchen knife is very likely made of steel, an alloy that combines Iron, carbon, chromium, nickel and maybe even other metals. Chromium and nickel percentage affects the rust resistance property of the steel…

Regardless of the artificial stones or natural ones, whetstones are usually categorized based on their grits:

• Rough stone: #200 — #600
• Medium stone: #800 — #3000
• Finishing stone: #4000 and up

There are a few other types of stones that you use with the whetstones:

• A fixer stone: flattens the…