Yoshikane Hammer Finished 120mm(4¾") Utility/Fruit
Japanese Kitchen Knife Review

I have been familiar with Yoshikane family of kitchen knives for several years by now(2011), yet I've never actually bought one, primarily because of the SKD 11 tool steel used in them. Not that it is bad steel, to the contrary, it's a good one, you might be familiar with it too, it's a good old, AISI D2 tool steel. While I have mainly positive impressions and experiences with it, it was nothing new to me, and wasn't really interesting enough, to bother buying a new knife made out of it. After all, it is WW II era alloy, and since then metallurgy did advance considerably. Well, if you ask me, knife steels don't evolve nearly as rapidly as they should, part of the blame is on the users, clinging to old and tried stuff, or simply not interested in what's the steel in their knives at all. The other part obviously goes to the makers. Anyway, that's a discussion for another article, in short, Yoshikane series are made using Japanese version of the AISI D2 tool steel, JIS standard name being SKD-11. Actually, I'd still buy Yoshikane kitchen knives, I like their design, especially the hammer finish on them, plus, simply because D2 or SKD-11 steel is hardened to the max, 64HRC. Good luck finding D2 at that hardness in western knives... Plus, in western knife world, nobody uses D2 class steels in the kitchen knives, even for combat/utility knives many consider it to be too brittle, and we're talking 56-60HRC range. However, there are also Kumagoro kitchen knives. They have very similar hammer finish and as usual are made out of carbon steel. Aogami II steel in older versions, and lately they switched to V2 steel. Aogami 2 is in general considered a better alloy, however Kumagoros are harder in V2, 62-63HRC in V2 vs. 60-61HRC in older Aogami II knives. I guess enough about the steels, point is, Kumagoros have identical design, and carbon steel, which I prefer for kitchen knives, regardless of maintenance issues, of which I really have none, but most of the non knife folks would ruin carbon steel knife in a day or two in their normal kitchen use. So, I went with Kumagoro. My only problem later on was that the longest Kumagoro gyuto was only 240mm, while Yoshikanes do come in 270mm length. So, in the end, friend of mine, who got into Japanese kitchen knives(and I can proudly say I had a hand in that), ended up picking up this knife, and I got to play with it for about 2 weeks, in pretty much NIB condition. It's a fun knife to use and I really liked it. Now I am considering getting that or something similar. You can never have too many knives, storage permitting of course ;)

I guess it is worth mentioning about Yoshikane and Kumagoro knives resemblance. They have pretty much identical finish and for a while quite a few people I've asked about them told me that they were made by the same family - Yoshida, just two different brands. Eventually, when I was making notes for this review, I've decided to get the truth straight from the source. Well, at least as close to the source as I could get :) Since I do not speak Japanese, and I have no idea how or where to contact either Yoshikane or Kumagoro, I went with the next best thing, EpicEdge. The answer I got was different, and it stated that the manufacturer of the Kumagoro knives is a relative of Yoshida family, and that they both have their forges in the Sanjo region, however those are two different makers. Plus, Kumagoro maker chooses to stay anonymous. So, I hope that clears things up more or less.

General

Blade

As mentioned before, the blade is warikomi awase style clad and the blade finish is what Yoshikane describes hammer finished. Basically, dimples all over the blade, quite large, but uniform, which makes it different from other hammer finish types I have seen. The design, if you call that a design is quite attractive visually, that's my opinion and a lot of people who have seen my kitchen knives collection did single out Kumagoro Hammer Finish gyuto as one of the best looking knives in my quite large kitchen knives collection. Alright, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There is another, theoretical benefit to those dimples, in that they create air pockets, thus reducing the drag on the blade and prevent sticking of the ingredients as well. However, there is no dimple in the universe that can prevent sticking of some ingredients, starting with cheese and ending with tomatoes. Damn things stick to anything. Gyuto is no good choice for cheese cutting, and neither is this fruit or paring knife. Given the relatively narrow width of the blade, sticking wasn't a prominent issue with it. I've tried various small vegetables and fruits, things were alright, as in, they would still stick, but most of the stuff was falling off, because the diameter was larger than the width of the knife.

At this point, I figure I can skip the steel discussion, considering all the ramblings I did in the opening section of this review :) Just a word of caution, D2 or SKD-11 steel is considered semi-stainless, which means it will rust easier compared to true stainless steels, and yes, once again, all stainless steels rust if proper care is not taken. I've personally cleaned rust spots from all sorts of stainless knives.

Handle

Sharpening

Usage

Starting with Brussels sprouts, cutting the ends, which is rather annoying work, as they are quite harsh to deal with and after washing wet sprouts aren't exactly handling friendly. Given the razor sharp edge, sprouts were no real challenge, except there were about 40 of them. Routine, repetitive work, but it went real fast with Yoshikane fruit knife. To do the job, I was using the choke grip, and with 120mm long blade it may or may not be super comfortable, but with this knife it never felt awkward, and I wasn't concerned about grip security or accidental cut. Cutting the ends of the Italian parsley was simple and nothing worth describing. Working with red radish was a bit more challenging, as I have to cut the radish from the bunch first, which means the knife has to get in tight places with pointy enough tip, and Yoshikane fruit knife was just fine with that. Cutting out the stems or the hard core of the green collard leaves also needs sharp blade and pointy one with some belly is even better, and again, Yoshikane knife qualified for all those requirements. Another not so knife friendly ingredient, celery, which also requires thorough washing, otherwise the dirt particles in it will do numbers to your edge. In the resulting salad I do mince the celery, I hate the taste of that thing, but in the prep work, I just cut the ends, leaves, etc. Short work, but if you mess up, you can screw up the edge by twisting the knife to much. That never happened with Yoshikane fruit knife, due to very high cutting ability. Other noteworthy ingredients include broccoli and asparagus. Neither is soft, at least when fresh, and with broccoli, you need to stick the knife in tight places again, cut out the leaves, remove hard spots on the stem and so on. Asparagus can be also troublesome, especially when the shoots are not very young. And the final test of challenge happened in the evening, when I was actually cutting the salad. ingredients were prepped in the morning, dried, and for most of them I use large knives, such as gyuto or chukabocho most often, if I feel experimental then I go with yanagiba, except I can't claim I am any good with using yanagiba as a do it all knife, but that's besides the point. Avocados, all 7 of them were cut in 4, then peeled using the Yoshikane utility/fruit knife. The skin on those avocados isn't exactly gentle or soft, plus when cutting them around the diameter, the edge does come in contact with the oversized seed in the center, which is quite hard too. The worst part of all that of course is the avocado itself, which is very oily and makes things real pain to deal with. Still, the handle was manageable through the whole thing, until I finished peeling and aligning quarters on the cutting board. As they say, everything is relative, and in relation to most of the paring knives, Yoshikane paring knife did perform very well. That concluded testing on that day.

Part two of the tests was the very next day, when I was cooking meal, no salad, I've had plenty already :) Not as wide of variety, but I honestly attempted peeling a potato, a job at which I definitely suck, and frankly, I have very little motivation to get better at it. I just try that with every new knife, for the sake of it, but just once, then I fall back to my trusty Rossle crosswise peeler. As you can guess, I wasn't very happy with the potato peeling result, but I am to blame, not the knife, I did succeed with cutting out potato eyes with the Yoshikane knife though, that was super easy, with its very sharp, pointy tip. Next was the garlic, which I love pretty much in any meal, save for the sweet stuff, I never understood garlic in ice cream... Anyway, the blade was not very wide, it's a paring knife after all, but I still managed to crush garlic cloves with 26mm wide blade and then peeling the rest was a breeze. And to complete the test, I've peeled an apple, which happened to be in the kitchen that day. Not so sure why, but I do manage peeling apples mucho better than potatoes, even though there shouldn't be that big of a difference. Apples are less messy somehow. As a fruit knife, Yoshikane did fine. Cutting slices of an apple and peeling it was real easy. So, oddly enough, I've used utility fruit knife for 99% of vegetable cutting and 1% of fruit cutting, but most of the fruits, at leas the ones I eat, don't really require much of the cutting, nor they pose any interesting cutting challenge anyway. Obviously, I won't go at pineapple with puny 120mm blade, and if/when I need to split a coconut, I'll whip out Busse FFFBM battle mistress or one of the Himalayan Import Kukris. Well, may be my fruit menu is not large enough, but here it is, my honest report on the deeds, and now it's up to you to decide whether or not the knife is for you, or may be do more research. For the record, I did repeat all the cutting next weekend, with the same ingredients, because I liked the knife and it was fun to use.

At the end of the testing, the blade did loose some of its initial sharpness, but nothing that would warrant serious or even medium level sharpening. In fact, I never had to resort to sharpening stones, I've used the same 0.30µm Aluminum oxide abrasive film followed by 0.25µm diamond crystal loaded strop and then plain leather strop. Since the knife was not mine, I had to restore original sharpness. Another 10-15 minutes using the abrasives listed above and the edge was back to its hair splitting sharpness it had in the beginning.

Conclusions