260 mm sujihiki WIP

This is the first knife I was asked to make by another fellow chef . She uses santoku daily and told me she was struggling to get a clean slices on large meats , I offered to make her a sujihiki . She wanted around 240 mm and I was insisting in 270 mm , seeing that I wasn't going to win that battle I made her 260 mm.





The cutting edge is 257 mm , 38 mm tall. It is D2 monosteel. The handle is d shaped Australian beefwood, buffalo horn ferrule and end cap . The knife weighs 225 grams , it is asymmetric ground for right handed person .




I still haven't finished cleaning the scratches on the blade or finishing the handle, i will post more pictures soon, as I am calling it a
day

 

Looking good, what do you use for tools? What hardness did you aim for?

 

Thank you Pierre , I have a very primitive set up. I use bench grinder , disc sander and drill !! I am using homemade charocal forge for my heat treatment that I am monitoring with a thermocouple and a infrared thermometer . I am waiting for our new home to be built , then I will have proper belt grinder , kiln , etc. in my mancave.
I have aimed at 60-61 hrc , altough it feels little harder than that . Since I dont have a belt sander I had to grind the blade to final dimensions minus the edge. There was little warpage but i managed to fix it in vise.

 

Great effort there, how does she cut? Charcoal forge.. you are all set for the apocalypse!

 

I haven't sharpened it yet Jim , I will probably finish the knife in couple days

 

Ok I decided to try make a saya for it as well , here it is what I had plus some citronella candles against Mosquitos .


Then I have attached the handle and sharpened the knife and used it for a shift at work. I was happy with the cutting performance , especially on pull cuts , but It wasn't as smooth as I hoped on lateral cuts. Did some more thinning to fix that , my dmt had a quite workout .



Here it's my first saya



My attempts to capture spine , poorly



And the choil with a phone camera during service

I have tried to get rid of scratches



Oops, forgot a spot



Overall I was happy with it, the lessons I learned were
: buy a proper belt grinder,
Make sure you order your steel in right thickness . Grinding 1/4 inch thick d2 on a bench grinder and hand finishing it with sandpaper ? Never again