Truth be told I wasn't planning on buying this knife at all. By Match 2009, I already had 5 gyuto knives in my kitchen knives collection and I can say without any bragging, those were real good knives too. The collection included Aritsugu 270mm A-Type Gyuto, Sanetsu 270mm ZDP-189 Gyuto, Watanabe 270mm Honyaki Gyuto, and a couple more 240mm ones. Still, I got interested in Tadatsuna gyuto. Mainly because there was a discussion on the knifeforums.com, where the photo was posted comparing few gyuto spines. Tadatsuna was the thinnest of them all. It was a really curious knife. At that point I have decided to get one for me. After all, thinner knives do cut better, except I wasn't very sure how would this thing perform exactly. 270mm long blade at 2mm width was the combo I haven't seen or handled before. Besides, knife dudes at KF were pretty excited about Tadatsuna knives. The only thing to decide was the steel. Tadatsuna primarily uses two different steels in their knives, INOX and Shirogami or white steel. INOX is the abbreviation formed from French - Inoxidant, i.e. stainless. Exact composition unknown, although there are a few rumors floating around, one of them stating Tadatsuna INOX is the good old VG-10 steel, which I am having hard time to believe. Few days later after publishig this review I was contacted by fellow knife entuisiast who clarified INOX mystery, which wasn't a mystery at all - Tadatsuna uses Hitachi Ginsanko (silver paper 3 steel) in their INOX line. It's the same formula as VG-1 and Sandvik 19C27. Lots of people swar by it. I have no experience, so I'm just realying the word out there ;) Anyway, I wasn't interested in INOX version, I wanted Shirogami version and obviously something had to happen with it :( In that, Tadatsuna managed to cancel Shirogami steel knives, although after receiving multiple requests he indicated the possibility of restoring the production of Shirogami knives somewhere around fall 2009. In short that sucked. The word was that the smith working on the Shirogamis left the company. Whatever it was I didn't really find out, because couple weeks later Takeshi of Aframes Tokyo managed to dig up white steel version gyuto for me somewhere and 2 days later I've had it in my hands :)

General

- Full name and title of the maker, or the brand to be precise, is Awataguchi Ikkanashi Tadatsuna. As I have learned from Takeshi, Awataguchi is one of the eight entrances in Kyoto, Japan, and apparently that was one of the places where famous knifemakers lived and conducted their business. Just like any good gyuto or other quality knife from Japanese knifemakers, Tadatsuna Shirogami gyuto arrived in a nice box, with saya strapped to it. The saya isn't like any other I have seen before. Not much of a difference, but it does have a strange half circle cut out on the opening side. Not so sure why. As for the rest it is your usual Japanese saya. wooden scabbard in other words. Black horn pin holds the blade inside the saya. As usual I have carefully inspected the knife after opening the box. The blade was flawless, no scratches, no damages to the edge, sharpened edge is very even and grind lines are very even. The small problem was in the handle. Tadatsuna WA type(octagonal shape) handles have a wood pin in the middle, I assume holding it on the tang. On one side the pin was skewed to the side, and somewhat depressed into the handle. The other side was flush with the handle much better. I didn't really pay any attention to that, the rest was perfect, no complaints. Thanks to its incredibly thin blade, just 2mm, the whole knife is also incredibly light - 180.00g(6.09oz). It's 50%-70% less weight than other Gyutos I've mentioned in this review, and 2-3 times lighter than western knives, even the much shorter ones.

Handle

- I have mixed feelings about this particular handle. On one hand, the Wa handles are my favorites. Tadatsuna handle is one of the better WA type handles I have seen on any Japanese kitchen knife. Ergonomics, size, proportions, all are pretty much perfect. The problem is, the handle was the only part of the knife that had a defect, and sadly after less than one month of use the blade developed horizontal play. Bear in mind, I have half a dozen other gyutos alone to use, so it's not like this knife was going through the same paces as in the pro chef kitchen. Total number of uses would be 5-6 at most. 1-1.5 hours max at a time. I've never had that happen to me with so many Japanese kitchen knives going through my hands. I still believe I got the lemon, because with so many Tadatsuna users on knifeforums it's be widely reported if it ever was a persistent problem. However, that doesn't make me any happier with my knife. The only comfort is that I was going to replace that handle with Stefan Keller's custom piece anyway. So, for now the knife is temporarily retired. In short, it is a good handle design and it is a well made handle, unless it develops a play like it did for me. Things happen, even with ~300$ knives.

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Last updated - 11/04/09