Watanabe Nakiri was a part of my first set of hi-end Japanese kitchen knives that I acquired in Jun. 2008. Considering that at that time I wasn't really sure what I wanted or what would work for me I decided to try out several options and a specialized tool like nakiri was a perfect candidate for the experiment. In general Japanese tend to have lots of knives with rather narrow specialization and nakiri is clearly one of them. If I am not mistaken, it translates into something like vegetable leaves knife. Frankly, it works amazingly well for that and many other types of vegetable cutting. Picking nakiri was relatively easy, Shichichi Watanabe is pretty well known maker amongst Japanese kitchen cutlery enthusiasts and has plenty of good recommendations. Besides, he makes exactly what I wanted, i.e. high-carbon, non-stainless steel knives at very high hardness. Both were important criteria to me when I was picking a nakiri, thus I went for Watanabe. Plus, his pro line is very reasonably priced for the knives of this class. 150$ wasn't that expensive for the quality knife such as this nakiri.
Initial inspection
- Small nakiri from Watanabe came in traditional box. Pretty much all Japanese knives I've ever received come in the box, which is nice. It is a hidden tang knife, relatively small. Well, at least it is small compared to 240mm Akifusa Gyuto I got around the same time. No damage to the blade or handle, no scratches. No visible defects or imperfections. Overall fit and finish are very good considering that it is kuro-uchi finished knife. Blade finish is much smoother than that of found on Takeda knives, e.g. Takeda Cleaver or Takeda Deba. Although, that part clearly depends on the maker, how much kuro-uchiish look it will have. I personally prefer Watanabe style kuro-uchi finish, mainly because it's smoother than Takeda's, but that hardly ever affects knife performance. Though, does affect ease of cleaning.NIB edge was really sharp convex edge. Shaving in both directions effortlessly, hair whittling was easily achievable. I was pleasantly surprised how thin the edge was. It is really rare to get NIB knife with high performance edge on it. Watanabe nakiri was one of those pleasant exceptions in my knife-life :) Kudos to Shinichi.
Blade
- Well, it's a typical nakiri as one would expect on nakiri bocho or hocho(both words stand for knife in Japanese). Almost rectangular shape blade, which is pretty thin. The tip is slightly rounded and that's pretty much it. It's a rectangle, thus the cutting edge is a straight line, save for the very tip. As I've mentioned already, it is a fairly thin blade. On the average it's 2mm thick. In details, then the blade is dual taper. At the heel, spine is 4.02mm thick, at the tip spine narrows down to 1.8mm. Closer to the edge, 10mm behind it, blade is 0.6-0.7 mm thick already. As per Watanabe, that geometry is their strategy to keep knives rigid and prevent flexing, which is not desirable for vegetable knife. I do agree with this statement.I've already commented blade finish above, so the only thing to add here is that the blade is traditional Japanese san-mai, ultra-hard core sandwiched between layers of soft, stainless steel. Serves dual purpose, prevents the rust, except the expose edge of course and adds protection to the core.