Comments about 0 Suisin Special Inox Gyutou:

This knife cuts like a laser. it is my first stainless japanese knife and i am very pleased with my decision. This knife holds its edge for weeks at a time and with stands the abuse in a high volume kitchen. Im a line cook at a restaurant doing 250-400 covers a knife and i now use this knife for both my prep and service with no problems at all.

Comments about 0 Suisin Special Inox Gyutou:

My 210 mm Special INOX Gyutou came with the following Specs:
Total Length: 333 mm
Actual Blade length Tip to Heel: 212 mm
Blade Thickness:
- Spine at onset of Bolster: 1.9 mm
- Heel 3 mm above edge: 0.3 mm
- 1 mm behind Tip: 0.38 mm
Weight: 185 g

General:
The fit and finish of blade and handle is very good - for sure far above average. The center of gravity lies in the bolster at the beginning of the handle which gives the knife a good balance. The design is elegant and functional. The Handle is well designed and suited for a pinch-grip.
Another nice feature is the slightly recessed logo. I like this much better than the just printed logos of the traditional and Wa INOX honyaki series as it protects the logo from wear and also allows you to polish the entire blade without scratching or removing the logo.

Blade & Edge:
My knife came with a hand sharpened double bevel blade is strongly asymmetrical with only a very shallow back bevel (~ 2°) that has a convex transition into the nearly flat back side of the blade. The front bevel came with a hamaguri (= clamshell-like convex transition of the front bevel into blade front) on it. All this makes it practically a single bevel knife but without the usual complications for users accustom to symmetrical western blades. This blade geometry allows to cut much thinner and consistent slices than you can achieve with a symmetrical blade/edge.

The knife was very sharp "out of the box". It arrived with microbevels on both sides.
Under the microscope the edge showed some minor residual burrs but nothing serious. After a few passes over a chromium oxide loaded leather honing pad the burrs were gone and the edge flawless and as sharp as a razor blade.

Toughness:
I'm generally careful with my knives and couldn't really bring me to treat the knife roughly. So I let a friend use it to carve up a turkey. He was very impressed with the sharpness but since he was only used to the usual soft steel western household knives not very careful with it. As a result the edge got quiet some contact with bones and other hard objects. After this rough treatment it was no surprise that the edge got some chipping. However, the damage was far less than I expected it to be and the knife was still performing. But this was a good reason to give it a first full sharpening.

Sharpening:
For the first sharpening I used 1000, 6000 and 10000 grit stones. In order to preserve the original geometry I sharpened mostly the front bevel and did only burr removal on the back. Finally, for toughness and better edge retention, I added an approximately 35° microbevel on front and back. To get the ultimate sharpness I did a final polish on a chromium loaded leather hone (~30000 grit). After this treatment it was able to push-cut paper easily and shave hair cleanly.
In a hurry the edge (= micro bevel) can be touched up on a smooth, fine grained ceramic steel with one or two light passes. The key here is to do it very slow and precise and with nearly no pressure - not the quick and dirty steel banging you see on so many cooking shows.
However for best results the preferred touch up method should be a 8-10k stone followed by a chromium loaded strop.
My overall impression is that it's AUS-10 steel is a little bit easier to sharpen and deburr than the Sandvik 19C27 of the Suisin Honyaki Wa-Gyutou.

Points to improve:
This knife came - like the majority of kitchen knifes - with the usual rather sharp edges at spine and choil. It would be nice if the knife would already come with rounded spine and choil. But on the other hand this can easily be done by the user with some wet sanding paper.