Ikeuchi Sakimaru-Gyuto Shirogami 220mm (8.7″)

Ikeuchi Sakimaru-Gyuto combines the blacksmith’s familiar design language we’ve come to know and love and our completely reimagined, contemporary blade shape. The blade’s unfinished (kuro-uchi) layer was hammered until what came out was an intricate tsuchime finish, dotted with miniscule hammer dents. With a beautiful sand-blasted kasumi line separating it from the cutting edge, it is a real rustic masterpiece.

Knife obsession is a very real thing. It’s a good kind of obsession. The kind that results in ideas popping up when you’re brewing your first morning coffee and that motivates you to keep discovering, to keep widening your horizons. It was one of these idle moments when an idea popped into Luka’s* head. Single bevel knives. The specificity of their tasks is what scares a lot of users from using single bevel knives, believing they are too advanced for them. This kind of geometry enables a half-size, much sharper angle, and consequently higher sharpness of the knife, which cuts more cleanly than double bevel knives. The main advantage in terms of function is that the blade pushes the slice of food that is being cut off away from the blade, causing it to fall away from the knife. The flat edge on the opposite side (uraoshi side) has a slight concave grind to it, which breaks the surface tension between the knife and the food. This allows the flat side of the knife to glide against the food with much less resistance. * Luka is the founder of SharpEdge. Get to know the team by clicking this link.

While this knife may not be the star player of the food prep team, it is however the perfect love-child of the single-bevel knife shapes. Its wide profile, similar to that of an usuba or a deba, gives it all the makings of a chef’s go-to knife for precise and complex techniques, like the julienne or the Japanese katsuramuki. Despite the age-old saying, (in the kitchen) size does in fact matter, and the knives listed above usually lack it. This is where the lengthy gyuto really shines – the 220 millimeter blade is perfect for longer, precise pulling motions used when slicing meat and filleting fish too.

To sum up: by joining a universal shape with a single bevel grind (giving the knife the width of a gyuto, with all the perks of a chisel ground knife) we managed to get the best of both worlds. Intrigued?

This sakimaru style single bevel gyuto is exclusive to SharpEdge and was created in collaboration with Ikeuchi Hamono.

BLADE SHAPE:
This gyuto differs from others of its kind by two very distinct characteristics. The first one is the aforementioned grind of the blade, and the second is the blade’s unusual shape. The spine is straight and the belly tapers in a continuous curve, until making a sharp turn right before the point. This is where the name sakimaru comes from, it refers to the tanto tip.

The single bevel blade is suitable 🚨 for right-handed users only!

STEEL:
The blade was forged by the Ikeuchi Hamono smithy. Its construction is called ni-mai, meaning it’s composed of a hard cutting edge (hagane) and a softer, external layer (jigane). The hard core is made out of Shirogami #1 steel and the surface of the jigane layer is rocking a special hammered (tsuchime) kuro-uchi look (for more take a look at our Blade construction: Blade Finish article).

Advantages of Shirogami #1 steel are a very fine, gentle sharpness – it is easy to sharpen, and remains sharp for a long time. The high carbon steel will develop some patina after time, so we recommend oiling the blade regularly. Learn more about knife maintenance here.

HANDLE:
The blade is fitted with an oval traditional Japanese (wa) handle, made out of rosewood and finished off with a pakka wood ferrule. The handle is a bit longer, making it suitable for people with larger hands too.

🚩 This knife has a special protective coating! The back of the knife is coated with a protective layer that shields the blade from scratches and moisture. This protective layer is removed during use.