Tohji Sakimaru-Gyuto Shirogami #1 220mm (8.7″)

Tohji Sakimaru-Gyuto bridges the gap between minimalistic and traditional—featuring a juxtaposition of a sleek migaki look and a traditional Japanese magnolia wood handle. The blade is sporting a unique hand-chiseled kanji and a beautiful whetstone kasumi finish. If the devil is in the details, this knife might have come straight from hell, with every inch of it being infused with the spirit of Japanese attention to detail and devotion to tradition. This is a knife for all of you who live by the moto “Less is more”.

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 Sakai Tohji.

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 Sakai Tohji 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 while the surface of the jigane has a migaki finish (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.

→ Read our articles Blade construction: Geometry and/or Blade construction: Lamination.

HANDLE:
The blade is fitted with an oval traditional Japanese (wa) handle, made out of magnolia wood and finished off with a beautiful buffalo horn ferrule.