Tsunehisa Santoku Kuro-uchi 165mm (6.5″) [Rosewood]

Tsunehisa Santoku Kuro-uchi 165mm is a wonderful hand-forged knife with a black Kuro-uchi protective patina and hammer dents. The blade design will suit anyone looking for a smaller, versatile knife for vegetables, fish, and meat. It will excel at chopping vegetables on the cutting board. The choice of steel also makes it very easy to sharpen.

BLADE SHAPE:
Santoku is a versatile kitchen knife that will shine through all kinds of chopping and cutting on the kitchen board. Meat lovers will only miss a little bit of length with larger pieces of meat. Did you know that the word santoku means “knife of three virtues” in Japanese? The word san is number three, meaning that it can be used to prepare vegetables, fish and meat.

STEEL:
The core of this knife is Hitachi’s Super Blue Steel (Aogami Super), which is the very top quality of traditional Japanese steels. The Kuro-uchi (black) patina on the upper part of the knife gives it a unique and rustic appearance. This knife was heat-treated to around 63 HRC. It is a very hard steel, meaning that it will retain a super-fine sharpness for a long time. In addition, due to the high carbon content (1.4-1.5%), the knife is very easy to sharpen. Among the high carbon steels, Aogami Super is also the least sensitive to rust. It also contains 0.4% vanadium as an admixture for micronized metal grains, which gives the steel more toughness. Aogami Super is rated as the most advanced carbon steel. The outer layers are of softer, stainless steel, giving the knife extra rust protection.

LAMINATION:
The core layer consisting of Aogami Super steel was sandwiched between two layers of softer steel. This technique is called san-mai and is used to protect the hard (but delicate) core from outside factors and physical impacts, which could lead to breakage.

The outer layers are of softer, stainless steel, giving the knife extra rust protection.

GEOMETRY:
It has a double bevel (symmetrical) blade.

BLADE FINISH:
Kuro-uchi finish, the unprocessed (black) part on the top side of the blade has already developed a dark patina, which protects the blade and gives it a unique and rustic appearance. The blade was treated with hammer blows, resulting in a textured tsuchime look, which gives it a beautiful finish and also prevents food from sticking to the blade.

HANDLE:
The handle (traditional Japanese Wa) is oval and smooth, with no discernible transition between the rosewood and maple wood. It’s suitable for both left- and right-handed users.

BLACKSMITH:
Tsunehisa knives are a brand that combines a variety of high-quality knives from various knife centers of Japan such as Tosa, Seki, and Sakai. Their philosophy is that each region has its own steel and different manufacturing processes. For example, Tosa is best known for its Ginsanko and Aus-8 steels, Seki is famous for making excellent blades from the V-Gold group of steels, and Sakai for its single beveled Honyaki knives.