It’s Crazy How Bad This Damascus Knife Is… But Why?? 

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I know these vids are mostly for funzies but for guys like me that rarely make a kitchen knife, these actual educate me quite a bit on what makes a good chef knife.

You should do some "follow-ups" to these reviews. Where you either fix the issues with the knife or you somehow repurpose them into a good product. That would be a neat conclusion, and the end result could be kind of cool for simple viewer giveaways or something.

as a chef i enjoy this series, im tired of all the facebook bs knives ads all over my feed

"Objectively, morally wrong." you crack me up.

Thanks Will, for exposing this garbage. Folks, you can get a high quality Japanese made kitchen knife for under $200, don't be fooled by advertising. I bought a Muneishi Aogami #2 stainless clad 165mm Santoku for $140 plus shipping. It cuts like a laser and I haven't needed to sharpen it yet, just strop it and the edge comes right back.

I left Brooklyn Bedding a bad review on their website after purchasing one of their mattresses and they deleted it like they do all of them. Terrible company.

“Junk knife Damascus chefs knife” where you remake all the junk knives into one nice one

As a chef of 28+ years and blade maker of 4, these videos of knife reviews are highly educational to everybody, ngl, I like the way use and handle a kitchen blade👌👌

Watching a more experienced smith break down blades and edge geometry really helps me to perfect my blade work as i start prepping for my journeyman test

Maybe you could make a "Frankenknife" of all the bad knives you have tested so far?

It reminds me of those infomercials where people can't use normal, household objects. Except the knife is actually that bad.

That thing is dowright scary. The way thr hollow grind causes blade to deflect as it cuts, combined with that round handle-I'm not a chef or a knifemaker but still that thing looks like an accident waiting to happen.

Omfg I don’t have much experience with the rest but I got a 20 dollar knife at Walmart and it went through the onion way easier than that knife. Absolutely ridiculous

This was a great insight into what a knife should be and how this one isn’t. Thanks

This might be my favorite series of videos to date Will. You guys have done an awesome job on these videos. Fantastic information. What I gather from these videos about the finer details of knife design, the how's and why's is fantastic. I keep re-evaluating my kitchen knives and if they're up to scratch. I really love cooking and can spend hours in the kitchen, and I want the best tools possible in those hours. At the moment, my primary kitchen knife is the tsuchimon from Yaxell. it'd be awesome if you eventually looked at the Yaxell brand. For my next kitchen knife, I want an America style, and I'll find a local blade Smith to make one for me. New Zealand doesn't have as bug a community of knife makers, but they're out there.

I absolutely love your knife reviews. It cuts through all the hype

I have liked the series but I would like to see a video covering 3 chef knives you’d recommend at 3 price points. Something like a $15 Victorinox, $100ish German knife and something like a $200 Japanese chef knife with AUS or VG steel. I think there are a lot of options in those categories and getting your opinion on them would be cool.

Love this series. Great way to learn what a good knife should be.

You should add these review videos to a playlist on youtube so we can find the others more easily. Especially since they are named so differently.

How they can scam people out of hundreds for such a product is insane. I paid like 60 bucks for a Kanetsune santoku 6-7 years ago ...that knife that slices like a razor, and I use it almost every single day, and plan to have it for the rest of my life.

Will is officially the only guy on RU-vid that knows how to remove an avocado seed. Seriously, I've never seen anyone do it correctly before.

I've been using kankitchen knives for a bit. Really nice knives! Japanese made, vg-10 edge, damascus patterned, not expensive, and sharp AF. I use just the chef's knife and the paring knife. They have a utility, or petty knife, that's awesome, but it feels like it really just wants human blood

I feel really satisfied with this video, Will is so soothing to watch.

Love this content. Great way to learn about the importance of geometry via real world application

I would love to see you fix some of these knives :) That would make for a fun series I think. For this one maybe just regrind the edge and fix the choil area. That would be pretty awesome I think!

A yellow handle Zwilling Henckles would be a really interesting review / benchmark. For under $60 they have to be the best bang for your buck knife out there. Plus they are in professional kitchens everywhere, and easy for a home cook to purchase.

Oof! Thanks for pointing out all the flaws to think about when choosing a knife. I purchased a "Rite Edge - Chef knife" with nearly identical looks and aesthetics to the one you have shown here in the video with a few minor exceptions. Firstly, I got it for about $30. Second, mine is stamped/labeled with Pakistan on the blade. Third, my sheath actually has a good welt in it and fits the knife deep into the sheath nearly covering the entire handle, as if it were a bushcrafting knife. Fourth, mine has a mosaic pin in the middle of the other two pins, which, while it still wasn't perfectly done within the spacing of the pieces in the mosaic pin, it still looks nicer than the one in the video. I do have some gaps in between the tang and my handle. There is some kind of terrible smell to the handle. There is some kind of tar/blackened glue squeeze out or maybe it's some kind of epoxy used to attach the handle scales left on and around the edges of the tang. The handle scales don't look as nice as yours in the video, I think there are/were some cracks filled in with that epoxy stuff and smushed back together again so it's like the handle is impregnated with the stinky stuff. The handle scales were either batch made with another machine before being attached to the tang OR they have shrunk in size leaving an extremely sharp 90 all the way around the tang, exposed beyond the handle (awful). The spine of the knife is extremely sharp - you could bushcraft strike a ferro rod like a dream with that spine! But that's not wanted for me in a "Chef knife", not even a camping one. The knife was entirely swimming within a plastic bag of some kind of thick viscous oil that took 5 washings with blue dawn to mostly get rid of and yet I still discovered a 1/4 of a US currency dime coin size of rust on the blade that I ended up rubbing off with a Klingspor Sandflex fine grit sand block (love those sanding blocks for knocking off rust from things). It does not have a flatness to the edge of the blade, meaning that there are gaps of light under it in a somewhat wavy fashion that does not make full contact with a cutting board. Mine did not have a burned up tip from sharpening. It does have a very similar grinding pattern on the sides of the blade but without that hexagon pattern that yours has. The dimensions are "10.5" OVERALL LENGTH - 4.5" HANDLE LENGTH - 6" BLADE LENGTH - GENUINE DAMASCUS STEEL BLADE" copy/pasted, so it's shorter than the one shown, and it's in a leaf shape kind of blade. Even the box looks similar to yours but does not have the same wording. I'd bet my knife came from the same factory that yours did! The spine thickness came out to: 0.14" or 3.7mm The part where the fingers go near the cutting edge at the handle where the blade is radiused into the tang area starts at: 0.13" or 3.3mm It starts tapering drastically there to: 0.06~0.07" or 1.6~1.7mm Then it's a sharp drastic wedge V shape for about the last: 0.06" or 1.6mm on the right side, and up to 2.3mm of grind on the left side - it was not ground evenly and is clearly visible to the eye. The last difference I can make is my handle is not round like yours, it does have rounded/radiused edges where the hand would hold onto it but overall it's more rectangular/squarish with flats on the sides of the scales. The top and bottom of the handle scales are not radiused like the sides and are kind of squared off and flat, not quite sharp though but still not comfortable. The knife of yours you showed in the video that does cut very well... I'd love to buy that one from you if you are selling them! The old rustic look of the blade is a beauty, just like my families antique kitchen knifes they have had in the family for more than a hundred years (not sure how old they are, but Very old!). Let me know if you could sell or make me one! I had an inkling into what I would probably be getting when I bought this Rite Edge knife, thus I didn't want to spend much for one... but the results of having it in hand were much worse than I had thought it would have been. I have not tried to use it on foods at all due to not knowing what it is made of for sure and all of the other errors in it, I don't trust it, and I wouldn't want to get poisoned by it somehow (not sure if you can get lead poisoned by a knife contacting food or not if it had lead in it). Anyways - thanks for the video~ Cheers!

Like the series Will. As a retired chef and seeing all the aweful "chef knives" force advertised all over social media I appreciate you bringing to light the reality weather good/bad for people to see before wasting their money. Also that pakistan made knife will likely test in the 45Rc range and contain high amounts of lead....which of course is what everyone wants in a knife for food prep. Also hope you found a good use for that birdeye african blackwood.

My uncle is a chef and he prefers his bigger knifes that he used to have a hole in the back of the handle or in the blade cause he has hooks he hangs them on above his cutting board and counter where he usually is at. And he also told me he will never own a high carbon or Damascus blade to keep in a kitchen. He said it's to much aggravation having to keep it oiled and worrying about rust especially in a professional setting. Not sure how good of information that is but I've always went with it.

I like the reviews and am a fan of Brooklyn bedding. I worked in furniture for 10 years, a bed is as good as you pay for it.

I like these videos because they add some variation to the channel and it's great to see the things that you're paying attention to as a bladesmith that I don't think about, like for example the pins not lining up on the handle.

This is why I have several Forgecraft, Village Blacksmith, and other antique high carbon knives in my block. One to five dollars each at neighborhood garage sales, and they are good steel with proper edge geometry, and cheap enough that I don't feel bad about recontouring if needs be. They cut so much better than the TV/Interweb "wunderknives" that it's not even funny. If I were better financed, I'd have my friend who owns Arrowhead Forge in Buffalo, Wyoming make me some kitchen knives (or take his class and make my own!).

Thanks for including millimeters in your video. Have you considered making a knive sharpening video. I know there are a lot out there ... even whole channels build around that topic. But since you do it anyway for your knives, you might as well document it one time and show us, what you prefer.

Really dig this content. It's refreshing to switch it up! Also if this video would have been produced 4 years ago I wouldn't have bought one of these knives 😂 At that time there were no reviews on them and I thought they were "cool". I've since been delivered though and all my kitchen knives are custom one offs😅

I’d be sooooo angry if I spent $220 on this knife. Love all the content Will, keep it up!!

I really enjoy these reviews! Especially when you compare them to your knives. Great content, good variety.

I got a dalstrong the other month that I have been enjoying. The santoku, and paring knife from the Valhalla series. I like that santoku but the paring is too big to be a paring knife. More of a small petty knife. They also don't really say where they are made but advertise what steel it is. Their shogun series would probably be the closer comparison to your knives

Help! I hope Will or another knife expert can advise me. Skip the next paragraph to get to my question. I was recently given a set of knife shaped objects that look very similar to these. They were brand new but in terrible shape. Way too thick behind the edge, heavy in the hand and looked like they were sharpened on a 120 grit belt at 30° per side. The worst had 2 warps in it, one right by the handle and the other half way along the blade and no amount of force I could exert could persuade it to straighten. In the end I had to place the cutting edge in a bath of water and heat the spine to cherry red to soften it. Even then it took 4 rounds of heating to get it soft enough to straighten. I put a mirror polished, razor sharp 17° (per side) edge on it and gave it back knowing that I’d only done half a job. My problem is I haven’t the heart to tell him that the very expensive gift from his wife is crap and I’d like to make the knives as good as possible for him. Question Would it be a waste of time trying to improve the cutting geometry by thinning the blade or are they not worth the effort? I sharpen knives etc for a hobby so the amount of time it takes, within reason isn’t too important.

It would be cool to have a follow up episode where you tried to fix these knives.

you should do a follow up video where you take this knife and see if you can make it better by turning it into a hidden tang to fix the handle and then regrind the blade to correct the profile and the edge geometry

Any of the shun series knives!!! Please!

thanks for educating the masses!! we need to get your videos out there

We use the Furi Pro East West Santoku knives (they come as a cheapish two pack) here! As a stay at home mom who spends an insane amount of time chopping and cooking they work great, but my husband does sharpen the blades for me so I don't know if they're great stock standard or if it's his sharpening that makes them okay 😅 I do find they tend to travel a bit especially while slicing cheese. I'd absolutely recommend them to people, but they're the only knives I've ever owned so I don't know any better 😂

4.8/5 stars on the heaving noises. Would recommend using in the future!

I’ve always been curious about the Spyderco kitchen knife. I would love to see how that stacks up. I love these reviews because I see plenty of ads as well on social media and it drives me nuts!

Good ol Pakimascus. Made from the finest quality oil barrels and pallet straps.

At that price point you could probably get a a couple knives from CK2G, and be set for years

A review of the MAC knife MTH-80 would be cool. I really like mine and think it's a solid production knife workhorse for the money. So much so that it's my go to recommendation to friends who wants a bit more knife than a Vicky, but not ready to go $3-400+ custom

I keep getting a knife ad here on youtube and I always forget to save it and send it to you. Huge cleavers that they claim to be universal kitchen knives.

A friend cut his hand open when he was making a knife and drawing it out of the sheath had to get his hand put back together and stitched up 😩🤕 but he has made a full recovery thankfully 😁

Have you used any Shun knives? Maybe test them out in the next review?

All right, you convinced me. Where can I get one?

I’d love to see a review of the work sharp belt sharpener (Ken onion) vs whet stones or your preferred method of sharpening.

I really enjoy this series. I’d really like to see some knives on the cheaper end like babish’s knives

It'd be cool to see a review on the Babish Clef knife. It's an interesting shape, made form stainless steel, and relatively cheap at around 35 bucks.

It would be great to see a series where you correct and better these poor excuses for knives. That would be fun.

1st, love your work, thank you for coming back and providing some awesome content. As for a production knife I'd love to see a true bladesmith review, I enjoy my Dalstrong shogun series knifes. Would be amazing to get your review of them.

You should do a series where you correct or modify these knives to improve the design and remove/minimize the flaws.

I still think the Tojiro DP line is interesting. It has little to no distal taper, but cuts more nicely than anything else I have personally tried. I am a poor though, so it's also the most expensive knife I've tried.

I think it would be cool to see how these knives compare to the Dexter-Russel Sani-safe Chef's knife, they're 12" and about $40 and they're used in a ton of commercial kitchens and other commercial industries

Ik you have mentioned global knives before. If you do a review video, you should choose a GF series. The handles are much better and I prefer there weight. I have a GF33 and a GF 34. Yeah they're not my Kato's but they are good entry level higher end knives. You can learn with them without destroying actual high end knives.

I bought a 10$ Cuisinart at some big box store, and used my Japanese stones to put a 3000 grit edge on it (eventually, took 3 days of sharpening to unscrew that horrible factory geometry,) and it cuts far better than that knife does... yikes...

Bad knife, great demo on what a good knife should be and do, very educational.

Thanks for reviewing knives, really enjoy your reviews.

As soon as you measured the thickness of the blade, I knew it was Crrrrrrrap! (channeling groundskeeper Willie). Kitchen knives should have very thin blades and (as said) no hollow grind to work their best. It's very hard to forge a knife thin enough to be a great kitchen knife, but there's no shame in using execellent steel of the correct thickness and not laying a hammer on it. High quality steel grain structure is already refined, and needs no forging!

thank you, i was informed and entertained.

great video. next time turn the voulme to 11. its pretty quiet. make us turn it down 👍

Hey! Maybe I like turning tomatoes to tomato paste!

I'd be interested in hearing a review on the "Forged in Fire" chef knife.

Having not watched the whole thing (so I don’t know if you destroyed it yet😂) you should fix the knife (best you can) lol

I think it would be fun to see you review one of those really basic Cuisinart chefs knives.

For a good production knife to review, how about Bradford knives? I have their chef knife and love it.

You should do one on one of those coolina knives everyone gets ads for

Those guys are genius Will. They just got you to pay them $217. to give them advice on how to make a kitchen knife. 😂😂😂 Thanks for the review.

Thanks Will. Oh and Zwilling kitchen knifes are very good. They are used by many Michelin star wearing European chefs. 😁👍🏼😁👍🏼

Can you do a series of you trying tto make these knives any better than they are?

I would love to see you review the babish line of knives. I have one of his knives and it's my favourite knife. Definitely going to get more of the set but would love to hear your thoughts on them

Just watching you describe the knife geometry and the taper just tells me that my chef's knives are not designed right. Please give some pointers.

But can you fix the issues on the knife with adding little to no more material? It is nice to get expert opinions but better to see them improve or fix it.

Awesome vid. Would love to see some reviews of knives that are NOT garbage. (I'd buy a Will Stelter knife but they are a bit spendy and pretty much impossible to get your hands on)

Instagram advertising must work if Will keeps buying these knives. 😂

I love Bob Kramer knives, I use those myself

I got a Miyabi years back as a gift and I love it. It’s the only production knife I own

I like your review videos. Learn alot from them.

Fantastic work…keep it up

items, not even just knives like this always make me wish I can look in the makers house, Do they themselves actually use what they're selling.With for instance a knife like this I truly feel like they only make them for export/selling

I have used Hinckel knives most of my life as a chef and bang for the buck they are hands down the best. Some day i wish i could afford one of yours but i am not rich LOL

Will, I would love to see an episode where you took a knife like this and made it the best it could be.

Yeah. German knives might be too expensive but its not hard to buy a japanese knife for under $150, made of a steel and bevel to stay sharp for a long time with some realignment and easy to resharpen when it finally gets dull, and last you forever.

I would love to see you review Wustoff knives. I have their 10" chef knife, and personally love it!

Could you do the Dalstrong Shogun 9.5" chefs knife? I've been a chef for 15 years and I have this knife. It's pretty underwhelming for the price and I like to know a bit more abouts it's geometry and perhaps how you as a blacksmith would "fix" it

dude, try the misono carbon steel gyuto. its 100 bucks and i think its one of the best on the market. they are a little rough around the edges but supposedly 60-62 hrc and super thin. i dont know what steel it is but it will apex with about 3 passes on a 1000 grit stone so i suspect it isnt quite that hard, but thes knifes are just fantastic and once they patina, they look 100 years old. Oh and they use brass rivets, so i think thats sexy as heck. thanks dude

Would love to see a review of a Wusthof Chef's Knife - ideally the 8" grand prix but I suspect they are all roughly the same. There are a lot of mixed reviews online. Suspect it's not going to be as bad as this knife, but would appreciate a pro's opinion of whether it's worth more than a cheap Victorinox usually selling at double to triple the price.

I'd love to see a review of the Babish knives.

Ahh the good old Pakimastus.

I’d love your opinion on woodcrafts zhen knife blanks. Also, do a tutorial on handle design and build while you do it.

I love this but the label on the food.. gave me the creeps.. Its me.. I know it.. but.. TAKE THOSE LABELS OFF! wash your tomatoes! about 10 years ago, My wife(of the time) asked me for some tomatoes for dinner, I walk 3 blocks to the market and am there just for tomatoes. Koreatown los angeles, ralphs market on 3rd and vermont, I walk in straight to the tomatoes and start picking out some good ones for salsa, next to me is a 70 plus year old korean woman. We stand picking tomatoes, and she sneezes HARD, I feel a bit of mist hit me...she then takes her hand BLOWS her NOSE into her hand wipes it on her shirt, and continues to pick thru the tomatoes With VIsible boogers on her hand. I back away, and walk home. she didnt even say anything... and no.. she was not homeless or disturbed. she was well dressed. I have always washed all of my produce since. I understand microbiology and it terrifies me.

A hollow ground kitchen knife. in the rubbish bin it goes! Which is a shame because their packaging is first rate in terms of the box, they would actually be quite an expensive purchase in terms of buying them in batches.

Maybe a bit out of the normal groove, but I've been seeing the steelport knives around a lot more lately and I'm curious what you think about them.