Test

[Mark76]

The Goko damascus gyuto is a beautiful knife. It does not only have a nice damascus cladding, but also a core of 19C27, which is one of my favorite steels. So when I was offered this knife at a very reasonable price, not to say cheaply (less than EUR 90), I decided to get one. A 210 mm gyuto.

The origin of this knife is a bit of a mystery. It was offered by multiple shops under different names: Echizen Hamono, Goko and Goko Hamono are names I have seen. When I asked around, I heard that these knives were traded by a Japanese knife wholesaler that liked to keep the origin of the knife confidential. Rumor has it that the knives are made in the Seki area.

A beautiful knife with a good steel, but with a mysterious origin and quite cheap. There must be something wrong with this knife. So I thought. I was soon to find out.

First impressions

What first attracted me to this knife was the nice Damascus cladding on the blade. I first got the knife with a friction saya made of a soft wood. When I took the knife out of the saya, it was severely scratched by the saya. I sent that knife back and got another one, but this shows that the cladding is quite soft.

Not everything about the knife is beautiful. The handle is plain ugly: a burnt chestnut wood handle with a plastic ferrule that was at least a millimeter lower than the rest of the handle. This makes it rather uncomfortable to hold. But that problem could be solved, too. Greg Gola made a beautiful handle for me of walnut burl with a muskox horn ferrule and very nice spacers. The measurements presented here refer to the original knife, however.

The Goko is definitely a laser type knife: the spine is 1.5 mm wide above the spine, which makes it by far the thinnest blade I have seen. There is little tapering: halfway the blade the spine still measures 1.5 mm. At one centimeter from the tip it is 0.9 mm wide. This is ok, but not spectacularly thin.

The profile is a bit odd. At first sight it may seem as if the knife has a proper flat “spot” for about the first third of the blade from the heel. However, at a closer look one can see the flat spot is not entirely flat: it curves slightly towards the heel of the blade. From about one third of the blade to the tip the blade has a gentle curve with some belly. The knife is 46 cm high at the heel, which is similar to many other 210 mm gyutos.

The knife has a sort of full-flat grind where the angle of the grind decreases a bit about 1.5 centimeters above the edge. It is not particularly thin just above the edge.

The spine and choil of the knife have not been rounded, but they have no sharp edges either.

Use
The proof of the pudding is in the eating and particularly for this knife I was not sure how it would cut.

Initially the knife was plain blunt, so I sharpened it with my Shapton stones up to 8K. Then I started using it. The first thing I noticed is how light this knife is: only 125 grams.

I threw a variety of foods at it: vegetables, meat and fish. The knife cut much better than I had expected. It wasn’t great with delicate pieces that benefit from a fine tip, but it dealt well with onions, for example. The knife never wedged, even though it was not very thin above the edge. I felt comfortable with the knife, although I wouldn’t cut pumpkins with it. And a cabbage would probably also benefit from a thicker knife.

The knife worked well both when push cutting and when slicing. In practice the curve on the edge towards the tip didn’t bother me much.

Food release was the worst I have seen on any knife. This is perhaps not a surprise, since it is never good on a thin knife, but the grind on this knife didn’t help.

Since the cladding on the knife is so soft, I expected the core steel to be soft as well. But this was not the case. The edge retention wasn’t as great as that of the Suisin Inox honyaki, which has my favorite 19C27 steel ever, but as a home cook I could comfortably use the knife for two weeks without stropping or sharpening. And I have high standards for sharpness.

Conclusion

The Goko is a knife with a beautiful damascus blade. The handle is ugly, but can be replaced. Or it can be sanded to make it a bit more comfortable. The knife cuts much better than I expected. Slightly exaggerated, this knife is a thin plate of metal with a sharp edge. And this knife proves that such a plate can chop and slice well.

I suspected that for a knife sold at this price there might be a catch. But there isn’t. I don’t know of any better looking knives at this price point, let alone knives that cut as well, too.

Factsheet

Click on the factsheet for a larger version.

Molecule Polishing: my blog about sharpening with the Wicked Edge

[Author]

Posts