Simon Maillet Honbazuke Diary

[HSC /// Knives]

Yeah i'm certainly not aiming to trash anyone's reputation here, we operate in a pretty niche hobby and it's important to support the small makers that are putting work out there.

Wrought cladding is notoriously prone to warps and bending, and twisted wrought must be really tough to work with. Even since I first got the knife straight a few days ago i've had to make further daily tweaks; that's not down to the maker it's because of the material.

You make a fair point that it's only fair to reach out to him if i'm going to write about all this stuff on the internet, and i've now done that. I'll refrain from further commentary until we've had the chance for a conversation.

I've been reading this with Interest and watching quietly and wondering why you just didn't reach out to him in the first place? and have a conversation with him and see if he offered a solution.

I mean, it's your knife and you have the right to do with it what you want, and I'm not trying to call anything out other than I'm just curious about your approach here.

But also the general approach of why customers don't provide feedback to the maker. I'm pretty sure Simon would like to know and that he would like to do a good job for you and any customer

 

[labor of love]

I’ve only owned one Simon. It wasn’t wrought iron but it did have impeccably clean blade road and was very stone ready outside of a very small spot around the heel.

 

[ryans_knives]

There's absolutely no harm done regarding this thread and I'm actually enjoying watching how you rectify these issues with this knife. Certainly no hard feelings and I know you would never intentionally slander a maker being a very respected member in this forum. Was merely an observation.

Would love to hear the feedback you get from Simon!

 

[Logan A.]

I’m always fascinated by these threads. I’ve never considered full stone polishing, so all the little mistakes you find along the way are things I would never bother to fix. Your attention to detail as you go along this process is immaculate.
I just hit things with finger stones until they’re pretty hahaha.

 

[Pie]

Honbazuke

I’ve really only undertaken this extreme task on a handful of knives, and man just about every knife has had some significant challenges. I definitely punt some bigger problems down the road when choosing the battles tho.

Great work, and keep going!

 

[OkayMode]

So I should really put my hands up here and acknowledge that blinded by my enthusiasm, this thread may have inadvertently dragged Simon’s reputation by presenting certain flaws as acceptable and to be expected when you buy one of his knives, without actually checking with the maker first to clarify whether this is actually the case by their own standards.

I now understand that whilst it’s fairly common, expected, and accepted to receive a knife from a shop requiring some minor work to get the best of it, it’s a different situation when you have a direct line of communication with the maker for a custom order and can provide feedback. I should have done that before posting.

I am pretty mortified that I was that thoughtless in retrospect, and I’m very sorry that I might have added further stress at a time when Instagram is choking off the reach these small makers have to present their work to the world.

I’ve learnt a valuable lesson and will engage with small makers before making posts like this in the future; in the meantime I am speaking with Simon to work out a resolution.

 

[EShin]

This is a nice documentation of why it’s adviced to buy knives from reputable shops in Japan, because they take care of exactly these issues which are very common in knives. There’s many factors at work but it’s not something a maker could avoid completely. Best thing to do is to wait for a year before grinding to minimize the warping but even then it will occur and of course customers don’t want to wait so long. I’m sure you’ll find a good solution. If you send the knife to the maker write something like “knife sharpening and/or refurbishing” and not kitchen knife to avoid trouble with customs fees that you already paid.

Well this comment aged like milk!

I need to get some harder coarse stones (or bite the bullet and go diamond plate), because it turns out there is some serious funk going on here.

If you decide to go on I’d strongly recommend getting a diamond stone for a good combination of hardness and speed that you just don’t get with regular stones. I got one recently and it’s a complete gamechanger for me.

 

[DanielC]

This is a nice documentation of why it’s adviced to buy knives from reputable shops in Japan, because they take care of exactly these issues which are very common in knives. There’s many factors at work but it’s not something a maker could avoid completely. Best thing to do is to wait for a year before grinding to minimize the warping but even then it will occur and of course customers don’t want to wait so long. I’m sure you’ll find a good solution. If you send the knife to the maker write something like “knife sharpening and/or refurbishing” and not kitchen knife to avoid trouble with customs fees that you already paid.


If you decide to go on I’d strongly recommend getting a diamond stone for a good combination of hardness and speed that you just don’t get with regular stones. I got one recently and it’s a complete gamechanger for me.

That's funny, because most western makers that specialize in wide bevels almost always prepare them better than most shops out of Japan.

 

[enrico]

FWIW here are some videos when I took my Simon to an atoma and debado 200. Took about 20 min. Mine was a satin finish, not stone polished. Costed me around $400

 

[EShin]

That's funny, because most western makers that specialize in wide bevels almost always prepare them better than most shops out of Japan.

From what I read here, many western makers make the bevels stone-ready so you have to be much more careful than if you just make a cosmetic finish that covers overgrinds etc. No surprise there. Many seem to charge surprisingly little for all that work though.

 

[DanielC]

From what I read here, many western makers make the bevels stone-ready so you have to be much more careful than if you just make a cosmetic finish that covers overgrinds etc. No surprise there. Many seem to charge surprisingly little for all that work though.

Stone ready gives a knife a fighting chance to be further maintained properly. Most of us don't charge near enough to cover the time it takes or for the years spent making mistakes and learning. Most of us are also 1 person shops with far less volume. Any finish applied outside of a machine is typically money lost.

 

[Byphy]

I agree with your assessment about the root of the issues and, unfortunately, it tracks with an example from this maker I've handled previously and feedback I've got from other buyers

According to this comment this maker is consistently bad. Wonder what other Maillet owners think. I’ve handled one and while the profile wasn’t for me, it cut fantastic.

 

[OkayMode]

According to this comment this maker is consistently bad. Wonder what other Maillet owners think. I’ve handled one and while the profile wasn’t for me, it cut fantastic.

If it’s alright, I’d prefer not to invite further positive/negative verdicts on Simon’s overall work on this specific thread, and risk antagonising things further, I hope you understand!

 

[Simply]

According to this comment this maker is consistently bad. Wonder what other Maillet owners think. I’ve handled one and while the profile wasn’t for me, it cut fantastic.

I have 4 and I’m not able to find a flaw with any of them, great knives. This thread is a can of worms, dive deep enough into any maker and I’ll bet you find similar cases such as this on the odd example. The only concerning bit is the hole in the flat spot, and I’m willing to bet the maker would’ve made it right if contacted. Simons a good dude and makes banging knives for the price. I’m sure he’ll appreciate the feedback, allows him to better his processes/qc in the future.

 

[ethompson]

According to this comment this maker is consistently bad. Wonder what other Maillet owners think. I’ve handled one and while the profile wasn’t for me, it cut fantastic.

I wouldn’t say bad at all, and I definitely wouldn’t say ineffective as a tool. Plenty of blades with stellar reputations have wabi sabi. Minor bends and such probably won’t impact cutting in any big way either. Plenty of truly excellent kitchen tools exist that aren't the easiest candidates for bench stone polishing.

Stone polishing just requires a different baseline of precision that isn’t necessarily in line with the requirements to be a good kitchen knife. You do enough stone polishing and you tend to develop a hyper-critical, borderline dysfunctional attention to detail. I notice and think about things now that I never would have considered 2 years ago. But... I don't think my knives really cut any better today than they used to. This type of polishing is a hobby unto itself, not a performance necessity.

Sure its disappointing to think a knife will be perfectly stone ready and find that it isn’t, but the reality is that the amount of work required to achieve that extra level of consistency doesn’t make sense from a makers perspective. My comment is more about resetting expectations than commenting on the quality of his blades overall.

I do not and will not do polishing work as a paid service. But if I did… I would expect to spend 20ish hours on a fairly well made knife doing geometry work through fine bench stone finish. If lucky, maybe 10 hours. If not, 30+ hours - by hand on stones, no power tools which would of course speed things up. At $30/hour thats a $600 polish job. Simon is managing to make a whole knife and send it out for basically that. Would people really want to pay double to compensate Simon for extra time spent for something that has little performance impact? Probably not - justifiably!

 

[Byphy]

If it’s alright, I’d prefer not to invite further positive/negative verdicts on Simon’s overall work on this specific thread, and risk antagonising things further, I hope you understand!

I can respect this request, completely understand

 

[OkayMode]

I can respect this request, completely understand

Thank you!

 

[bsfsu]

I've put 100's of Japanese knives on stones, I'm struggling to remember a knife that was perfectly stone ready.

From my experience, when you stone polish a knife you will find "defects" but that doesn't mean the knife is badly made. It just means the knife is handmade and eye finished, not made by a robot.

 

[OkayMode]

Thought I should share an update on this by way of a resolution to the discussion above.

We've already established that I should have flagged the flaws I noticed with this knife straight away, and I took the advice to get in touch with Simon and discuss the best course of action.

Despite the fact that I had already done some work on the knife, he very graciously offered me the choice of either receiving a full refund, or for him to give the knife a cold treatment at -80c to release the left over tension in the blade (hopefully minimising any further bends/warping), even out the high and low spots on the bevels with a horizontal wheel, and make sure the edge profile is all as it should be with no holes etc before sending it back to me to decide whether to keep it or not.

I went with the latter option, and got it back with more or less a week's turnaround, which was great.

I am used to working on convexed bevels at this point (and it's worth noting that I do usually like em quite convexed), which could have potentially been quite a bit more of an undertaking to maintain whilst working out the low spots and resulting in a reasonable amount of loss to height. However, Simon flagged that his usual approach is that whilst his knives have a convex overall geometry because the knife is forged to shape, the bevels are typically ground flat.

As a result, the refinished knife has lost less height than I was anticipating (it's now 55.5mm tall at the heel), with the shinogi raised a bit from the original grind.

I have tested it out a bit this week and am really happy with it; the profile is great and provides a lot of lot of comfortable cutting real estate thanks to the flatter edge profile, early impressions are that the core steel seems nicely crisp without feeling delicate, and despite my historical scepticism towards flat bevels, it cuts confidently and well - including through harder veg that you might normally expect to wedge. I will sharpen in some some convexity behind the edge over subsequent sharpenings, but that's more to suit my personal preferences than a comment on performance. Obviously, it looks awesome too.

I'm super grateful to Simon for the work he's done to get the knife where it is now (when he would have been within his rights to choose not to), and i'm happy to own some work by another great UK-based maker.

 

[Bico Doce]

Thought I should share an update on this by way of a resolution to the discussion above.

We've already established that I should have flagged the flaws I noticed with this knife straight away, and I did get in touch with Simon to discuss the best course of action.

Despite the fact that I had already done some work on the knife, he very graciously offered me the choice of either receiving a full refund, or for him to give the knife a cold treatment at -80c to release the left over tension in the blade (hopefully minimising any further bends/warping), even out the high and low spots on the bevels with a horizontal wheel, and make sure the edge profile is all as it should be with no holes etc before sending it back to me to decide whether to keep it or not.

I went with the latter option, and got it back with more or less a week's turnaround, which was great.

I am used to working on convexed bevels at this point (and it's worth noting that I do usually like em quite convexed), which could have potentially been quite a bit more of an undertaking to maintain whilst working out the low spots and resulting in a reasonable amount of loss to height. However, Simon flagged that his usual approach is that whilst his knives have a convex overall geometry because the knife is forged to shape, the bevels are typically ground flat.

As a result, the refinished knife has lost less height than I was anticipating (it's now 55.5mm tall at the heel), with the shinogi raised a bit from the original grind.

I have tested it out a bit this week and am really happy with it; the profile is great and provides a lot of lot of comfortable cutting real estate thanks to the flatter edge profile, early impressions are that the core steel seems nicely crisp without feeling delicate, and despite my historical scepticism towards flat bevels, it cuts confidently and well - including through harder veg that you might normally expect to wedge. I will sharpen in some some convexity behind the edge over subsequent sharpenings, but that's more to suit my personal preferences than a comment on performance. Obviously, it looks awesome too.

I'm super grateful to Simon for the work he's done to get the knife where it is now (when he would have been within his rights to choose not to), and i'm happy to own some work by another great UK-based maker.

Looks fantastic!

 

[ryans_knives]

Thought I should share an update on this by way of a resolution to the discussion above.

We've already established that I should have flagged the flaws I noticed with this knife straight away, and I did get in touch with Simon to discuss the best course of action.

Despite the fact that I had already done some work on the knife, he very graciously offered me the choice of either receiving a full refund, or for him to give the knife a cold treatment at -80c to release the left over tension in the blade (hopefully minimising any further bends/warping), even out the high and low spots on the bevels with a horizontal wheel, and make sure the edge profile is all as it should be with no holes etc before sending it back to me to decide whether to keep it or not.

I went with the latter option, and got it back with more or less a week's turnaround, which was great.

I am used to working on convexed bevels at this point (and it's worth noting that I do usually like em quite convexed), which could have potentially been quite a bit more of an undertaking to maintain whilst working out the low spots and resulting in a reasonable amount of loss to height. However, Simon flagged that his usual approach is that whilst his knives have a convex overall geometry because the knife is forged to shape, the bevels are typically ground flat.

As a result, the refinished knife has lost less height than I was anticipating (it's now 55.5mm tall at the heel), with the shinogi raised a bit from the original grind.

I have tested it out a bit this week and am really happy with it; the profile is great and provides a lot of lot of comfortable cutting real estate thanks to the flatter edge profile, early impressions are that the core steel seems nicely crisp without feeling delicate, and despite my historical scepticism towards flat bevels, it cuts confidently and well - including through harder veg that you might normally expect to wedge. I will sharpen in some some convexity behind the edge over subsequent sharpenings, but that's more to suit my personal preferences than a comment on performance. Obviously, it looks awesome too.

I'm super grateful to Simon for the work he's done to get the knife where it is now (when he would have been within his rights to choose not to), and i'm happy to own some work by another great UK-based maker.

Great work! Still very nice specs and looks awesome