# 270MM Gyuto-Hiki Review.



## Zwiefel (Jan 23, 2013)

A few photos to get started....















I wasn't expecting anything other than the knife but it came with a nice padded, zippered carrying case as well as the best packing job I've ever seen...I mean really...the knife had a wooden splint to prevent damage in shipping!

Mario calls it a 270, according to my crappy tape measure, I get about 281MM from choil to tip and about 294MM from bolster to tip. A quick trip on my uncalibrated scale says 184g.

Very nice polish on it too...maybe the shiniest knife I have now.

Very nice distal taper, and much thinner behind the edge than I'd expect given the sense of heft when holding it. Really quite thin near the tip...perhaps thinner than any other knife I own, with a small amount of flex that's not present 2-3" from the tip. Balance is about 3/4" in front of the index finger when held in pinch grip. I think a lot of folks that like a forward balanced knife would love the balance point here.

This is the last 4-5" of the blade, apologies for the poor photo, I'm still trying to figure out how to capture these kinds of details, didn't get the shot perfectly aligned with the blade face so some of the blade face is visible. Should give you a sense of the taper though...and see the rounding a bit.





Spine and choil are nicely rounded and the join between the ferrule and handle seems to be perfect. The handle is a bit shorter than my other wa handles on my 180MM and 240mm knives, but certainly not too short my crappy tape measure says 125MM, I'd say it's roughly 1/2-3/4" shorter than the others. Very comfortable size/shape/length for me.

This looks a bit thicker than it feels when cutting, you can see it's nicely rounded though.





After working with it for 5-6 hours now, I continue to be surprised when using it. It's really quite surprisingly agile, esp at the tip, and esp considering it's 280MM. I still have a lot to learn about knives and consider myself a noob, but this may be the most subtle knife I have now. I keep getting surprised by how it wants to be used for different tasks and the breadth of tasks it is suitable for. 

I love love the profile of this knife, very clear to my now why a previous poster said it would be their "The One Knife" </precious>. Plenty of board clearance for me--I do have small hands, but I think most people would be fine--and plenty of edge length for every task I've thrown at it so far.

For cutting performance, I've not had any wedging so far, but I haven't tried any larger root vegetables with it...and that's perhaps the only place I'd think it possible. It effortlessly glides through cantalope, tomatoes, onions, etc. with no detectable steering. I haven't used it on any proteins yet...but look forward to see how it does with some crusty proteins and bread over the weekend. Don't have a lot of food sticking, mostly when I'm doing brunoise.

Mario sent it with a respectable edge @4000 grit and I haven't re-touched it yet. Probably this weekend I'll have a touch-up session and see if I'm able to do better at 8k than Mario at 4k...a 50/50 proposition I think.

To sum up, I'm extremely pleased with my first forray into semi-custom cutlery, and think I still have a lot of things to learn about this extremely well-crafted and beautiful blade...Mario's reputation is well-earned. Furthermore, I promise I will not have a denim laminate saya made for it....I'm thinking maybe some sort of laminate woods...hmmmm.


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## Zwiefel (Jan 23, 2013)

Did I put this in the right place? Just noticed Mario created all the other threads here.


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## Andrew H (Jan 23, 2013)

I moved it for ya, Zwiefel. Nice review!


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## Zwiefel (Jan 23, 2013)

Thanks, sorry for the trouble.


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## jgraeff (Jan 23, 2013)

I'm in love with mine such an awesome knife! 

Mine hasn't wedged on anything but doesn't cut super smoothly on hard vegies like celery or rutabagas. Although what knife does.. In my opinion the best overall most versatile knife I have used with best overall performance 

Love that handle btw!!


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