Nakamura Hamono Ko-bocho 155mm

Another great knife that splits hairs

Posted by Unknown on 11th Apr 2021

The blue 1 steel takes a great edge. . . it doesn't immediately cut through hair like some others but instead kinda turns it into a fine shaving. Both behaviors make for really sharp knives. . . .though the only one that shaved hair that way was a tamahagane honyaki knife I got to try once. What that means, I'm not sure. It also bites into my fingernails really aggressively, with great control, so that's new to me, too.

The heel was unsharpened, unlike in the pictures, which is good for scraping the peel of things like gobo, or using that part like a deba. I sharpened it up after a bit, so that was fine. The handle is a tad long, which makes the knife feel a bit like a slicer or mini gyuto if I hold the entire handle. But the knife itself is a tall petty. I might shorten the handle a bit for nimbleness, though the extra length helps with leverage, so its a trade-off. I do get more control when I hold more of the handle, so that might have been the intention. My handle didn't have the cracked wood at the ferrule from hammering in, like in the picture, which was good. There was a slight buIge ferrule end from hammering in, though, not as severe as the pictures -- instead quite slight. This is kind of helpful though, it acts like a mini-sort of a guard to prevent fingers from slipping forward, so I'll spend more time thinking about it. The knife did have a mini-kiritsuke tip at the last couple mm, which sometimes happens to fix chipped tips. Chipped tips are quite easy to accidentally do to a knife, and relatively easy to fix.

The wide neck makes the knife feel more rigid and secure, and the perpendicular filing marks on the spine help with grip. The choil corners are eased with filing marks. The grind is slightly concave with a distinct shoulder on the left side. The blade flats are actually quite flat. . . very slightly concave like most are, with some deeper wide hammer marks near the tip on the left side.

The steel sharpened up with a kind of chrome-ish polish, and comes to quite a fine edge. . . I'm surprised how much the blue 1 steels act like how I thought white 2 would have acted like. There was the tiniest recurve near the heel that I took out during sharpening as well. I plan on using this as a tall petty to replace an old Tosa one of the same length. The old one had a more narrow neck, so it's a trade-off, but both are fine to use.