Kotobuki Teruhisa Santoku & Nakiri Japanese Kitchen Knife Set

Though inexpensive, these are excellent knives for the home cook. I have been using these for about 8 months before I wrote this review, and these have not disappointed. They are sharp and built well. At the time of writing this, they are still razor sharp. Japanese knives take a little more effort than their European counterparts, and are designed for a specific kind of food preparation (do some research to find the knives right fir you), but if you are on a budget, and are looking for some decent knives, these are the way to go.

I'm a professional chef, and yeah, I own paring knives that cost twice what these two did together. That said, do not skip over these knives; they are very decent blades. They're three layer carbon steel, softer stuff around a harder core, made quite well as far as the blades themselves go.The cheap is because they're not Damascus, or 40 layers of hand forged blade. The handles are nondescript softwood, unfinished and very basically shaped and sanded, and the ferrules are cheap black plastic. Nonetheless, the blades are fitted into the handles firmly, and the knives balance well, just slightly blade heavy. That point is almost moot given how light they are.They came out of the box quite sharp, though not quite good enough for my taste. They're a double bevel blade, so easy to sharpen for those used to western knives. I use a series of water stones to sharpen these; they ended up absolutely razor sharp and have held their edges admirably under heavy daily use. If you're unfamiliar, carbon steel will sharpen and hold an edge better than many other variants, but they can chip if you misuse them, and they must be washed and thoroughly dried right after use, or they will rust.Additional fine tuning involved taking fine grit sandpaper to the handles and refining the shape somewhat, which is actually quite a pleasant task, considering how personal a tool a kitchen knife is. I put three light coats of Behlen Rock Hard finish on the handles; this made them much more water and stain resistant and should increase their working life considerably.These are now fine tuned, very capable knives I tend to reach for first more often than not, and I don't sweat using them hard. Not for everybody, but it guess I could put it this way: If I buy a woodworking plane, unless it's a Lee-Nielsen, I'm gonna take the thing apart, fine tune it, and put a Hock blade on it before it touches wood in my shop, and doing that will cost far less than the LN. Like a Groz plane, these are a genuinely worthwhile bargain I'll buy more of.