Shoichi Hashimoto (橋本庄市) White 1 Honyaki Gyuto 240mm Blue

Extremely rare Shoichi Hashimoto's Honyaki White 1 Gyuto, Aruba-honyaki (oil-quenched) extreme steel banding pattern, and super cool differential heat treatment pattern. This knife has two dates engraved on the tang, indicating it is forged and sharpened by Hashimoto himself (forging and sharpening date, respectively).

Comes with special dyed and stabilized curly maple handle with mosaic pin and matching magnetic saya. 

Spec:

• Weight (g): 213g
• Edge Length (mm): 237mm
• Height (mm): 53mm
• Thickness @ Heel / Mid / 1cm from Tip (mm): 3.4 / 2.3 / 0.6
• Steel: White 1

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About Shoichi Hashimoto (橋本庄市)

Shoichi Hashimoto is a damascus artist who is speicalized in producing some of the most stunning damascus work I have came across in my career. You can read more about his background in this blogpost.  He is a frequent exhibitor of numerous knife shows, including the Seki Knife Show and the New York knife show, so make sure you visit his stand next time around.

While his design is certainly breathtaking, his forging skill is also high up there as well. His signature 72 layer blue / white core is made by forging blue 2 and white 2 steel together. As you might know, blue and white steel have different ranges of heat treatment temperature, and the overlap region is very narrow. Shoichi is able to heat treat the 72 layer core perfectly within that narrow region resulting in the blue / white damascus hard steel that according to one of my sushi chef customer, " the Kireaji (切れ味, feel of the cutting edge) is unrivalled".