JCK's Deep Impact AS = Hiromoto AS alternative

I just got finished working on this knife. It's a Deep Impact Series santoku sold through JapaneseChefsKnife.com

This knife has an Aogami Super steel core wrapped in stainless cladding.

The blade is much thinner in it's stock form than Hiromotos were, a plus for sure regarding performance. The spine and choil come as sharp though.

The handle scales are made from paper micarta and are fit nice enough to the bolster and tang. I will note, however, that the bolster and tang showed a few signs (irregularities) of rough finishing that's filled in with either a tinted epoxy or some form of liner cover up. This would have made for a sloppy rehandle on this particular knife.

The customer asked for me to thin and etch the blade. I wasn't sure if thinning would be a good idea as the blade was pretty thin to begin with. I did remove some steel at the edge up to about 1" or so which exposed a bit more core steel, reduced some of the cladding, and nicely exposed the lamination line. I had to hand sand the blade to remove the deep factory scratches and that wasn't fun, much more difficult than Hiromoto cladding to make smooth. The end result is nicer than stock and equal to what a Hiromoto AS santoku would give up with the same treatment.

I hope to be able to do more of these in the future, hopefully some gyutos, I'd love to see how they turn out.