$300 vs. $500 Miyabi Chef Knife

welcome back Ricky here all right so this is my first left comparison in 2019 and it's good to be back so number you guys have actually written me and was asking me where I've been for the last few weeks and quite honestly I just needed to take some time off there are a lot of changes that happen in my home and I think it's a good time for everyone to kind of just stop and relax after the year is over so I just spent some time just relaxing and enjoying my kids and my wife a lot of people have been asking about the Mayombe birch versus the black and which one should they by the way I tested these and eyes are basically used in my kitchen for an entire month straight they were the only knives in my kitchen one at a time so I didn't use them side by side I used a birch wood for a whole month then I used a black for an entire month I'm that way actually got a really an overall sense of how the knife performed in daily tasks so this is the Miyabi birch wood core steel is an su 2 micro carbide very hard 63 walk well edge retention is excellent another boxer sharpness is one of the sharpest knives I've ever gotten the handle is made of a Korean birch wood very beautiful look and feel a nicely shaped it's got a d-shaped handle but a very oval eyes D shaped handle and a steel end cap great polishing on the rounded spine and the toil the Damascus cladding is 101 layers technically it's 100 layers because you have 50 layers on each side and then you have the core layer so they call it 101 layers because they always add that core for the extra number one and overall a very handsome knife very well-put-together fit and finish is second to none currently on amazon is priced at 229 not the cheapest knife out there but you know still within reach of both people who were looking for a premium grade knife alright so this is the Mia black this time he was released last year all right so the elephant in the room is the core steel Miyabi advertises this knife has using a cryo door micro carbide powder steel with heat treatment of 66 it's GBP 189 I know it's strange that Miyabi would not market this knife with a DDP logo or DDP insignia somewhere but it is made of zdp 189 I think it would be a smart move from a marketing staff to actually place that on their knives but for some reason they've opted not to do that with the CVP you've got a 66 Rockwell which is insanely high and that's definitely the highest I've had here in my studio and the handle uses a black ash is cut essentially the same shaping as the birch wood it's a suddenly thinner handle at least on this sample it is but the overall d-shaped overlies handle very comfortable to hold and the black ash is really nice it's a bit more dense and so it makes the head the knife just a few ounces heavier than the birch wood in terms of Damascus cladding you've got a 66 layer domestic lighting on each side so you have a total of 132 layers on the knife or technically one to 33 layers when you count the core as the extra layer but you got 66 layers on each side it gives a knife a little bit more depth to it then the birch wood and the pattern of the Damascus it's more horizontal or it runs along the parallels of the knife versus a little bit more squiggly lines basically less of a linear pattern on the birch wood relative to the black keep in mind that the Damascus cladding has nothing to do with the overall knife's performance at least in terms of edge retention and edge sharpness it does or it can affect the knife's slicing ability and Agia we'll get into that as we review this knife blade height from the spine to the heel they're both 44 millimeters so when I talk about knives out of the box sharpness or sharpness after sharpening this is the PC 58 and it's a knife scale or essentially it's a very high calibrated digital scale that is used to more or less measure the force that a knife produces the CAI filament that sits right here and so this is how I test my knives I don't have a fancy hundred thousand dollar Katra machine button cut you know hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper every single day so on the internet Pizza 50a the lower the number the less resistant it took to actually produce a cut of the filament the art of the box sharpness of these two knives were incredible the birch wood achieves a score of 121 which is I think one of the sharpest if not the sharpest knife out of the box I've ever gotten in the black received a score of 140 not the lowest score of both certainly very respectable and definitely up there in the top ten of the shoppers lives out of the box after three or four weeks of using both these knives I did notice something that was very particular on the Birchwood the Birchwood felt sharper and just much easier to cut on large ingredients especially starchy ingredients like potatoes and your yams and even things like spaghetti squash and so that kind of dish took up in my mind I couldn't figure out why that's the case and then I decided to take them back into the studio back here and do another edge cut test on the PT fifty a and here's what I found out the edge on the Birchwood was afraid at 2:46 while the Miyabi was rated at 297 so I wasn't crazy the Bushwood was actually sharper than the black after the 30 days so I thought how could that possibly be I decided to do one more test and so just to see how this would actually play out I took both knives and strap them on my old Buffalo strop within nine thousand grits compound from Herald's it wasn't very scientific I basically struck for about a minute on each knife and simply did another cut test and here is where things get really interesting on the PC 58 the black now received a score of 151 the bridge would receive the score get this of 187 if I'm doing my math correctly the birch wood has a resistance score increase of 55% versus the black which has an increase of resistance by about 7% so here is my interpretation of this data well first off I would say that out of the box sharpness or even at Absolute sharpness I would say that the birch wood has the ability or the sg2 core Steel has the ability to get a sharper edge than zdp however based on this very simple test here the CDP has a far better edge retention ability than sg2 so is zdp far superior than sg2 well sort of if you're only looking at pure edge retention then I would say yes but if you're looking at overall experience I have found that the st2 core steel on the birch wood is slightly more responsive and more lively on the cutting board than the CDP also the number one thing that I would say that wood this knife from being a top pick in my mind relative to the birch wood is the mass is cladding now the cladding on the black is beautiful it's cool it's black it's dark it's really nice-looking I have found that when cutting large starchy ingredients like your potatoes and your yams you cantaloupe honeydew I have found that the side of the knife on the black sticks through the ingredients a lot more than the brush would did and so for me and that was actually something that I did not expect it behaved a lot like the Cramer Damascus sg2 even though the Cramer sector - is much worse than this knife it does have that same stickiness but don't be alarmed that thickness does go away after a few weeks of washing and using and washing but in the beginning it does feel sticky and it will throw you off a little bit particularly when you're looking at a net that cost $350 so which one should you buy and who are they for well obviously there are four of the knife enthusiasts will love sharp knives you love knives that have a great edge holding ability great fit finish and they look very different from your traditional kitchen knives both these knives are very beautiful very handsome in their own way you're not going to be disappointed with either knives they are both very very good knives my pick though is gonna be the birch wood I think the birch wood is an overall more compelling knife with these two particular samples I found that they handle on the birch wood is slightly more rounded and about maybe a half a millimeter of water then the ash or the black ash on the black so I find that the handle on the birch wood is slightly more comfortable than the black I also find that the thickness of the Damascus cladding to me is more of a hindrance than a Plus even though it looks really nice and most people would want to buy a knife that has more cladding material or more cladding layers that is not necessary in this case it does not add any sort of performance benefit so to me the high polish of the birch wood actually makes a lot more sense now the core steel is really nice on the CDP I have to admit I love the fact that a knife can hold an edge like a zdp but to me is not worth the sacrifice especially when you're looking at $100 price difference or $120 price difference between the two knives so to me I'm willing to get a knife that needs to be sharpened a little bit more frequently and you know with su - with the heat treatment of 63 you can strap me into this knife once a month and you'll be fine you can do it once a week if you really want to su - it's a really great balance between having a really good edge retention being able to get a really good edge and also being relatively affordable when you're comparing it to other high-powered or super steels out there so dollar per dollar spent I think that the Birchwood is a more compelling knife however if you were eyeing the black go and get it it's a great knife the de meses cladding is only slightly stickier than let's say ideal because I use the bush wood first and then I hop in this night and so it just felt stickier I need to make something really clear this is me splitting hairs between the knives literally if I didn't have these knives side-by-side and I simply grabbed one of them to used it I would love it you're not gonna find many knives at $350 with the same level of craftsmanship fit and finish and with zdp 189 as a core steel and for those who don't know these knives I will have them linked in the video description you guys can check them out on your own time alright guys that'll be it for this video thank you for being here I'll catch you in the next one let me show you guys some real special but lots of folks are asking for alternatives for much more ks's because as you guys know they're completely sold out supposedly for the next three years or something like that and according to most Emoto when I was in Tokyo or I was in Japan not long ago they say that that may even discontinue that knife at some point if it hasn't been dissing to you it already so I had to go do my due diligence and find some alternatives for some Matsumoto's and here they are so I don't have them all unboxed and I know which one is exactly oh here we go so we have the doughy yes blue number two 240 millimeters we have the Mori taka this is the more taka 215 millimeters very nice box we have the Cano ski the Cano ski gs+ right here and it is 240 millimeters with the ebony we have the akkada at the Ikeda I'm very interested about because it's using alchemy super and it has a very beautiful profile and yeah really nice box see the akkada 240 millimeters and then we have the Okada white number to see and the Okada is actually made by I think one of the founders of the tech whose knife village compound which I've been I've been to when I was in Japan and I think akkada is one of his students as well so I think these two and I are gonna be very interesting to look at and yeah so these are only five that I have been able to pick up because they were in stock they are like I said they're about five more that I think really fits the bill once they come in stock I will pick them up let me know what you guys think of the idea of picking us some KS alternatives I know a lot of folks who really want the Mars rover ks's but you can't get them this is the next best thing I can do for you is finding what knife fits that bill so thumbs up if you guys liked the series idea and you guys want to see the actual unboxings of these knives let me know in the comments and then you guys can actually see the knives and kind of understand why these knives were picked [Music] ah here we are this is so this is a doughy this is dough Joey Joey 240 million Vigo doughy no wait don't piss annoy or doughy it's doughy it's still it's Japanese is doughy so let me guys so let me know what you guys think of the kind of the KS so what am I saying [Music]

Channel: Burrfection

Views: 179,218

Keywords: miyabi chef knife, miyabi black vs birchwood, miyabi birchwood vs miyabi black, zdp 189 vs sg2

Id: j7YEwq2DbEw

Length: 12min 55sec (775 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 26 2019