Honesuki vs Deba?

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old onion
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by old onion »

Altadan wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:17 pm
old onion wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:03 am
Altadan wrote: Thu Jan 11, 2018 5:22 pm For what it's worth, I've recorded a (rather noobish) video of my second attempt at breaking down a chicken with a Deba.
There's plenty room to improve upon, but you can get an idea.
I stopped the video just a moment before I split the drumsticks from the thighs.. that's a fun part with deba ;)
https://youtu.be/-emexPL8_Lw
I think I'll stick to my old Rapala Fillet knife for fish.Also,I find it much easier to fillet a fish if you do not remove the first cut side completely.Leave the side attached so the rest of the fish has a good platform to lay on while you fillet the opposite side.
I've never (yet) filleted a fish, and I suppose I'll only get around to do that once I get a chance (or invitation) to go fishing :)
A rapala is certainly much lighter and more maneuverable than a 300g Deba, but... is it as cool? :mrgreen:
No,not as cool but is light years faster then the way you did your fish.I would have starved to death if I had to wait for you to fellet my fish for dinner.I used to go fishing up in Canada and camped on islands and the only food we ate is what we caught.We six guys did that 6 years in a row.I think you would have been washing the camp dishes and pots and pans. :mrgreen:
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by Altadan »

old onion wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:50 pm
Altadan wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 1:17 pm
old onion wrote: Tue Jan 16, 2018 7:03 am

I think I'll stick to my old Rapala Fillet knife for fish.Also,I find it much easier to fillet a fish if you do not remove the first cut side completely.Leave the side attached so the rest of the fish has a good platform to lay on while you fillet the opposite side.
I've never (yet) filleted a fish, and I suppose I'll only get around to do that once I get a chance (or invitation) to go fishing :)
A rapala is certainly much lighter and more maneuverable than a 300g Deba, but... is it as cool? :mrgreen:
No,not as cool but is light years faster then the way you did your fish.I would have starved to death if I had to wait for you to fellet my fish for dinner.I used to go fishing up in Canada and camped on islands and the only food we ate is what we caught.We six guys did that 6 years in a row.I think you would have been washing the camp dishes and pots and pans. :mrgreen:
Point taken :lol:
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― François de La Rochefoucauld
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by KetchupKing »

someone found this old thread, and was looking for topic like this. read many great responses. I think most bang for buck like usage wise from what I read is probably a 50/50 honesuki in soft steel that pull breaking down/trimming/push comes to shove petty usage. soft steel so wouldnt be bothered about babying it around anything, etc? Thats what i got from this. Also looking at which one these knives wanted. question though, in regard to bone, is it matter of heat treat? and how "hard" or "soft" is soft/hard? like particular range where its like no no for really just taking it all around bones etc. like past 60? etc? But then my question to smiths would be, why even make honesuki out of white treated at 64 etc, if its known that this knife will be "around" bone, or is it just a case of performance increase, but you really have to watch where your going type of thing?
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by Drewski »

KetchupKing wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 1:31 pm ... But then my question to smiths would be, why even make honesuki out of white treated at 64 etc, if its known that this knife will be "around" bone, or is it just a case of performance increase, but you really have to watch where your going type of thing?
I wonder the same thing
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by d_rap »

I have the Ishikawa honesuki that Mark has been offering for a while and it's single bevel white 2. I posted some pics fileting a snapper on knives at work a couple of weeks ago.

I part chicken with it all the time and it gets screaming sharp. I slip it gently through the tiny rib bones where they separate, but I don't cut through the breast with it or anything like that. Of course it goes right through the leg joint.

Single bevel, so it steers, but I have gotten used to that and I use it for a bunch of proteins and even doing things like taking the green tops off strawberries little tip spin. Not saying it's a petty but kind of like a petty.

I'm careful with it around bone but it's very sharp, very thin 15 degrees inclusive or so, and yeah it chips a little bit every now and then. But it's very easy to sharpen those tiny chips out. May put a micro bevel on it.

But the way it glides through chicken or takes silver skin off or makes fine slices of ginger, gotta love it. Nice sharp little tip for various and sundry. Of course my gyutos slice cooked meat beautifully but so does the honesuki.

To me it's my go-to extremely versatile small knife. It gets absolutely screaming sharp. When I separate a leg and thigh I can't miss with it that's true. It's fragile. But the performance is fantastic.

On the Deba front, to get a big heavy single bevel Japanese knife that can go right through the spine of a large fish, that would be great. But to me right now that doesn't justify the money I would want to spend.

Versatility wise I think it's actually an easy call, at least for some users. The honesuki can be a hell of a little knife and obviously for a lot of people in 50/50 it would be even better.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by KetchupKing »

Versatility wise I think it's actually an easy call, at least for some users. The honesuki can be a hell of a little knife and obviously for a lot of people in 50/50 it would be even better.
[/quote]

So question then.. for most versatility, would not a softer steel petty be better "overall" then if going to go 50/50 honesuki at that point?
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by taz575 »

I have the Artifex boning knife, 150mm petty, honesuki and hankotsu from several years ago. They do work well for trimming silverskin (especially the honesuki and hankotsu) and stuff like that. The Honesuki worked really well on chickens and I used it to trim steaks and meats down as well, even being single bevel. I rarely use them anymore because I haven't been fishing as much or processing my own deer. I use a boning knife I made from AEB-L for most of my poultry breaking down tasks and bone related tasks and a Bark River Kalahari Sportsman for fish duties now. The Artifex were nice, but the stock handle was a bit too short for my tastes.

I had/have a deba around here somewhere I think? I may have sold it years ago though? I didn't use it all that much, even for fish. I tried it on big tuna and it worked well, but I still prefer a regular fillet knife for fish. Never got into the single bevel stuff.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by d_rap »

KetchupKing wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 1:32 am So question then.. for most versatility, would not a softer steel petty be better "overall" then if going to go 50/50 honesuki at that point?
Sure. I think that's right.

I was just intrigued to see this old thread come up and wanted to put in a plug for the relative versatility of a honesuki, even a single bevel one, at least in a low stakes home environment. There's plenty of posts online and some here that argue honesukis are for parting chicken and are terrible for everything else, and that just has not been my experience. But I'm certainly not arguing that they're anything like the ideal smaller utility knife.

Of course honesukis vary significantly, particularly in thickness, and mine is quite thin, flexible and nimble, so it may cross over better than some others.

Personally speaking, my petty tasks are few and far between anyway. Surely like a lot of people here, I do things like slice radishes and mince garlic with a 240 gyuto. Dedicated small knife tasks? Cutting the fuzzy choke out of an artichoke heart, or cutting cross-hatches in brussel sprout bottoms so they cook more evenly--these sorts of things, where a gyuto or bunka or what have you would be impractical or dangerous, come up only here and there for me.

So admittedly, the main reason I bought the Ishikawa honesuki was for parting out chicken, but also filetting fish (single bevel steers and slips near a fairly soft spine as would a deba, but that's actually very safe for the edge if you're careful), and trimming other proteins, all of which I do frequently. In addition, in my case I was eager to try a single bevel j-kinfe, both in product and on the stones. And as an added bonus the Ishikawa turned out to be perfectly fine, even excellent, at multiple, occasional small tasks in tight places, things like making a small, fast conical cut to remove the tough sepal off the top of a tomato.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by ronnie_suburban »

d_rap wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 12:30 pm There's plenty of posts online and some here that argue honesukis are for parting chicken and are terrible for everything else, and that just has not been my experience.
Nor mine. My honesukis are great for dealing with spare ribs, especially when the tips are still on. They help me steer around curvy bones and sections of the tips that contain hidden cartilage. For me, they're the sweet spot between a small petty and a larger, more flexible boning/filet knife. I still find them to be of fairly limited-use but for some tasks -- not just breaking down chicken -- they're my preferred option.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by salemj »

I've always felt that these two knives are relatively incomparable, which is basically what Nick said two years ago to the interested party. Why? It isn't so much chicken versus fish; it is the profile and design.

A Honesuki, regardless of bevel design, thickness, or steel, generally has a flatter profile with very little "belly"/radius, and a thinner tip, and the tip is also triangular with a very short height so that it can get into tight places (this includes dealing with skin/silverskin/joints). A deba, by contrast, almost always has a specific amount of belly for boning motions (such as curving through the end of the slice around bone). The deba also lacks a piercing tip, and the geometry is almost never tapered enough near the tip (beyond the grind itself) to make the tip functional as a piercing or precision tip that can compete with a honesuki.

To me, these are the basic differences, and they apply to 95% of all knives of these designs, perhaps more so than questions of robustness, grind, etc., which now span a huge variety of differences. I'd base any comparison on these physical differences which lead to real functional differences. Beyond these, yes, you can design whether you want softer steel or harder steel, single or double bevel, and so on, but for such a purpose-built knife, the fundamental question is whether it will first do the task it was designed to do, and in the case of each of these knives, they are designed for very different types of boning motions (as reflected in the profile and tip designs, among other things).
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Comments: I'm short, a home cook, prefer lighter, thinner blades, and own mostly Konosukes but have used over a dozen brands.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by d_rap »

Image

I just went to the store site and looked some. It all looks as you describe Joe, except In terms of amount of belly I saw a mix in both types of knives, flattish debas and honesukis, lots of both in the same range as my honesuki above. Maybe some more belly in debas, but not so significant. Admittedly some very quick rough research, so please help me see what I may be missing.

I agree that the knives are almost incomparable. Obviously there are some uses that cross over. But a deba can take the head off a big fish (still could get some microchips, depending); a honesuki is a totally different beast. And I sure wouldn't want to filet anything big with mine.

I'll link an interesting thread from the old forum where this issue comes up, with some of the same posters.https://www.chefknivestogoforum.com/hon ... 11078.html Part of what intrigued me in this current thread was that in Nick's initial response he mentioned the lack of versatility of the honesuki, a point that ran counter to my admittedly limited experience.

I filet whole fish frequently, 2-4 portion sized fish, usually for my wife and myself, and the knife in the picture above filets beautifully in this small verison of the product. I do not remove fins or heads with my honesuki; certainly mine would not hold up to those tasks. But for filetting small fish I'd put it up against most anything I have used, including a very sharp Western-style long thin filet knife.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by KetchupKing »

d_rap wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 12:30 pm
KetchupKing wrote: Sun Jul 05, 2020 1:32 am So question then.. for most versatility, would not a softer steel petty be better "overall" then if going to go 50/50 honesuki at that point?
Sure. I think that's right.

I was just intrigued to see this old thread come up and wanted to put in a plug for the relative versatility of a honesuki, even a single bevel one, at least in a low stakes home environment. There's plenty of posts online and some here that argue honesukis are for parting chicken and are terrible for everything else, and that just has not been my experience. But I'm certainly not arguing that they're anything like the ideal smaller utility knife.

Of course honesukis vary significantly, particularly in thickness, and mine is quite thin, flexible and nimble, so it may cross over better than some others.

Personally speaking, my petty tasks are few and far between anyway. Surely like a lot of people here, I do things like slice radishes and mince garlic with a 240 gyuto. Dedicated small knife tasks? Cutting the fuzzy choke out of an artichoke heart, or cutting cross-hatches in brussel sprout bottoms so they cook more evenly--these sorts of things, where a gyuto or bunka or what have you would be impractical or dangerous, come up only here and there for me.

So admittedly, the main reason I bought the Ishikawa honesuki was for parting out chicken, but also filetting fish (single bevel steers and slips near a fairly soft spine as would a deba, but that's actually very safe for the edge if you're careful), and trimming other proteins, all of which I do frequently. In addition, in my case I was eager to try a single bevel j-kinfe, both in product and on the stones. And as an added bonus the Ishikawa turned out to be perfectly fine, even excellent, at multiple, occasional small tasks in tight places, things like making a small, fast conical cut to remove the tough sepal off the top of a tomato.
interesting. Reading your post reminded me back in one of my early french kitchens where it goes "all you need is chefs knife and a pairing knife" :lol: :lol:. So I guess my question would be, what is the smallest size you could comfortable use to break down chicken then. Lets say if you don't want to get a honesuki, but also don't want to get a 3' and a 6', is 120 petty(so could be used for when push comes to shove for in hand as well) able to break down chickens if needed? I have never touched anything smaller than 150mm for that task and it has never crossed my attention to. Basically my point is that say you have chefs knife and like you say, you don't have a dedicated small knife like I don't either. But instead of having honesuki primarily geared towards chx, in theory to get all around-er on the smaller end, but still be able to get to chx, what is the smallest size you could go comfortable to get to chx while going smaller to get away as far as possible say from an 8.4inch gyuto.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by cliff »

I think breaking chicken is a pretty common task that makes a Honesuki/Garasuki worth the money. But I don't have a travel version yet, so I often use a Misono UX10 Santoku to part chicken when I visit family and friends. I don't like it as much as my Honesuki, but I don't always have the Honesuki in my roll. The Misono is very versatile. I think just about any robust 150 Petty -- I'd rather not use my Ginga... -- to 180 Gyuto/Santoku should work fine.

On the topic of the thread, I don't think either knife is terribly versatile, but a double-bevel Honesuki is much more versatile than a Deba.
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by KetchupKing »

I guess where I understood the question was which one was more versatile? Meaning "I could use deba to break down a chicken" but "could I use honesuki to really tackle fish?" So In all, my question is.. would the smaller 170/180 mioroshi deba more "versatile" of the knife? But As you stated that you have petty + honesuki etc. In the question of versatility and having one, thats where im attacking/asking the question of "then wouldnt a robust soft 150 best overall then? or maybe little smaller(same attributes). I know it wouldnt be better than a honesuki, but then you would be able to keep one piece for smaller things, + using to break down chickens, as opposed to having 3 knives similar range to do sorta of "best at this task knives".
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Re: Honesuki vs Deba?

Post by cliff »

I tend to like bigger knives. I'd probably go with a robust, soft 180 petty/gyuto -- that would tackle way more tasks than either a Honesuki or a Deba. That's basically what my UX10 Santoku is. It's plenty tough but delicate enough for fine tasks. If you get a double-bevel Deba, it's basically a thick Gyuto. That would work as a beater, but I don't know how great it would be for fish. I have never tried a honesuki for fish, but I could see how it would work for smaller ones.
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