Kengata • 190 mm • tsuchime stainless san mai • VG5 special • western handle • pakka • for right- and lefthand use

Features of the Takayuki VG5 series

The blade is forged by sub contractors in Seki and afterwards finished and sharpened by Takayuki. The VG5 core is friendly if it comes to maintaining sharpness and known for it's capability to remain high sharpness for a longer period. On the outside of the blade you will find a delicate tsuchime and the logo and name brand of Aoki Hamono. Thinned througout the whole blade, this refined geometry will benifit with less friction during cutting.

A thin blade combined with a razorsharp edge will enhance the experience of a sliky smooth cut. The tsuchime is refined and the same goes for the matte finish on the blade. The hamon (forging line) indicates clearly the san mai, three layered, construction.

The choil is rounded and polished, so it creates a " Finger rest " for pinch grip and will give you more control on the handling. 

VG5 is the little brother of VG10, designed by Japanese steel manufacturers especially for the Japanese knifemakers. VG5 components are almost identical to VG10, but VG5 uses more vanadium and a little less kobalt. VG5 has proven in practice to get the job done right. This VG5 series excels in geometry, balance and out of the box sharpness, perfect ingredients for a perfect knife

Elwin de Veld about the knives of Sakai Takayuki

We usually start our trips to Japan in Osaka, from where we take a Shinkansen ( a bullet train) to Seki, in Gifu prefecture. We start in Sakai, in south of Osaka, where we always recieve a warm friendly welcome from Aoki san and Ogawa san from Sakai Takayuki. In recent years the customers in our shop have been asking for special Japanese traditionally forged knives: Yanagiba, Sakimura, Kengata: all the names of models which are used in Japanese kitchens for preparing various sorts of fish. Sakai Takayuki is my key which opens the door to the world of traditional Japanese knives and to top it all, their product range is targeted for the western market. For making of the traditional Japanese knives Sakai Takayuki employs the best of the best: Itsuo Doi and Kenji Togashi, among others. The blacksmith Yamatsuke san, with his stable hand on the Kaiten Toshi (Japanese water stone), is a guarantor of an exceptionally sharp finish. Sakai Takayuki buys lots of their steel from the Aichi steel (their headquarters are situated close to Nagoya) and works among other with carbon steel shirogami white and aogami blue. A nice detail: the colours in the names of the steel have nothing to do with the colour of the steel itself- it's just the colour of the packing in which the raw steel is being stored in the factory. The western models are manually finished at the company's quarters in Osaka (sharpening), but largely manufactured in Seki, in Gifu prefecture. The finish and the quality is sublime- just what we can expect from Takayuki.