As a Japanese I have never heard of this brand of knives. Quick Googling gives me a couple of Japanese blogs reporting that the company advertises only to the English‐speaking market, and that based on their direct inquiries they have individually found out that the knives are manufactured in Yanjiang, China using Japanese steel. The branding makes me suspicious from the get‐go for a couple of reasons, like how the name itself (“神箏”) is somewhat quirkily formed (not impossible but weird), and the fact that Honshū is usually not what you mention when you describe where something is from - it’s the largest main island with about 80% of Japanese people living on it, saying something is from Honshū reveals almost nothing. You at least have to specify which region of Honshū it’s from, like Tōhoku, Kansai or Chūgoku. With these clues I can at least tell that it’s not a “genuine, authentic” Japanese brand.
This was the kind of comment I was looking for. Thanks for the insight - knowing that they only advertise to the English-speaking market, and not where they're allegedly based in, is one of the biggest red flags for me. If your product (in this case, knives) were actually good, you'd be selling to your local market first before going abroad, since there'd be nothing to hide.
The moment I saw them advertised I knew they weren’t Japanese. My first thought before any research was “I bet they are made in China.” Something just didn’t feel right. I have worked with Japanese companies and the marketing and branding just didn’t feel right.
Re-watching this after the big scandal surrounding established titles and realising the same shady company and people are behind this knife company... Shad you were definitely on to something.
Most likely: yes, they are a scam. Mystery steel with no comment about where it's made (Japanese knife makers tend to be very proud, and almost always tell you what kind of steel their knives are made from and the city they're made in) makes me believe that they're not being entirely honest about the quality and origin of these knives. Reminds me of how MVMT watches are just bottom of the barrel Chinese watches with a fancy logo slapped on after the fact.
What always put me off, besides that, was how they always boasted that each knife "takes *yeeeears* to make!" That doesn't make the knife better, it just means you must suck at making knives. Steel isn't like wine. It doesn't just get finer and sharper with age. You either make it strong and sharp or you don't, and there's no reason steel of this size should take years to make.
Glad i didn't jump on a MVMT watch. Ended up getting the miltary grade Samsung smart watch. Wear it everyday installing glass & windows. I wear it working out and when i delivered car batteries, rotors and tires too. I did buy a glass/composite screen cover and it saved my watch from a direct hit with my seat belt buckle that broke the screen protector but not the watch.
When I was a kid, my father sold woolen suits at a local market. They were a known brand (Fletcher Jones, although that won't mean anything to most people today) and he was selling them for a fraction of the normal price. They simply would not sell. Finally, my mum suggested raising the price to half of the price of the ones bought in stores. He was skeptical - if they weren't selling for $50, why would they sell for $75? Still, he raised the price ... and watched them walk out the door.
@@Batmans_Pet_Goldfish - We had a wholefood shop where we used to sell freshly made peanut butter. We carefully set our price to match the standard not-cheap brands (Kraft and Bega in Australia) and we got about a 100% markup. This was much more than we had on most other products we sold, as we generally aimed for 50% and beat the supermarket. We still had people tell us our peanut butter was too cheap.
@@EmeraldHill-vo1cs - I didn't know that! They were a big brand in Tassie back in the '70s and '80s. I've just looked them up, and I see they have an online presence still.
Advertisers take note: Try to get Shad to shill your shoddy product, and not only will he refuse, but he'll make a video exposing you while simultaneously using the ad for his actual sponsor to help humiliate you. A better way of telling ripoff companies to leave you alone, I cannot currently conceive.
A whole new level of bm. Not only will he mock you while you're down but humiliate you by thinking you'll get back up before knocking you back down and finishing you off with a friend.
except hello fresh has been exposed for giving people absolute tat as produce and shitty budget meat cuts you could buy yourself for half the price, calling out a scam while promoting a scam pretty funny
@@Xenohart237 I have a rule that if a company needs to sponsor YT channels and others things like that, instead of using normal means, it's a good indication it's a scam.
When you mentioned that 420j steel is used in surgical instruments, I immediately said that edge retention is one quality that doesn't matter on surgical instruments. If you watch a surgeon, even on a minor surgery, that blade will probably be replaced several times, just to maintain a sterile environment. Edge retention is about the last thing on the mind of surgeons, because they replace the blades frequently.
That combined with one of the best steels for corrosion resistant, which only really matters if you don't maintain (or don't want to maintain) the steel in the first place. (and unless its really bad for the steel which nobody would make knives with anyway, that factor is irrelevant for food-prep knives) The only reason you'd do that is if you made a bunch of them and kept them in storage for a long time and didn't want to have warehouse oversight for all of the steel..
Surgical stainless steel is mainly rust prevention, I've got cutco my knives both the serated and straight edge both hold there sharp edge, it's actually great when knives include a sand stone means they know all straight edge will need to be sharpened. That said those fake Japanese knives never appealed to me.
I remember my science teacher in school explaining how pressure works depending on surface areas it is applied to. To prove her point, she made a cardboard knife with a sharp point to cut potatoes. It helped me stop investing in expensive knives and instead invest in a whetstone
In all honesty, good steel matters as well... more so you either can sharpen it quickly and have a very sharp knife, but you have to do it frequently or you can have a knife that needs rarely to be sharpened but it will take some time. So it's more of a preference type of thing.
There's good steel too, but at a certain point, it becomes very niche and you have diminishing returns. Of course, it does basically comes down to just how much effort you have to put into maintaining and resharpening the knife vs. a steel that can take environmental exposure longer or stay sharp longer in between a wipe-off and oil down or resharpening.
I'm a cook, so I can assure you, when you buy knives, it's better to just find a good knife you are comfortable with in weight and length in the $20 to $50 range and use a honing iron and a good sharpening stone. I've seen cooks buy expensive knives to find that they find them uncomfortable to hold. If you cannot hold the knife before you buy it, you don't buy it.
I've got piles of nice expensive cooking/table knife sets people have given me over the years. I still cook and eat with the beat-up Ka-Bar I got in the Corps decades ago instead. lol
Well if you want a Japanese style knife i would recommend supporting a local smith Wich would give you a good knife at a reasonable price And you are also supporting local knifemakers in your community
Thanks for an honest take on this instead just taking the sponsor money and running. Your sponsors should thank you too, because this definitely increases their perceived authenticity since we know you're not a scammer.
True, this is basically raising his own market value. While it probably makes him highly unattractive to sponsors that will shill out a ton of money for a sub-par product (because all the budget goes into marketing), the actually decent products looking for a promo will stick with people like Shad.
Yeah risking of getting blacklisted by one sponsor in this case probably is worth it, unless they pay exceptionally well. Still yeah, I appreciate honesty even if sponsor gave them truckload of money (we don't really know, people don't tend to disclose how much they got). Edit: It doesn't seem like Kamikoto sponsored this video, so now I'm confused what sponsor money he could run with, as it doesn't reflect negatively to his other sponsors anyway.
@@Cute_Clord Op was saying that he chose to do this video instead of accepting the sponsorship and promoting a subpar product. Which shows that the sponsorships he does have are products he genuinely thinks are good
@@Cute_Clord When you go after a Company for their products, other companies tend to steer clear just in case they get the same treatment from you. Companies also use Advertising Companies, so the one actually sponsoring you has multiple products they control advertising for...and you just fucked them on one. Think they will come back with a different one? Nope, just lost everything that advertising company is involved with. This is why certain UA-camrs all have the same sponsorships...because they work with the same advertising company.
@@justinlast2lastharder749 I am not sure Shad needs more sponsors. He already has a few good ones, some of which, he was hand picked for as well. Those are very unlikely to drop him for that, actually, it shines a good light on their product. I do agree for new sponsors though, some my be scared, others, those wo believe in their product might still be attracted in some cases. Yes most sponsoships are run bu agencies, not the companies, so that part very much hold.
Also, shadiversity, just to specify, I meant the GOOD use of the term nerdy. Semi-nerdy. Just enough to trust your word, but not enough to try to shove you in a locker. Plus, I don't want to lose any limbs attempting to do so. I like my limbs. I use them daily! Well, except one of them. I like that one the most though!
@@hopsonkim4952 Does Ramsay count as cool? He's a millionaire but buys 15 pound Tesco pans and supermarket knives. Never saw him use something super expensive outside of his restaurants.
@@hopsonkim4952 But you can tell if he's a time-traveller by the smell.. Cleanliness was not as important then as it is now. If he isn't covered in siht, he's either an actor or the king. Monty Python fact-checked this as true.
I'm always suspicious of companies that absolutely flood content creators with sponsorships. As soon as the "titles" one became less common everyone immediately started pushing these knives.
@@GameTimeWhy It’s because misleading your viewers and by extent giving your viewers’ money to scammers is (for one) bad for your reputation, conscience and happiness amongst viewership, and (for another) allows for further scammer investment to propagate the cycle of them gaining money by deceiving individuals through lying in marketing material
@@thatmanatite the viewers tend to be self righteous pricks. First it was raid shadow legends then it was click bait "getting worse" then shorts. It's the platform. Don't like it then start supporting creators on patreon so they don't need to get sponsors.
I actually had the steel grading argument back when I sold knives. I had three German tourists turn their nose up at me and try to get superior because I didn't have any "German steel". I basically explained to them the grading codes and such and how it being German didn't effect the quality in the least. They weren't happy.
Funny thing about that, the pencil sharpeners that I own that say "made in Germany" seem to sharpen the best. I wouldn't make a huge argument about it though.
It's not really that important and if it were actual german tourists they were just assholes or idiots. When I buy something on a trip then I most of the time don't even know if I can cut with it. I am on Vacation, that looks cool, let's buy it 😂 Maybe they were such idiots, because we have this whole _Made in Germany_ thing... Most cheap things were import with tags like _Made in China_ and all that stuff and in the result often things are advertised as good quality since it was made in Germany...
A note about surgical steel: The average scalpel will make one, up to less than a dozen cuts in its entire life. For patient and staff safety, a lot of scalpels and edged instruments are single-use. So corrosion resistance, stiffness, certain amount of resistance to snapping are all useful properties. But edge retention? Doesn't really come up. A lot of surgical instruments are clamps and various things not even edged items. Better made ones of these do get reused and sterilized. Not rusting or pitting is going to make that process better and safer. But the fact that surgical steel is suitable for making reusable hemostats has no bearing on whether it is good for knives.
@@Sue_Me_Too Stainless doesn't always mean low quality. The 420 and 440 stainless are crap and when you just see "stainless" on the blade it will be one of these. There are actually some really good stainless steels they're just a lot more expensive. For example: D2 steel. It's not all that much more expensive but it holds an edge extremely well and is pretty corrosion resistant. It's not going to be marketed as "stainless" on its own but it's in the category of stainless steel because of its corrosion resistance. When I say not all that much more expensive it's kind of relative, though. It's probably at least 5 or 10 times more expensive but when your starting point is so low the actual cost isn't really that much higher.
Just buy a scalpel and use one... they dont cut very well at all. Ive used them when i was a medic, and just removing a single mole on a service members scalp (no bigger than a .177 cal bb) dulled it and required a minute or two of "sawing" in order to fully remove it. Had it been a legit surgery that required more precise cutting we either would have used a different tool or just multiple scalpels, tossing them as soon as it dulls.
Blacksmith here. 1/ The profile of a knife blade is what makes it suitable for certain uses. The potato cut test you did - the better cutting blade will have a thinner 'flatter' blade profile. Imagine it exaggerated and like a wedge attempting to widen a cut zone - the potato flesh will grip the blade. 2/ Damascus steel blades are not tough. Damascus steel styles are a rough 'twist/mix' of different steels. The effect is highlighted using acid to erode into the mixes. Because of the blend, regardless of if one of the mixed steels in the Damascus is a hard one, there will also be soft steels on the cutting edge. The secret to a blade is a longitudinal mix of steels. The body made using a strong springy steel whilst the cutting edge is made using a really hard (but slightly flexible) steel. Those Damascus blades are nothing but 'bling'. There are indeed some awesome Japanese blade makers but that scamming company has created a bunch of shi**y blingy blades on the back of known good blade makers. My best knife? It cost 50p from Wilkinsons the supermarket. It's a short plastic handled kitchen knife. The blade is medium hard but the best bit is its profile - flat and goes through vegetables very easily.
I'd like to see this guy try to cut through tomato skin with super thin slices using these cheapo soft and/or German steel knives. No surprise these made in China Kamikotos can't cut or last with their 420J2 soft steels In saying that, expensive knives are still overpriced.
There is “Damascus” steel and Damascus steel. Most of the western stuff is pattern welded crap. The original Arabic stuff was a naturally occurring molybdenum steel - and then the mine ran out.
Knifemaker here; agree with you on 1/, mostly disagree with you on 2/. Damascus/pattern welded blades can be very tough, just as tough as a monosteel blade if they're well made. The cheap Pakistani made damascus knives are not tough because they're made from terrible materials and are poorly heat treated. Most western bladesmiths are using 15N20 and 1084 in their damascus, two steels with very similar cutting and toughness properties. As long as the smith forge welds cleanly he'll have a blade as strong and sharp as if it had been made from one solid piece of steel. If a bladesmith uses a soft metal like pure nickel or copper or unhardenable wrought iron or mild steel or 300 series stainless into their damascus it's usually as cladding for a san-mai or go-mai billet, in which case if the soft cladding layers make their way onto the edge it's a serious error. There is a trend among some makers of stainless damascus to combine AEBL with 302 stainless, which I don't agree with since 302 is barely hardenable. On the other hand, Swedish Damasteel TM stainless damascus is made from PMRWL34 and PMC27 which are both good hardenable steels, though RWL34 has a deal more wear resistance than the PMC27. The higher-end Japanese knives are commonly made from Takefu's laminated steel, which has cladding of relatively soft 300 or 400 series stainless, and a very hard core of high quality steel like VG10 or SG2.
@@FuckYouYouFuck non english nativ engineer here. I don't get you point. The effect of damast is that hard, brittle steel is embedded in a soft matrix so it won't break. you say western bladesmith use two steel with similar properties. what's the point of making the mix accept fancy optics? Why you should harden damast, the soft matrix is crucial or is just 1 steel get hardend? In my perpective a proper heat treated monoblock (small grain structure, embedded carbide and martensit) is superior to a damast steel mix. I would be thankful for you explaination. High alloy steels/stainless are another beast I'm not really into
If anything ET is less scammy. It is very obviously a novelty product, a souvenir without much of a purpose. These purport to be quality knives, for cutting stuff, but they are just garbage, easily beaten by a $10 knife.
@@SianaGearzT is a pure scam, plain and simple. You’re paying $50-150 for a PDF, and the promise that *some* of the money will be donated to a charity that only charges $1 for a tree to be planted if you just donate to the charity directly, while ET is also claiming that the money goes towards protecting the woodlands it’s on, when they are already government protected. This only dates back to the 70s-80s when actual Scottish landowners on struggling estates would “sell” title to these souvenir plots and plant a tree (usually a commercial pine variety for later logging work), on the explicit idea that this was a gag gift and didn’t grant any peerage or real ownership. ET has broken all these basic principles and contributes no money to struggling Scottish landowners for it. These are just shitty knives being sold as expensive ones, which is a tale as old as time, quite literally the earliest records we have of complaints about a product are about low-quality copper being sold as high-quality copper.
@@SianaGearz except it's also similarly scummy in advertising since they advertise that people can use said 'titles' in legal documents. The novelty of donating to charity is a joke because in the end this is false advertising over the mask of charity which still earns them a profit without people being as critical about it which in my opinion is even worse than just promoting a straight out scam.
I was a chef for many years and a knife collector. For me it's quite obvious that this knife is about as good as anything you can buy at target. I didn't know they were asking $300 for it though! What a rip off!
its because they know their target market arent going to know anything about steel grades or knife quality really, so they put inflated prices and advertise through youtubers who will happily promote things for easy money regardless of any knowledge to the actual quality.
@@jomangeee9180 FOR A THOUSAND YEARS I HAVE SLUMBERED TO AWAKEN AT THIS VERY MOMENT THAT YOU MIGHT SLANDER THE LONG AND MY WRATH SHALL BE UPON YOU!!! Praise the Don!
Side note on grades of steel used in surgical instruments: corrosion resistance is important, as you mentioned, but edge retention is not a concern at all. Why not? Because implements such as scalpel blades are made to be *disposable*. That way, the implements being used on you have never touched another human being. They are sterile and reliably sharp for a low number of cuts.
Wanted to say the same thing that the scalpel blades are just thrown away after minimal amount of use. All they care is that the blade is sharp out-of-the-box and it's clean.
The reason why that grade of steel is used in surgical instruments is that in the developed world most surgical blades and bores are now single-use. The move to that began in the UK after the CJD outbreak around BSE in the 1990s. Even $7,000 skull bore bits are single use nowadays. As long as the steel quality is good for single use that’s all that matters.
@@jakethegreatest473 "Disposable" in this case means single use before being remade. This eliminates the human error involved in cleaning because in that context even a small amount of cross contamination can be dire - a bit of rotting human is the worst case scenario. They litteraly kill it with fire. 25:43 Shad himself mentions sharpening the surgical blades between each use. The edge is remade.
I actually have an old reusable scalpel stolen from surgery long time ago. I'm using it as X-acto knife for DIY. I must say it loses edge quite quickly and is hard to make as sharp as single-use x-acto and scalpels, but it is a lot less brittle.
kamikoto is in the family company that included established titles, so it's not a big surprise the knifes are more of a marketing trick rather than a real product
Whenever I hear of these scams I always worry they are from my home, Hong Kong. And indeed they are. Any company that does business in the west and is registered in Hong Kong, but does not seem to do business in China or Hong Kong, is automatically super untrustworthy in my eyes. So many scam companies hide here. Not just western ones, but loads of indian and arab ones too.
@@NowhereBeats it's a tax haven, it's also far away and is under the cover of the PRC so any investigations would be quite hard so it's quite the juicy spot to set up a shady business
The way Kamikoto describes their knives made me think of that old tweet where someone described their job as a cashier at McDonald's as "I'm responsible for handling the day to day financial transactions of a multi-billion dollar company" or something along those lines. Wordplay can be very powerful at times.
I make knives and have a decent blade shop in my basement (forge, belt grinders, buffers, drill press, etch tank, etc, etc). I've had people ask me what kind of kitchen knives I made for myself. They're often confused when I tell them I use a $49 set of Farberware knives I bought at WalMart. One friend showed me his $500 set of Victorinox kitchen knives, and laughed when he found out I was using such a cheap set. So I started pulling his Victorinox blades out of the block to inspect them. They were almost all DULL as butter knives. I explained that he was welcome to dry shave the hair from his arm with ANY of the knives in my block. My knives likely will NOT hold an edge as long as his blades... but mine sharpen quickly, and I know how to maintain them at that level of sharpness. Lesson: Don't invest big money in your kitchen knives... invest in a good sharpener, or learn how to stone them.
@@Mr.Ekshin that's just sad, spending so much on knives and not sharpening it; i only really ever use a single knife; the mac mth-80, and i sharpen them myself regularly, to make sure it stays razor sharp. being able to sharpen knives yourself is definitely quite an important skill, and stones would definitely be the best option, and your friend should definitely get a cheap set, just to practice sharpening, since cheaper sets have softer steel, and will sharpen easier, and if you somehow ruin the knife, it's only a cheap knife well, you definitely already know this, and i'm only writing this for any other people that come across this comment tl;dr i agree with your opinion on being able to sharpen and maintaining your knives yourself also a different note, ceramic knives are horrible, there is no way to effectively sharpen them yourself; don't buy them
Nothing wrong with a "little upgrade" in the curriculum, huh? "I'm a technician especialized in the maintenance of sanitary facilities in urban commercial centers" (bathroom cleaner at the mall).
@@221b-l3t - Yup... it IS sad. I went over to a friend's house for dinner, and watched his wife using Wusthof blades. She was cutting food not on a cutting board, but on stoneware plates. And then she casually tossed hundreds of dollars worth of blades in the DISHWASHER. Those are literally the two things that will dull kitchen knives faster than anything. All of them were dull from constant mistreatment. It made me want to weep watching fine German steel treated like that. It was probably a thousand dollars worth of kitchen knives that they got from her uncle as a wedding gift, and they simply had no idea.
If you want a knife that will seriously hold an edge, make it out of a steel file. It's high carbon and very hard. But the drawback is that it's brittle and also prone to rust.
As a knife nerd, I assumed they were a scam the first time I saw an ad for them. The thing is if they were cheaper they'd be a fair play but for the money you can get proper high quality knives.
ngl this has always struck me as similar to Vector Marketing/Cutco, just without the MLM aspect - just the combination of overpriced knives and deceptive marketing practices (the 'company is actually owned by a different, bigger company with a dubious reputation' aspect is also comparable...)
Could I possibly trouble you with a recommendation for a proper quality knife brand? I've tried to do research but I always get stuck in a rabbit hole of dozens of articles that seem more like advertising than actual information. I would be very grateful.
@@greaserpup Anything, you see an add of is a scam. If the product has realy good quality a friend would have told you or you already know it ontop the company spends money on the add, they could have used the money to improve quality further or lower the price.
@@donc9275 I make from bandsaw blade :D grind to shape and glue and rivet handle in place. Took less than hour to make and works year or two :D Flexes bit too much but its ok for less than dollar manufacturing price.
Here's a little wisdom the corporate knife world doesen't talk about: The secret to sharp knifes in the kitchen long term isn't what product to buy, but our habits. Learning to sharpen is one aspect of it, but much more importantly (and much more difficult) to find a routine that works for each person to keep that blade sharp in use. Again, it's not about what sharpening device to buy, it's about the commitment to develop a routine that can be sustained. Most people won't develop or stick to such a habit and end up with dull blades. In that case, it's a complete waste to purchase "nice" knifes.. as they'll only end up as blunt and not being used to their potential. Knifes and steels are fascinating, and the qualities of each material, style and manufacturing are wildly different. However, all of these have surprisingly little to do with how sharp knifes will be in your kitchen, every time you pick it up, long term. The irony that humans are notriously bad at good habits and that's what stands between us and happiness. Commercialism tries to lure us in with the perception that we could buy our way to happiness on a shortcut.
I have the 900pts knife from Price Chopper, its better than some of the knives Ive spent $50-$100 on. I couldnt imagine buying $200+ knives, I just done see the point.
For the damage test, i would assume that the reason why the kamikoto knife didnt get damaged as much is because, as mentioned, its a softer type of steel so it was able to deform to the sword cut easier without chipping pieces off. Like how if you took a hammer to a glass pane vs a block of clay, one would shatter into a hundred pieces and the other would just deform .
Also the Kamikoto blade is a bit thicker, so a bit more mass to resist the cut. I'm not sure it is actually lack of hardness that is the issue - I'd suspect poor heat treatment (in particular - stuffed up the tempering stage) - which typically results in a knife that loses its edge fast but is hard to sharpen.
Tensile strength or hardness will affect how a steel reacts to other objects with certain strengths. Take ceramics for example: really fantastic hardness, low tensile. Meaning it's great for cutting something with a lower hardness but will not withstand impact from something with greater tensile strength (concrete, steel, aluminum!) Really enjoyed this review and exposé of marketing scheme.
Something that was immediately sus to me about kamikoto was how the knives were advertised as taking a 19-step process and being “individually inspected” before being sent out. It makes sense for real high quality brands, but weird for a brand willing to give a sponsorship to random UA-camrs. Like there are certain kinds of brands, like expert artisans and craftsmans, you’d never see on a sponsorship unless maybe it was related to a channel that was targeted toward that industry and the person also had some level of knowledge about it and would advertise it to an audience that also knows about it well. Maybe I’m wrong in my reasoning, but the phrasing just felt off to me
To me it was how vague their marketing buzzwords were what made me suspicious. "19 step process", "traditional Japanese techniques", like what kind of process, which exact techniques? If they were so great, wouldn't they have some kind of name that one could actually research and verify whether it has any bearing on quality? I'm used to that from the home electronics branch: premium brands like to exaggerate the effect of materials and technologies they used/employed in the product, cheaper but still decent brands tand to make up their own fancy terms for the same basic stuff that everyone does, but only the really cheap and shoddy crap doesn't bother throwing (made up) names at you and just tells you "supreme quality", "x times better than y" and all that shit that sounds good, but is so vague that you can't double check it.
The only thing this was missing was a comparison to a verifiable high-quality knife. But the fact that the Kamikoto is comparable to a free knife in any capacity is very worrying. Ironically, this was a fantastic advertisement for the free MasterCheff knife, if I could get them where I lived I would.
Just get a cheap knife with the same steel Sure edge geometry and other factors will influence handling, but everyone has different preferences when it comes to that and it's not like you'll waste alot of money if you buy two different ones for like 20 bucks in total
It feels terrible knowing how many legitimately entertaining and well-meaning content creators Galton Voysey (owners of Establiahed Titles and Kamikoto) managed to lure in. I'm glad more UA-camrs are catching on to them.
@@FrankYammy no. Feels terrible that GOOD UA-camrs who TRY to get sponsorships that are legitimate get roped into scams like these regardless. There's a different, you know. Call them naive, stupid or sloppy, but some people accept deals in good faith.
Thank you Shad. Genuinely, thank you. You got offered a sponsorship for something not good, and you actually did the research and took the time to give us a review instead of just taking the money. You should be proud of what you've done and how this is presented 🙏
I remember seeing "Sheffield Steel" on a knife blade and saying to my Grandfather "Must be a good bit of metal" because he lived in the area and worked in the business when he was younger. He told me it didn't mean anything, Sheffield was top dog in terms of steel quality at a point in history but he said that where he worked they produced everything from meticulously tested and graded steels to stuff that you wouldn't trust to sink if you threw it in a lake. He also said there were multiple foundries in the city and they varied wildly in production quality so the term was just branding to fool people who didn't know any better.
As a knife and sword collector, mostly antiques, I'll agree completely. This also applies to "Solingen" and "Toledo" stamps: Historically they were known for having top quality steel and/or blade quality, but haven't been relevant since at least the 19th century. In their proper era these are legit markers of quality. Just not on anything modern.
Also, saying the steel came from Honshu, Japan is about as helpful as saying the Ford Mustang was assembled in mainland USA. It's literally the largest part of the country 😂
Material Scientist student here: The number on the steel that they have as the industry standard is a number code that shows the weight percentage of each metal in the alloy. For example, AISI304 is a type of stainless steel used in structural pieces, and has roughly 18-20 wt% Chromium (wt% in this case being the unit symbol of "Percent by weight") 420j2 (also known as AISI 420) has ~12-14wt% chromium from what I could find, and it's not nearly as hard as 304 steel. AISI 420 has a hardness of 192 HBW, which is a measure of kilograms of force per mm^2 304 has a hardness of 200 HBW at a minimum for the quality standard. This allows the knives that Kamikoto makes to be surgically sharp for a few cuts, as we've seen in the test, but you'll need to sharpen them basically after every use to keep the same level of sharpness as a normal stainless steel knife.
Aircraft mechanic here: It's crazy how different industries have different labels for the type of metal they use. Like one of our Aluminum alloys is 2024-T4 or 7075
Their heat treat is also wildly variant at 53 hrc +/- 2, so it's potentially as low as 51 hrc which is so damn soft that it isn't even suitable for any kind of cutting implement. I've sharpened about 20 of these in the last month and the grain structure is quite poor with the worst edge stability of any knife I've had to sharpen. The burr just disintegrates and takes your apex with it. What specifically enrages me about this brand is their marketing of Japanese aesthetic and claiming Japanese bladesmithing provenance when they're actually fake single bevels, Japanese single bevels have a flat lip and hollow grind on the non bevel side (uraoshi/urasuki) for sharpening and food release, these don't. They're garbage chunky grinds that even make Cutco look good.
@@thecookseye7383 Good points. Yeah making a single bevel knife out of that steel type is just wrong. I find it very frustrating - they obviously spent some time making them *look* nice. If they had used even a fairly low end reasonable steel (VG10 or VG5) and heat treated it properly...they could probably do that same marketing scam re price but at leat the knife would be ok rather than crap!
Found this a bit late but... It is a Chinese company with a tiny office in Tokyo that handles the online presence. All steel is made in China and they have nothing to do with Japan other than the tiny office. This type of thing destroys the reputation of authentic Japanese products that have taken many years, sometimes hundreds of years to create a reputation.
worst thing is they are still dogsh!t even by chinese knife standards. You can get a Chinese shibazi Cleaver with a core made of 9cr and a tested hardness of 59HRC for $40 on amazon.
Fun fact: Kamikato knives is owned by the same company that does Established Titles. It is a company based out of Hong Kong. That’s about as much as you need to know.
I value reviews like this one so much, Shad. It feels like sincere reviews of garbage brands are more and more rare these days, maybe due to some creators' fear that they'll scare away sponsors. I hope to see more content like this
Money unfortunately is the reason. The only way that you get honest reviews is if there's no financial incentive to promote the product. If your livelihood is dependent on pushing a product, hell yeah you're going to shill it for all you're worth. Patreon has helped some get away from that but it's still problematic. Like Sayune (さゆね) mentioned in one of the other favorited comments, this doesn't look to be an actual Japanese brand. The name does seem weird; I'd usually expect the kanji they used rather to refer to music played on a koto (箏曲) rather than a koto itself (琴). And even then, it's a bit... anachronistic? I'd usually see it written with the more common kanji (琴曲). And yeah, it doesn't matter where the blasted steel comes from even if it was a good grade for knives. The only differences you might see in that is some of the impurities and those are all *within certain tolerances*. This looks to me like this company is taking advantage of the recent Japanophilia craze to push their own cheap product at a premium price. As the saying goes: if you can't dazzle them with brilliance then you can baffle them with bullshit.
I saw these being advertised and immediately felt something was off, so I did my own research and found, quite literally, no info of the steel in their site, besides the fact that it's "Japanese steel", now they say its a type of stainless steel which to my recollection isn't part of a centuries old Japanese tradition. What bothers me also is the annoying use of buzzwords to make it sound more fancy, instead of directly telling us the type type of steel when you buy a knife. Sorry for the ramble but I've been annoyed by this for a bit now, glad someone's talking about it.
Japanese steel is actually quite bad. that's why they had to fold it so much to work out impurities to get a quality steel. Also why they needed U.S. steel to maintain their war efforts in ww 2
@@truetheternal2314 Yes, no, maybe? The biggest drawback of tamahagane is the insane amount of labour it takes to produce. I can't comment on the quality of properly made and finished tamahagane I do feel like a big factor would be just time efficiency and costs
The folding doesn't remove impurities as much as it spreads them evenly so there's no pocket of impurity leading to a weak point. Folding removes carbon, moving from steel toward iron. Folding too many times leaves you with low-carbon steel or worse, pure iron.
The trick with "Japanese steel" is to make anyone imagine their own best thing. Someone thinks "tamahagane", someone thinks "blue paper", someone - VG-10, etc. This is just how it plays with people's imagination.
I'm a chef, and one of my favourite knives is a cleaver I got at a Canadian dollar store, for five dollars. I bought it as a junk cleaver, and it ended up in my professional knife roll, beside knives that cost me hundreds of dollars/pounds(I'm dual, so just depends where I was when I purchased a given knife). I don't even use it as much of a cleaver, rather I use it as a chef's knife(like Chinese cleaver style chef's knives). Incidentally, another favourite is a spring-steel knife I made from an old lorry suspension, when I was 15 years old. It's has a no frills rough wooden handle(I wrap it sometimes), but is a damn good knife.
Many times when cheap steel is used in manufacturing it can vary widely in hardness. My guess is you hit the jackpot and got one of a really nice hardness.
I wound up here after Scott Schafer did a video recently revealing another company - Established Titles - was a scam. Turns out Kamikoto is owned by the same company. This company also owns Deal Dash, which, if you've been on the internet for a while, you've known was a scam for a long time.
@@bige8949 Pretty much everything that Established Titles advertises is false. You do not legally own the land you purchase from them, you are not eligible for the title in your name and you have no proof that any of your money will go to charity.
The very idea that Kamikoto sees Shad and thinks, “A sword guy! Knives are just mini swords! This is the PERFECT sponsorship opportunity!!!!!!!” Mistakes were made. I’m crying. 😂
Ever seen that meme of a guy riding a bike and sticking a stick between the spokes and screaming when he flips over? That's how bad Kamikoto shot themselves in the foot thinking Shad would just take the sponsorship because "Derp durdur, sword guy!"
To be fair, this kind of sponsorship is the most appropriate for a channel like this. It’s that Scottish Established Titles sponsor that I would find sketchy.
@@NathanCassidy721 As far as I can tell, Established TItles is a scam site copied off of the real organization Highland Titles and it's sister Celtic Titles, which are pretty upfront that the title part is more a silly gag than a real title. They don't even seem to have a presence in Scotland. To be clear, Souvenir plots can't be registered in Scotland and the Court of Lyon does not recognize ownership of them to grant titles. This means that companies like Established Titles can sell the same plot multiple times. (Edit: This isn't to say that Highland Titles is completely legitimate or noble, their books are kept in the dark, but they do demonstrably own land in Ireland and do let you visit it.)
Story from 40 year ago: worked in heavy engineering as metallurgist Chemist came to us with a set of cutlery he had bought in middle East, supposed high quality and expensive, but a knife had broken in a dishwasher. These were very good looking pieces, luxury handles, looked at fracture surface with microscope, just poorly worked steel, carbide and slag visible. Rip offs nothing new, caveat emptor. But I did have an old butter knife of my grandmother, put an edge on it like a scalpel, kept it for years, sheffield steel.
for about a hundred years the best quality steel you could get in any appreciable volume was American. For small things like cutlery this is meaningless, but for big projects like warships, tanks, rebar, and in the early stages bridges, it was American or compromise. Hell, part of the reason you hear terms like 'effective armor thickness' in warship and tank design discussions is because the quantity of quality steel the Americans had access to was unparalleled, and when comparing the armor of a Japanese or even Royal Navy warship to that of a US warship, the protection per thickness of armor was dissimilar. A 20% reduction in effectiveness for the Japanese armor dissimilar.
@@DSiren Really? what is your source? It is very contradicting to the fact that, for example, the Carnegie Steel Company Pittsburgh produced such low quality steel plates for the early US Navy and other countries that a congressional investigation commitee jugded that the "shameless character of this cheating [...] makes them unworthy of trust". Other sources cite that the only period where american steel had any higher significance on the world market was during the 1940s and 1950s (Todays market shares excluded). BTW the term effective armor thickness is usually used for sloped armor. It describes the relative thickness of the armor plate caused by the angle. As result a sloped plate could be thinner but has the same effectiveness as a thicker straight plate. The term has nothing to do with the quality of the material.
@@minibob9252 the term has a double meaning. In tanks the angle of the armor has more effect than the quality of the steel but that changes on warships.
A friend of mine swore by his set of knives, I started to realize that he was regularly sharpening them after washing them.... I had a good laugh when he bought a new one it was quite a bit larger than the old one he only had for about 6 months, LOL! He sharpened them so much the knife was literally shaved down!
As a folding knife collector who was a steel snob for a while, Kamikoto have always just screamed scam to my instincts, glad to see my instincts proven right.
For me it was just retail experience... They promise a heck of a lot with no real cause... Just look at the marketing you see from kai or global kitchen knives... It's basically 'we exist, we make knives using these steels and methods.. and this is the range we make' no promises . No weird name dropping
@@Simon-ho6ly Tbh tho, Kai has a decent amount of name tax these days. They were GREAT a couple of years ago, but now they are a bit overpriced imo. Still very good knives from a known brand, but not the first recommendation anymore. Global is great tho if you want something good without spending a fortune.
@@MrMonsterjesus fair, my Kai knives are about 5 years old so my experience is more with them, i was fortunate enough to pick up a couple of knives in a stock liquidation sale so no real experience with the more recent ones.. Global I found a uk company who often has sets going remarkably cheap, usually slightly damaged boxes, also liquidation from other retailers, if you dont mind the shipping its "hearts of stur" in the uk, ive done well from them
I have to ask, I remember this from a few years back but there was a company that was selling a Damascus folding knife and prided themselves on the fact that the steel of the knife came from the Terpitz battleship from ww2. They were selling it for an extremely high price kinda like these kimikoto knives but I want to get your opinion on them of if they are just as scam-like as kimikoto are or not.
Have you ever, had the temptation to dismiss your gut, because you understand that you do not know everything? Just curious, because I certainly have or have been tempted to.
Aye, Shad is the man. While I haven’t always agreed with him; he is a man of principle and proof that success doesn’t always cost integrity. Mad respect for him 🍻
Except he recently proved hes so pigheaded he absolutely will not admit when hes blatantly wrong. Some guys hes collabd with seem to be legit but shad here proved he has no integrity.
Kamikoto's are an absolute, 100% scam. A friend of mine bought a few because some UA-camr told them they were great knives. Why you'd believe a gaming UA-camr who survived on Door dash shocks me but whatever. Anyway I happened to be at his house the same day they arrived and fresh out of the box they sucked. I drove home and grabbed my KME and sharpened them up and they were great for about 5 minutes. We ended up using my ZT 0562Ti to finish making dinner. Last I knew he was working on sending them back but he was having no luck. Honestly I'd just go on Amazon or to WalMart and find a knife in your price range with decent reviews.
@@HiddenAgendas They're trashed. And garbage. The knife I carry daily was 10 times sharper and it hasnt been on my KME in months. Go buy yourself a set of these garbage knives and let me know how they work for you.
It's so strange to me that legitimate brands don't sponsor UA-camrs more often, considering how well it seems to work for crap-quality products (Manscaped, Raycon, All Mobile Games, etc...)
Risk Management. Remember Subway Jared? If a big brand ties themselves to an influencer and the influencer does something stupid or bad they then get negative publicity associated with their brand. It's not worth it for these companies to use this form of advertising in many cases.
@@BobfromSydney yeah I can honestly see why legitimate companies these days don't really use UA-cam sponsorships although Subway nowadays as fix up their reputation and been doing pretty well nowadays even thoug mentions of that guy ( anyways I can see the reason why) although nowadays if I were to go for a modern-day equivalent of that guy and a much better version of him is Milad Mirg although he's more of an employee there but at least he feels like it Him minus the negative stuff that is all
Raycon is a "crap quality product"? That's news to me. I've been using their products for well over a year and I'm continually impressed by them. Especially when you drop them on to a concrete warehouse floor from 30+ feet in the air and you just pick them up and keep on using them like nothing happened.
Hey shad, my cousin recently got the $306 set that you have as a wedding gift. Abs he noticed that the blades dulled unusually quickly too. Really goes to show how marketing can ruin the perception around certain items.
Tell him to take it to a bladesmith. A good bladesmith "MAY" be able to do a surface hardening of the cutting edge and put a good easy to maintain bevel on it. A bladesmith is someone who does all blades, not just knives and swords. I've had bladesmiths repair scythes, and other farming tools in addition to touching up my knives. Now that I think about it, the bladesmiths I have worked with in the past are somewhat regional, so they might be called something else in other parts of the world or even countries. I originally found the first bladesmith by asking a blacksmith about repairing a scythe blade and he sent me to a bladesmith the next town over.
@@greylocke100 The steel is too bad to warrant redoing the heat treat. It was probably hardened as high as it would go, witch is probably in the 50-55 HRC range. I have redon the heat treat on a few old chisels that were overheated by the previous owner on a grinder. This ruined the temper and caused them to loose their edge too quick. I put them in my forge and heat treated them, tempered at 400 for an hour.
Softer blades can be better than harder less resilient blades, because most people don't use cutting boards exclusively underneath their knives and thus cut with ceramic or glass underneath instead. By not using a resilient surface underneath the thing you are cutting will quickly blunt any knife, even though the harder knives will take longer to blunt. The advantage with softer steel knives is that they are easier to sharpen with the steels, ceramic sharpeners or sharpening stones and most people are not willing to spend the greatly increased sharpening times to restore the edges. Therefore a softer steel knife is perceived to be a better knife because it is easier to return to a 'sharp' edge. Please only use cutting boards and don't use good knives to cut with ceramic plates underneath and then the harder knives will shine as the better knives.
I was a cook in the army for a few years. THE best knife ive ever used is a 7" santoku knife that was like $12 at walmart. Ive been using this blade for almost 7 years
I've also worked as a chef for fifteen years and agree, my favourite knives are either the unbranded ones, or the basic lines from both Victorinox (especially the turning knives) and Zwilling (pairing knife and butcher knife). My first knife-set was very basic and not from a brand and I still use it twenty-five years down the line and still love using it. Instead of getting an overpriced knife, rather spend that money on a good sharpening steel, though I often just use the rim of an old stoneware bowl to sharpen my knives, so even that isn't a must. Especially for my turning knives, the bowl works a treat. - Trick from my gran/ great-gran, btw.
Ehh...bad in a way he is schooled in, yes. But hello fresh? That's more for people who don't know how to cook. At least he said he and his wife are no chefs earlier in the video. It's cheaper to get stuff at the local supermarket and whip up a meal if you know what you're doing than to go with HelloFresh. I'm not saying they're all bad, I'm just saying they should cater to people who aren't that good in the kitchen.
@@kronos6948 hello fresh is kind of dumb but at least they're up front about it. Like They're not saying that these are ancient Chinese vegetables or something. You just pay more for the convenience of not having to leave your house
As someone who loves blades, I'm surprised you haven't gotten into the realm of nice kitchen knives. As a foodie and someone who loves to cook, I've had a lot of fun getting into entry-level carbon steel kitchen knives. Completely changed what I expect from sharpness and edge retention in the kitchen.
EDIT: I'm sorry this post is so long, but if you're here because you're considering buying Kamikoto knives, you should watch this video and read this comment. I'm a chef and I've spent over half my life working in restaurants. I'm also a passionate knife enthusiast, which I'm sure is what brought me to this channel in the first place. My personal collection of culinary knives alone, is worth many thousands of dollars and consists of knives ranging anywhere from around $10 a piece, to around $1000 a piece. With the exception of a very small handful of antique kitchen/ butcher knives that I own, I have used all of the knives in my collection extensively. If I don't love a knife, I either sell it or give it away. I have unfortunately seen many young cooks and aspiring chefs fall for the Kamikoto scam over the years. These are people who know a lot more about food than the tools used to prepare it and that's understandable. I also know a lot of cooks who's family members bought them these knives as a gift. I hate being the person who brings people down. Particularly in regards to people spending their hard earned money, but it got to the point where if someone walks into work with a brand new set of Kamikoto knives, the first words out of my mouth are "please tell me it's not to late to return those". At this point I inform anyone who comes to work for me that they are allowed and encouraged to bring their own knives, but Kamikoto knives are not welcome in my kitchen. So, if this video wasn't enough to dissuade you from throwing hundreds of dollars in the garbage (where these knives belong) Please take it from me. I've seen dozens of Kamikoto knives used in a professional environment. Not one of them has ever proven itself to be anything shy of disgustingly overpriced trash. BTW If you're looking for reasonably priced REAL Japanese knives, I would recommend Tojiro. Kamikoto's most popular set is an 8.5" Slicer, a 7" Nakiri and a 5" Petty and I believe that sells for around 350$ You could absolutely get a Slicer, Nakiri and Petty from Tojiro for much less than that.
I agree, but i do disagree with tojiro, cause it is also a cheap chinese trash pretending to be japs. Kai, Kanetsugu, Miyabi or Yaxell and a bunch of others are good japs, but some of them are europe-owned and in fact do not differ much from an average Zwilling. U gotta go deeper to find the steel different to the one you get at Victorinox, Zwilling, Wuesthof, WMF etc. I would strongly recommend to go with Kanetsugu, Yaxell, Kai for a true jap to get experience different to european knives. P.s. do not go for kanetsune since they are sometimes dull out of the box.
@@sergeyk6136 I'd be interested to know where you got the information that Tojiro knives are made in China. I can't find anything contrary to their claim, which is that all of their knives are made in Tsubame-Sanjo Japan. I've also only ever purchased knives from Tojiro's DP line, which are made with VG-10 (a common Japanese steel). Yaxel, Miyabu and Kenetsugu are all great and are definitely worth a look for anyone looking for a Japanese knife. I have no personal experience with Kai. I also want to be clear that I don't recommend Tojiro because I think they're the greatest Japanese knives you can buy. I recommend them because I have never had a Tojiro knife that doesn't preform way above it's price range and I think they are an excellent introduction to Japanese knives. It's also worth mentioning that in regards to Japanese knives, I think it's often best to skip mass production companies all together. There are a lot of awesome hand-made/ forged Japanese knives out there for right around 200$. So it's right around that price point that I stop looking at the major companies and start looking at small shops and individual makers.
A neat comparison is that KAMIKOTO sells 4 knives there for over $300 made with super low-grade steel, while a different knife company such as TUO sell an entire 8-knife set for less than that (sometimes on sale for a little over $100) made with the higher-end X50Cr15MoV steel
I hate that I actually know what X50CrMoV15 means 😂 It's corrosion resistant due to sufficient Carbon and Chrome, no numbers after 15 means it has some, but not a lot of Mo and V, and from what I can recall those 2 elements can make good steel for industrial production processes. Professionals please correct my memory if I'm wrong.. Sorry for the rant but it's probably better steel than whatever Kamikoto is using.
@@thatcopenguy It is, I believe. The knives that use it aren't the greatest for holding their edge, but they're still really not bad at that and are pretty durable. I have a bunch that I use regularly. Definitely better for their price-point than Kamikoto's.
Took a few months, but now since scots video went viral everything is coming together. This story arc is complete and we now know everything this company does is probably a scam.
The scammers already have their money. They'll move on to find other ways to convince folks to give up their money. Vigilance is the name of the game now.
More videos like this would be great. What makes this style of video work so well is that it's covering something that is relevant to almost every single person watching.
@@AccidentallyOnPurpose autoclave is the worst enemy for anything you want to stay sharp, it works wonders for things like forceps tho. I think a better method is UV
@@mexcore14 Some parts of the world use ionizing radiation sterilization too. It works really well, but there have been many mishaps at sterilization plants though.
I have had these Kamikoto knives in hand right next to a set of knives i bought from Aldi....the Aldi knives were $7 for a chef knife, $7 for a carving knife and $7 for a paring AND utility knife....and side by side they were the exact same quality, build and handle shape. I swear they came from the same manufacturer
It's the same with guitars. Although guitars coming from China and Indonesia these days can be really good quality (Epiphones and Harley Bentons are excellent for their price). However a lot of manufacturers build their guitars in the same factory and just put a different headstock on which in turn justifies a 500% markup if it's an established brand.
Thank you shad!! I am a professional chef and was taken by the “single bevil” part of their adds and almost got one! I’ll be more carful about checking the steel rating in the future.
If you want a single bevel knife just shop around for kiritsuke or sushi(aka yanagi) knives (double check that they are single bevel though). Plenty of brands offer these styles, usually single bevel, and usually at least VG10 or AUS10 steel. Gyuto knives are basically the japaneese equivilent of a western chef's knife, usually dual bevel Sushi/yanagi are similar to western fillet knives with a different blade profile better optimised for fish, western fillet knives are also often single bevel though so not a ton of difference Kiritsuke is basically an inbetween of those two, more utility than the sushi knife, but not appropriate for harsher chopping tasks
I love how you didn't get snobby about the steel and act like "oh this rubbish should never be allowed to cut a tomato" it was always about what they're charging for it.
If you do lots of cooking I think quantity >>> quality. Cheap knives cut veggies just fine. Get the cheapest piece of crap stainless steel knives out there, sharpen them, use them for like 3 months, sharpen them again and throw them away after another 3 months. In the end you'll spend like $12-$15 a year on kitchen knives.
Modern forging techniques and traditional western technique both have nothing to do with the quality of the steel though, steel composition is determined by a factory
also, "traditional" western forging techniques, if you mean steel creation, were inferior to chinese methods up until the 17th century, because they used inferior furnace technology. The only reason europe was able to keep up quality wise in anyway was because they had decent quality base iron ore in the nordic region and germany
How would you even know they are "sketchy" without personally testing them? They are knives. They are steel, which is either mild or hardened, both of which must be treated differently. They cut. No scam here besides anyone paying full retail for them.
You gave me the shock of my life. I got a really good Japanese knife for Christmas and my parents took a long time to check for real quality and when I saw the title of the video I thought mine was also made by Kamikoto but it wasn't. I really thought I "fell" for the scam only two weeks before you make this video
Your point about raising the price and people buying it more is so true, as I learned in marketing. Others in my group started charging less for their service and were barely surviving, but once they TRIPLED their rates they actually got more customers! And these weren't the "can you make a discount?" customers, oh no, these were the "I value your service and will pay what you consider to be the fair price." This is really odd, but, people, don't ever go cheap. It just doesn't work.
Makes sense to me. People tend to look at the price of something and make assumptions of its quality based on that. If somethings too cheap, the customer think "hmm, seems cheap. The quality is probably pretty bad". Bump up the price enough and those same people are going to actually look at the product once the price isn't so cheap anymore. Everything about your product is telling something to the consumer, and the price tag is one of them.
@@calsalitra4689 that's the downside to making products cheaper and more accessible to common people. Makes alot of other people think it's a inferior product
There's also the possibility that by raising the price point, you've shifted your target audience/customer up a grade. The big paying buyers tend to want high quality over thriftiness, if what experience has told me. Therefore, if the customers feel the quality is superior, they'll gladly pay the premium.
I only saw this Kamikoto brand's ad once, and it make me scratch my head when it said it gives a "special discount". Authentic Japanese product that made for a long time (such us knives, bonsai scissors, etc) doesn't usually give off discount, because of how long it takes to even get into the order queues.
Exactly! I'm an amateur astronomer and there is a brand of telescope (Takahashi) that if you want a new scope... you will have to get on a wait list... and the wait is at about 20 YEARS!
Recently, I came very close to ordering these knives, but car trouble delayed my purchase. I had planned on ordering them soon....and am eternally grateful that I came across this video beforehand!
@@rubenjanssen1672 no, it doesn't. "Japaenese knives" were always shit What do you expect out of a country whose historically KNOWN for having massive steel shortages to the point that they would scavenge nails out of house fires?
@@RazorsharpLT I get that you doesn't like Japanese knifes for some reasons, but your argument is pretty bad. If you are in a country that has limited access to a resource, it will be valued more, so more labor might be put into one single knife. This might also the reason why, at least from my experience, there is a greater emphasis on folding the steel in Japanese knife/sword-making than in European, because folding is mostly done to get rid of steel impurities.
In regard to the sword test near the end, it seems like the "freebee" knife chipped where the Scamikoto knife rolled. Which would lead me to believe it is softer than the free knife.
@@Megozelenka Have you had problems with your Kamikoto knives bending? Mine sure don't; they are the best knives I have owned. They take and hold a fine edge better than any other kitchen knives I have had in 50 years. Too many people talking about things they have never even seen in person.
Agreed, the 420J2 is prone to plastic deformation rather than chipping usually. A steel that has no business in a kitchen knife, garbage is what it is.
I was a commercial cook for many years here in Perth WA. Picked up one of the Masterchef knives not really expecting much from it. I was very pleasantly surprised with it. The ergonomics and balance are really good for meal prep, and the edge retention is fantastic for such a "Cheap" knife. Sad to say the offer had gone by the time i had decided i should pick up a couple more.
I LOVE the way Mercer Genesis blades feel. Great handle, great balance, and good quality steel, not the best, it's certainly better than this steel. It's x50crmov15: x50crmov15 Edge Retention: with more than 0.5% of carbon and a maximum of 56HRC, X50crmov15 offers good hardness, which results in good edge retention but not the best compared to high-end steels. x50crmov15 Corrosion Resistance: With 15% of chromium X50crmov15 offers great corrosion resistance. x50crmov15 Wear Resistance: The mixture of Vanadium and carbon offers the steel a good Wear resistance. x50crmov15 Sharpness: The rule says the harder the steel, the harder to sharpen it, X50crmov15 isn’t hard to appoint to be a struggle while sharpening it, it’s easy to sharpen. x50crmov15 Toughness: X50crmov15 is pretty tough, the steel offers more toughness than hardness. I use a Wusthof pull through that's made for their Classic line and the standard cutters give 14 degrees. Like the analysis says it's easy to sharpen them, so while I may have to hone them on a regular basis and sharpen them if I do a bit of cutting, mostly to keep myself satisfied (paper test using flimsy paper, I want it to bite in easily and a very clean cut) it's so easy to get that steel to that condition. I use that line for all my cutting except I do have the Wusthof Classic 8" chef knife for heavier cutting. If I ever decide to become a Sushi chef I'll invest in Japanese blades. Since I'm 60 though I don't see that happening 🙂
My favorite is Wüsthof, had an old rag I was going to throw away so I rolled it up to see how sharp my knife was with only honing and 3 years of professional use. It cut through 56 layers lol.
I got my FIL an "as seen on tv" pair of Forged in Fire branded a knives (chef's knife and paring knife). The paring knife was absolute garbage that won't hold an edge but the chef's knife is amazing.
Whenever I’d see a UA-camr do a sponsorship deal with Kamikoto and they got to the Japanese steel bit, I always laughed because historical Japanese steel was dogwater. That was what set me off to them being a scam.
Totally agree, one of my favorite channels started shilling these knives, and I remember after the second or third time they played the ad bit, I left a comment about how claiming it was Japanese steel was kinda silly, it was the folding that made the famous blades, not the steel, and was necessitated by the crappy nature of the steel. Glad Shad confirmed my suspicions that this product was crap.
Same, I'm subbed to "The Quartering", and I remember leaving a comment about how silly that ad is when he first started shilling Kamikoto. I knew the history, and the fact that the craftmanship and folding techniques were what made Japanese blades famous, not the steel. In fact, the opposite, the smiths had to overcome the poor quality of steel with improved methods. The other thing that made me suspicious was the bit where they say they are hand-crafted. Nobody does handcrafted anymore, and certainly not for anything mass-marketed to the degree these knives are, they would be back ordered for years if they were made by hand.
@@consciouscrypto3090 there are some channels i dont care what they are shilling cause its either raid or nothing. countdankula (famous for his nazi salute pug) is like blacklisted from everything and despite having 900k subscribers thats all he has
A lot of the sponsor products really are subpar and trash for their price points. These companies purposely go through youtubers because ppl are much more likely to trust things coming out of a person they like more than a random company.
yep, the same goes for raycon earbuds, they are low to medium quality and you can find the same insides in some low price earbuds the only plus they have is the size, they are smaller than the equivalents. But if you want bettersound quality just don't buy wireless (this is mostly what I got from reviews and some technical sites, never owned a pair... never will)
I appreciate you exposing these scams, and it lets me know you do stand by your actual sponsors and I can greater trust that. I will say though, for an hour long video, I would've appreciated it if you had a guest chef, and/or a few >$100 cooking knives to show what one SHOULD expect from a higher-mid-range to premium range cooking knife.
@@monotech20.14 I don't know if you noticed, but Shad is a professional UA-camr, and this is his business. You can use a phone or an e-mail to ask a pro chef to come on, and you can use the internet or the yellow pages to find one. Duh.
My dad bought one of these years ago thinking it was gonna be a great knife. He always keeps it in the box and only uses it on special occasions 😂. I haven’t told him he got ripped off yet
@@rolandfrerichs5625 Trophy rules apply to An object considered to be memorable or of value to a person. Even if it might not be, either of value, or, memorable to anyone else. Or even liked by someone else. Like the leg lamp from a Christmas story for example is a trophy. It was loved as a treasure by Ralphie's dad and hated by his mom and it confused everyone else in the town.
I feel really sorry for anyone who watches this video after buying that $7000 set... And I really hope they take a action to get a refund using this video as evidence.
Shad should start his own knife company: *Meter Cleavers!* _Quality blades that measure up to the task._ (WARNING: Knives are in fact, sharp, and may cut you if mishandled. Meter Cleavers assumes no responsibility for using our knives as actual measuring tools.)
I just ran across a 1-star review on what looked like a good quality, high-carbon steel chef's knife on Amazon. The reviewer was raging over the knife rusting after only a couple weeks. It was so bad, that even his $2 walmart knives were better quality -- they NEVER rusted! I finally understood why some people can't even.
Many people have grown up with cheap big box store stainless steel knives. They are great if you want something you can toss in a dishwasher and not worry about rusting etc. But there is really no substitute for a good quality high carbon steel for edge retention. As Shad pointed out, pretty much any Steel can be made equally sharp.
@@Skwisgar2322 edge geometry in the main ingredient for sharpness and some steels can definitely take a finer edge than others. i have some white #1 knives that can take an absolutely screaming edge with very little effort than i cant get on other super steels, but it actually wont hold an edge as long. i find alot stainless steels can only get so sharp as the chromium basically just start to microchip the finer you take it.
You should look at some amazon reviews on cast iron pans. People complaining they rust after putting them in the dishwasher. Or comparably, people buying manga and complaining they need to read it in 'reverse'. Some people don't have a clue and are too lazy to look stuff up, even if it's at their fingertips. Those are the people companies like Kamikoto target.
The first time I heard from Kamikoto (I think it was when they started their sponsor campaign for UA-camrs), I immediately knew there was something fishy. "Used by some of the Michelin chefs around the world" doesn't mean a thing. Do you think Michelin star chefs always use cream of the crop tools? No. "Comes in a beautiful box". No, it comes in a mass-produced box that looks like those boxes you get a 200€ katana set in. Now seeing that "Woah, it's actually almost a 2000$ knife but you can get it for a low low price of 350$, just for a limited time and only for you!" is the proverbial nail in the coffin. Any company saying that is scamming people. It's always that same damn "sale for a limited time" that actually lasts forever.
Dude that’s not how it works. When they say “Used by Michelin star chefs” it just means that in their entire history they just had to have 1 chef use it 1 time who was probably paid $5,000 to use it that 1 time in the first place. Has nothing to do with if they buy quality or not. It’s simply marketing jargon.
My father often orders green tea leaves from China or Taiwan. And we always notice, the fancier the packaging, the more expensive the product, but taste wise its no better.... Maybe worse😂 At one point we decided to just order green tea leaves in big bags😂
because of your channel i have learned so much about how swords work. in my own stories i wanted a magical metal and at first it was your standard "can be sharper then normal metal", after watching your channel i changed it to it keeps it's edge for a ridiculously long time. so thank you for making my writing more interesting. and for allowing me to have a character say: "i got this blade for my 18th birthday. never have needed to sharpen it..." "im 75 years old."
I remember being kind of the same way. At this point when I do special metals I change either durability, weight, or maintenance properties while still keeping most of the overall performance, And I can see why Tolkien kind of did the same with his metal of Mithril, Makes me wonder how much he knew about metals and these kinds of things himself because it's a more and more believable change as I learn more.
Because I have a cousin who is similar to Shad, I ended up learning about these things ages ago... Simply because we had a friendly rivalry of who was not on, y smarter than the other, but who could cite more resources in backing up our statements. 🤣 Even though what he favored wasn't my Forté... He admitted that I long ago defeated him with my ability to absorb and reapply my more general knowledge towards far more technical levels of his knowledge. 😅 In other words... I'm a really OP BS synthesizer who happens to be skilled in ending up correct.
You were definitely ahead of the pack! Many months later, other YT channels are also exposing Kamikoto, along with Established Titles, as scams! 👉 You're video is sooooo much more entertaining & educational than those others. Thank you!
@@flagmichael It was my first time ever viewing his channel. I suppose it's like the old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt" or, maybe, "Too much of a good thing?"
I bought a chinese-made kitchen knife 3 years ago, but without the fancy pretend-marketing. There were honest about it. It's made from VG10 (and without silly gimmicks like fake printed weld-patterns) and cost 30 bucks. The edge was just machine-cut for faster production and cost cutting. Sharpened it properly with my own wetstones like all my knives. Changed edge angle with 400 grit, sharpened with 1000 grit, then 8000 grit, polished with a strop. It's amazing now and I don't need a more expensive one than that. (I use it daily and gently re-sharpen every half a year with 8000 grit and strop to make sure the sharpness doesn't drop even a bit. VG10 doesn't have the highest potential for sharpness, but edge retention is great, so once it's as sharp as can be - it's gonna stay that way for a long time)
@Abraham Johnathan That's very true, most of these knives are trash these days and you have to be very careful when shopping for one. In fact, I tried to find a good knife online (as a comparison) after watching this video and today it's much more difficult/expensive than a few years ago...
@Abraham Johnathan China is the capital of Communism. It has altered it's traditional Communist ideas into a more mainstream version of fascism (government control of "private" corporations in order to get more economic power from their authoritarian system) but it is still Communist, just in a 21st. century kind of way
@Abraham Johnathan no one likes Mao's policies, especially not CCP leadership. His closes aids and wife were put in prison right after he died. Deng - the next paramount leader after Mao was someone whose eldest son was beaten until he's in a wheelchair for rest of his life by the red guards. Xi Jinping's father was also crippled, and his sister was killed at the hand of the red guards during Mao's cultural revolution. Deng Xiaoping was the one who laid the foundation of China's policies since then.
A good term for them might be national syndicalism (which nazism and fascism are subtypes). Although Japanese stateism (another type of national syndicalism) is also fairly close.
Kamikoto were like "O hey a guy who likes pointy things, perfect sponsorship opportunity here!" and Shad is like "Nah, but thanks for giving me this nice idea for a video. I'm _sure_ you'll like it too." Lmao! Shad the Savage. MUCH appreciated.
I only became aware of the Kamikoto knife scam after the Established Titles one by the same company blew, but I've always been sceptical about these knives. Now, I don't know anything about kitchen knives other than they better be sharp, but it's always been hella sus to me how much they would highlight that their knives are alledgedly made using "traditional Japanese techniques", but would never actually name these supposed techniques, making it impossible to research whether they're actually a thing that has a meaningful impact on the quality of the finished product.
@@cubeheadgameing like 300 to 500 dollar range something simple but gets the job done right. I honestly don't know how high the price can go so I'm hoping that's a goodish range?
I genuinely believe this video should be spread around more so other content creators who actually care about their sponsors can know that kamikoto is a scam company. I had a feeling the first time I saw these being advertised that they were b.s. especially when they talked about how gorgeous their "ash wood boxes" were. I'm no expert carpenter but I could've made those same boxes back when I was 15 in woodshop for no more than $5 worth of wood and hardware bits and it'd be done in an hour or 2 tops.
Every single video I see advertising this, there’s always one comment mentioning this video. It’s been making the rounds since the Established Titles controversy.
I actually got recommended this video from another comment on a Warhammer 40K video lmao. Person was talking about how crappy they are and how if you want people to take you seriously you should peddle something else and linked this video haha.
Thanks for this video Shad . There alot of people who have been lured into buying these knives because some of the bigger or more "trustworthy" creator's are making adverts for this knife and I bet most of those dudes don't understand what makes a knife good , so they just follow the advertising buzz words. But I hope this video clears some things up for people who are trying to save money and buy a good everyday tool .
I don't understand what makes a good knife. But if I was a creator, I wouldn't accept any sponsorship money from these guys, unless they could prove that these knives are of authentic Japanese make. Chinese knockoffs are common knowledge in all types of products.
Your research on the steel instantly reminded me of how many times I've seen adverts for things made from "surgical steel." It's funny to realize it's a way to spin "we used just about the cheapest stainless steel on the market."
At least if you cut yourself with surgical steel and let the knife stay in, you won't get an allergic reaction! A weird selling point, but probably the only honest point you could make.
I get a few of these cross my bench. I can get a pretty good edge on them and surprisingly the owners like them. They're home users though so not very demanding. I've been asked my opinion on them before purchase and luckily I was able to warn people off them. Once I actually suggested the Masterchef chef knife for $20 instead - sharpened.
I almost bought a set of Kamikoto knives but the customs fee was ridiculous at the border because they marked the $1500 value not the $200 they actually charge on the paperwork. I refused to pay the fee and they refunded my money. I really dodged a bullet there.
I feel like there was a real missed opportunity for a joke with the home made ruler knife. The ancient wisdom of the blade states; Measure twice, cut once. But with this blade, I can measure twice while I cut once. So much more convenient!
I’ve lived in Japan several years never heard of them. The good quality knives are used by the sashimi restaurants. The blades give off a grey color with swirls within the steel from the materials used in the forging process, usually with natural or dark wooden handles. The cheapest is $1000 US. The sharping stones aren’t cheap either.
The Damascus-style knives have a different process than normal knives but the ending result is absolutely beautiful and probably worth the price for high end places
My Sakai Takayuki 33 layer was only $300 but go off about a topic you know nothing about I guess. Kamikoto is obviously a scam but real Japanese knives don't have to cost that much
@@ksb7938 I could tell from just listening to the trigger words, but a Damascus knife being cheaper than Kamikoto is kinda outrageous with their marketing
I'll never understand why people buy things like this. There's a reason they have to push so much advertising at you. It's because the product is junk and the only way to sell it is to get a bunch of well-known creators to constantly push it. I'd much rather spend the same money on a knife that has zero marketing but very popular amongst professional chefs. The best products are the ones that speak for themselves.
In a few countries, it's against the law to market something as on sale when it had never been for the previously listed value. So unless they sold the knives for almost 2 thousand dollars at a previous time, they'd be in breach of consumer protection laws in a few countries. Bethesda Softworks was taken to court for it and settled
sadly they are from china so unless they have distributor outside the country they can do what ever they want. And even then it only affect those distributors. That is why you wont see any official add or proper marketing, they know what they are doing. On the other side you can banter and mock them without any legal ramification.
As a Japanese I have never heard of this brand of knives. Quick Googling gives me a couple of Japanese blogs reporting that the company advertises only to the English‐speaking market, and that based on their direct inquiries they have individually found out that the knives are manufactured in Yanjiang, China using Japanese steel.
The branding makes me suspicious from the get‐go for a couple of reasons, like how the name itself (“神箏”) is somewhat quirkily formed (not impossible but weird), and the fact that Honshū is usually not what you mention when you describe where something is from - it’s the largest main island with about 80% of Japanese people living on it, saying something is from Honshū reveals almost nothing. You at least have to specify which region of Honshū it’s from, like Tōhoku, Kansai or Chūgoku. With these clues I can at least tell that it’s not a “genuine, authentic” Japanese brand.
This was the kind of comment I was looking for. Thanks for the insight - knowing that they only advertise to the English-speaking market, and not where they're allegedly based in, is one of the biggest red flags for me. If your product (in this case, knives) were actually good, you'd be selling to your local market first before going abroad, since there'd be nothing to hide.
@@InvalidationX145 Do you know where I can buy good cooking knives?
The moment I saw them advertised I knew they weren’t Japanese. My first thought before any research was “I bet they are made in China.” Something just didn’t feel right. I have worked with Japanese companies and the marketing and branding just didn’t feel right.
@@magicman3163 My advice is if you have a chance, ask a professional chef near you, and remember to have your knife sharpened from time to time.
It is made by a China company pretend to be Japanese and was registered in Hong Kong.
Re-watching this after the big scandal surrounding established titles and realising the same shady company and people are behind this knife company... Shad you were definitely on to something.
Same here.
he was ahead by 6 months XD
Found this on my recommended just now, seems like the algorithm is onto something
Its _recycled_ Japanese steel at that
Hasn't shad done sponsorships from established titles? Maybe I'm wrong but for sure many of youtubers from the community of the sword on youtube have.
Most likely: yes, they are a scam. Mystery steel with no comment about where it's made (Japanese knife makers tend to be very proud, and almost always tell you what kind of steel their knives are made from and the city they're made in) makes me believe that they're not being entirely honest about the quality and origin of these knives. Reminds me of how MVMT watches are just bottom of the barrel Chinese watches with a fancy logo slapped on after the fact.
Wait. They don't tell you the type of steel? That's ridiculous. You should always know the type of steel in a knife.
What always put me off, besides that, was how they always boasted that each knife "takes *yeeeears* to make!" That doesn't make the knife better, it just means you must suck at making knives. Steel isn't like wine. It doesn't just get finer and sharper with age. You either make it strong and sharp or you don't, and there's no reason steel of this size should take years to make.
ua-cam.com/video/1k5y-nlLxeY/v-deo.html Finally it's here.
Glad i didn't jump on a MVMT watch. Ended up getting the miltary grade Samsung smart watch. Wear it everyday installing glass & windows. I wear it working out and when i delivered car batteries, rotors and tires too. I did buy a glass/composite screen cover and it saved my watch from a direct hit with my seat belt buckle that broke the screen protector but not the watch.
Same with US knife makers. I've never met one that didn't tell me what the steel was or combo of steels since US knife makers love Damascus patterns.
When I was a kid, my father sold woolen suits at a local market. They were a known brand (Fletcher Jones, although that won't mean anything to most people today) and he was selling them for a fraction of the normal price. They simply would not sell. Finally, my mum suggested raising the price to half of the price of the ones bought in stores. He was skeptical - if they weren't selling for $50, why would they sell for $75? Still, he raised the price ... and watched them walk out the door.
If you sell something too cheaply, people get suspicious.
@@Batmans_Pet_Goldfish - We had a wholefood shop where we used to sell freshly made peanut butter. We carefully set our price to match the standard not-cheap brands (Kraft and Bega in Australia) and we got about a 100% markup. This was much more than we had on most other products we sold, as we generally aimed for 50% and beat the supermarket.
We still had people tell us our peanut butter was too cheap.
Well fj's are still in melbourne city and other locals.
@@EmeraldHill-vo1cs - I didn't know that!
They were a big brand in Tassie back in the '70s and '80s.
I've just looked them up, and I see they have an online presence still.
Martha Stewart started off selling pies. Nobody bought them for 5 bucks; after she increase the price, they sold like hot cakes.
Advertisers take note: Try to get Shad to shill your shoddy product, and not only will he refuse, but he'll make a video exposing you while simultaneously using the ad for his actual sponsor to help humiliate you.
A better way of telling ripoff companies to leave you alone, I cannot currently conceive.
Do not forget, there is no such thing as bad publicity.
A whole new level of bm. Not only will he mock you while you're down but humiliate you by thinking you'll get back up before knocking you back down and finishing you off with a friend.
@@RobFeldkamp I think you'll find there is, and the only people who believe that bad publicity is good are reality TV 'stars'.
except hello fresh has been exposed for giving people absolute tat as produce and shitty budget meat cuts you could buy yourself for half the price, calling out a scam while promoting a scam pretty funny
@@Xenohart237 I have a rule that if a company needs to sponsor YT channels and others things like that, instead of using normal means, it's a good indication it's a scam.
When you mentioned that 420j steel is used in surgical instruments, I immediately said that edge retention is one quality that doesn't matter on surgical instruments. If you watch a surgeon, even on a minor surgery, that blade will probably be replaced several times, just to maintain a sterile environment. Edge retention is about the last thing on the mind of surgeons, because they replace the blades frequently.
That combined with one of the best steels for corrosion resistant, which only really matters if you don't maintain (or don't want to maintain) the steel in the first place. (and unless its really bad for the steel which nobody would make knives with anyway, that factor is irrelevant for food-prep knives) The only reason you'd do that is if you made a bunch of them and kept them in storage for a long time and didn't want to have warehouse oversight for all of the steel..
Very true it's basically disposable razor steal
exactly, anything that cuts is disposable, just like syringes and needles.
Surgical stainless steel is mainly rust prevention, I've got cutco my knives both the serated and straight edge both hold there sharp edge, it's actually great when knives include a sand stone means they know all straight edge will need to be sharpened.
That said those fake Japanese knives never appealed to me.
@@alexguskov25 Technically the Cutco "serated" knives are "Double D edge".
I know because I used to sell them. LOL
Shad is clearing out the competition before launching his own knife range - Ruler Sharp. Suitable for carrots, gherkins and goblins.
You could say its the one knife range... to Rule them all. :D
Shad must have put a special enchantment in the ruler knife to make it deal extra damage against vegetable.
The knife against which all others shall be measured.
"Ruler sharp - for measured cuts"
Da hell is a carrot?
I remember my science teacher in school explaining how pressure works depending on surface areas it is applied to. To prove her point, she made a cardboard knife with a sharp point to cut potatoes. It helped me stop investing in expensive knives and instead invest in a whetstone
I use wetstone all the time. For stirring, cuting, slicing, paperweight.
In all honesty, good steel matters as well... more so you either can sharpen it quickly and have a very sharp knife, but you have to do it frequently or you can have a knife that needs rarely to be sharpened but it will take some time.
So it's more of a preference type of thing.
A knife may make a cut in any material, but a whetstone may make a knife out of any material
There's good steel too, but at a certain point, it becomes very niche and you have diminishing returns. Of course, it does basically comes down to just how much effort you have to put into maintaining and resharpening the knife vs. a steel that can take environmental exposure longer or stay sharp longer in between a wipe-off and oil down or resharpening.
You were investing in expensive knives while in school?
I'm a cook, so I can assure you, when you buy knives, it's better to just find a good knife you are comfortable with in weight and length in the $20 to $50 range and use a honing iron and a good sharpening stone.
I've seen cooks buy expensive knives to find that they find them uncomfortable to hold. If you cannot hold the knife before you buy it, you don't buy it.
I've got piles of nice expensive cooking/table knife sets people have given me over the years. I still cook and eat with the beat-up Ka-Bar I got in the Corps decades ago instead. lol
Well if you want a Japanese style knife i would recommend supporting a local smith Wich would give you a good knife at a reasonable price
And you are also supporting local knifemakers in your community
I actually use my bush craft knife for cooking. the one knife is all i need and been doing work for over 20 years now :P
@@velazquezarmouries Can you really get a good hand-made knife for, say, $50 dollars?
ua-cam.com/video/1k5y-nlLxeY/v-deo.html Finally it's here.
Thanks for an honest take on this instead just taking the sponsor money and running. Your sponsors should thank you too, because this definitely increases their perceived authenticity since we know you're not a scammer.
True, this is basically raising his own market value. While it probably makes him highly unattractive to sponsors that will shill out a ton of money for a sub-par product (because all the budget goes into marketing), the actually decent products looking for a promo will stick with people like Shad.
Yeah risking of getting blacklisted by one sponsor in this case probably is worth it, unless they pay exceptionally well. Still yeah, I appreciate honesty even if sponsor gave them truckload of money (we don't really know, people don't tend to disclose how much they got). Edit: It doesn't seem like Kamikoto sponsored this video, so now I'm confused what sponsor money he could run with, as it doesn't reflect negatively to his other sponsors anyway.
@@Cute_Clord Op was saying that he chose to do this video instead of accepting the sponsorship and promoting a subpar product. Which shows that the sponsorships he does have are products he genuinely thinks are good
@@Cute_Clord When you go after a Company for their products, other companies tend to steer clear just in case they get the same treatment from you. Companies also use Advertising Companies, so the one actually sponsoring you has multiple products they control advertising for...and you just fucked them on one. Think they will come back with a different one? Nope, just lost everything that advertising company is involved with. This is why certain UA-camrs all have the same sponsorships...because they work with the same advertising company.
@@justinlast2lastharder749 I am not sure Shad needs more sponsors. He already has a few good ones, some of which, he was hand picked for as well. Those are very unlikely to drop him for that, actually, it shines a good light on their product. I do agree for new sponsors though, some my be scared, others, those wo believe in their product might still be attracted in some cases.
Yes most sponsoships are run bu agencies, not the companies, so that part very much hold.
My mom always told me, "If you want 100% accurate info on any blade quality, ALWAYS get it from a nerdy white guy dressed like a knight." So true.
Well, to be fair, if you get it from a really COOL white guy dressed like a knight, he’s either an actor or a time traveler…
@@hopsonkim4952 fair point, fair point.
Also, shadiversity, just to specify, I meant the GOOD use of the term nerdy. Semi-nerdy. Just enough to trust your word, but not enough to try to shove you in a locker. Plus, I don't want to lose any limbs attempting to do so. I like my limbs. I use them daily! Well, except one of them. I like that one the most though!
@@hopsonkim4952 Does Ramsay count as cool? He's a millionaire but buys 15 pound Tesco pans and supermarket knives. Never saw him use something super expensive outside of his restaurants.
@@hopsonkim4952
But you can tell if he's a time-traveller by the smell.. Cleanliness was not as important then as it is now. If he isn't covered in siht, he's either an actor or the king. Monty Python fact-checked this as true.
I'm always suspicious of companies that absolutely flood content creators with sponsorships. As soon as the "titles" one became less common everyone immediately started pushing these knives.
I dunno what you're talking about. Raid: ExpressVPN Raycon is an absolutely great product and/or service.
Whats funny is kamikoto is produced be the people who made established titles, absolute scams all around
except raid shadow legends
@@mad_max21 raycons are overpriced for what they are. most of the money went to the packaging than the product itself
@@risso097 and the marketing 😋
Wow 6 months ago and people are still taking them as sponsors. Thank you for investigating this and exposing these frauds.
This video has aged very well.
Got into my recommended all this time later
When this is your only income and the offer is $20k for the month, why not?
@@GameTimeWhy It’s because misleading your viewers and by extent giving your viewers’ money to scammers is (for one) bad for your reputation, conscience and happiness amongst viewership, and (for another) allows for further scammer investment to propagate the cycle of them gaining money by deceiving individuals through lying in marketing material
@@thatmanatite the viewers tend to be self righteous pricks. First it was raid shadow legends then it was click bait "getting worse" then shorts. It's the platform. Don't like it then start supporting creators on patreon so they don't need to get sponsors.
I actually had the steel grading argument back when I sold knives.
I had three German tourists turn their nose up at me and try to get superior because I didn't have any "German steel".
I basically explained to them the grading codes and such and how it being German didn't effect the quality in the least.
They weren't happy.
Funny thing about that, the pencil sharpeners that I own that say "made in Germany" seem to sharpen the best. I wouldn't make a huge argument about it though.
It's not really that important and if it were actual german tourists they were just assholes or idiots. When I buy something on a trip then I most of the time don't even know if I can cut with it. I am on Vacation, that looks cool, let's buy it 😂
Maybe they were such idiots, because we have this whole _Made in Germany_ thing... Most cheap things were import with tags like _Made in China_ and all that stuff and in the result often things are advertised as good quality since it was made in Germany...
german cars are better, german steel is better, german air is better.
even their 💩 is better. these are facts.
The only German steel I would ever want is Krupp. "Harder than Krupp steel!".
Late ww2 German tanks doubt the hard Krupp steel argument. They were KNOWN for just having useless low quality steel.
A note about surgical steel: The average scalpel will make one, up to less than a dozen cuts in its entire life.
For patient and staff safety, a lot of scalpels and edged instruments are single-use. So corrosion resistance, stiffness, certain amount of resistance to snapping are all useful properties. But edge retention? Doesn't really come up.
A lot of surgical instruments are clamps and various things not even edged items. Better made ones of these do get reused and sterilized. Not rusting or pitting is going to make that process better and safer. But the fact that surgical steel is suitable for making reusable hemostats has no bearing on whether it is good for knives.
Surgical steel is also always stainless steel, which isn't ideal for chef knives.
@@Sue_Me_Too Stainless doesn't always mean low quality. The 420 and 440 stainless are crap and when you just see "stainless" on the blade it will be one of these. There are actually some really good stainless steels they're just a lot more expensive.
For example: D2 steel. It's not all that much more expensive but it holds an edge extremely well and is pretty corrosion resistant. It's not going to be marketed as "stainless" on its own but it's in the category of stainless steel because of its corrosion resistance. When I say not all that much more expensive it's kind of relative, though. It's probably at least 5 or 10 times more expensive but when your starting point is so low the actual cost isn't really that much higher.
Just buy a scalpel and use one... they dont cut very well at all. Ive used them when i was a medic, and just removing a single mole on a service members scalp (no bigger than a .177 cal bb) dulled it and required a minute or two of "sawing" in order to fully remove it. Had it been a legit surgery that required more precise cutting we either would have used a different tool or just multiple scalpels, tossing them as soon as it dulls.
@@witiwap86 I was thinking more in terms of *making* the knife, stainless steel is a total drama queen.
surgical steel is the knive's equivalent of "military grade". Meaningless marketing
Blacksmith here.
1/ The profile of a knife blade is what makes it suitable for certain uses. The potato cut test you did - the better cutting blade will have a thinner 'flatter' blade profile. Imagine it exaggerated and like a wedge attempting to widen a cut zone - the potato flesh will grip the blade.
2/ Damascus steel blades are not tough. Damascus steel styles are a rough 'twist/mix' of different steels. The effect is highlighted using acid to erode into the mixes. Because of the blend, regardless of if one of the mixed steels in the Damascus is a hard one, there will also be soft steels on the cutting edge. The secret to a blade is a longitudinal mix of steels. The body made using a strong springy steel whilst the cutting edge is made using a really hard (but slightly flexible) steel. Those Damascus blades are nothing but 'bling'.
There are indeed some awesome Japanese blade makers but that scamming company has created a bunch of shi**y blingy blades on the back of known good blade makers.
My best knife? It cost 50p from Wilkinsons the supermarket. It's a short plastic handled kitchen knife. The blade is medium hard but the best bit is its profile - flat and goes through vegetables very easily.
and when it breaks or gets dull, it's cheap to replace!
I'd like to see this guy try to cut through tomato skin with super thin slices using these cheapo soft and/or German steel knives.
No surprise these made in China Kamikotos can't cut or last with their 420J2 soft steels
In saying that, expensive knives are still overpriced.
There is “Damascus” steel and Damascus steel.
Most of the western stuff is pattern welded crap. The original Arabic stuff was a naturally occurring molybdenum steel - and then the mine ran out.
Knifemaker here; agree with you on 1/, mostly disagree with you on 2/.
Damascus/pattern welded blades can be very tough, just as tough as a monosteel blade if they're well made. The cheap Pakistani made damascus knives are not tough because they're made from terrible materials and are poorly heat treated. Most western bladesmiths are using 15N20 and 1084 in their damascus, two steels with very similar cutting and toughness properties. As long as the smith forge welds cleanly he'll have a blade as strong and sharp as if it had been made from one solid piece of steel.
If a bladesmith uses a soft metal like pure nickel or copper or unhardenable wrought iron or mild steel or 300 series stainless into their damascus it's usually as cladding for a san-mai or go-mai billet, in which case if the soft cladding layers make their way onto the edge it's a serious error.
There is a trend among some makers of stainless damascus to combine AEBL with 302 stainless, which I don't agree with since 302 is barely hardenable. On the other hand, Swedish Damasteel TM stainless damascus is made from PMRWL34 and PMC27 which are both good hardenable steels, though RWL34 has a deal more wear resistance than the PMC27.
The higher-end Japanese knives are commonly made from Takefu's laminated steel, which has cladding of relatively soft 300 or 400 series stainless, and a very hard core of high quality steel like VG10 or SG2.
@@FuckYouYouFuck non english nativ engineer here.
I don't get you point. The effect of damast is that hard, brittle steel is embedded in a soft matrix so it won't break.
you say western bladesmith use two steel with similar properties. what's the point of making the mix accept fancy optics?
Why you should harden damast, the soft matrix is crucial or is just 1 steel get hardend?
In my perpective a proper heat treated monoblock (small grain structure, embedded carbide and martensit) is superior to a damast steel mix. I would be thankful for you explaination.
High alloy steels/stainless are another beast I'm not really into
With the recent stuff about the Established Titles being a scam, this video aged beautifully. Kamikoto is owned by the same company.
Marketing firm products with inflated values, pumped up with the biggest social engineering team money can buy!
If anything ET is less scammy. It is very obviously a novelty product, a souvenir without much of a purpose. These purport to be quality knives, for cutting stuff, but they are just garbage, easily beaten by a $10 knife.
This aged well
@@SianaGearzT is a pure scam, plain and simple. You’re paying $50-150 for a PDF, and the promise that *some* of the money will be donated to a charity that only charges $1 for a tree to be planted if you just donate to the charity directly, while ET is also claiming that the money goes towards protecting the woodlands it’s on, when they are already government protected. This only dates back to the 70s-80s when actual Scottish landowners on struggling estates would “sell” title to these souvenir plots and plant a tree (usually a commercial pine variety for later logging work), on the explicit idea that this was a gag gift and didn’t grant any peerage or real ownership. ET has broken all these basic principles and contributes no money to struggling Scottish landowners for it.
These are just shitty knives being sold as expensive ones, which is a tale as old as time, quite literally the earliest records we have of complaints about a product are about low-quality copper being sold as high-quality copper.
@@SianaGearz except it's also similarly scummy in advertising since they advertise that people can use said 'titles' in legal documents. The novelty of donating to charity is a joke because in the end this is false advertising over the mask of charity which still earns them a profit without people being as critical about it which in my opinion is even worse than just promoting a straight out scam.
I was a chef for many years and a knife collector. For me it's quite obvious that this knife is about as good as anything you can buy at target. I didn't know they were asking $300 for it though! What a rip off!
i am glad i saw this video before getting ripped off, but come on 50+ mins!! thats a rip off in itself
@@jomangeee9180 get Sponsorblock. They have a"highlight" feature where you can usually jump to the results. All user submitted.
I was given one 5 years ago as a gift, the person paid 600 for it at the time. I want a refund and it wasn't even my money.
its because they know their target market arent going to know anything about steel grades or knife quality really, so they put inflated prices and advertise through youtubers who will happily promote things for easy money regardless of any knowledge to the actual quality.
@@jomangeee9180 FOR A THOUSAND YEARS I HAVE SLUMBERED TO AWAKEN AT THIS VERY MOMENT THAT YOU MIGHT SLANDER THE LONG AND MY WRATH SHALL BE UPON YOU!!!
Praise the Don!
Side note on grades of steel used in surgical instruments: corrosion resistance is important, as you mentioned, but edge retention is not a concern at all. Why not? Because implements such as scalpel blades are made to be *disposable*. That way, the implements being used on you have never touched another human being. They are sterile and reliably sharp for a low number of cuts.
Wanted to say the same thing that the scalpel blades are just thrown away after minimal amount of use. All they care is that the blade is sharp out-of-the-box and it's clean.
True but for a cutting knife….. edge retention and quality steel is better
They use an autoclave to sterilize them after use. As to sharpening I am unsure. My wife was a medical assistant.
@@imperfectlump6070 shhhh stop dropping truth bombs
@@imperfectlump6070 old fashioned scalpels were sharpened on a stone or strop ( like a cut throat razor) then autoclaved.
The reason why that grade of steel is used in surgical instruments is that in the developed world most surgical blades and bores are now single-use. The move to that began in the UK after the CJD outbreak around BSE in the 1990s. Even $7,000 skull bore bits are single use nowadays. As long as the steel quality is good for single use that’s all that matters.
Another reason surgical instruments use this steel: they're disposable so it doesn't really matter if they lose an edge quickly
That's right. Most "surgical steel" only has to cut once, then they throw it away. I could make instruments out of tin that would do for that purpose.
@@surferdude4487 hope it gets recycled lol
@@jakethegreatest473 "Disposable" in this case means single use before being remade. This eliminates the human error involved in cleaning because in that context even a small amount of cross contamination can be dire - a bit of rotting human is the worst case scenario. They litteraly kill it with fire.
25:43 Shad himself mentions sharpening the surgical blades between each use. The edge is remade.
I actually have an old reusable scalpel stolen from surgery long time ago. I'm using it as X-acto knife for DIY. I must say it loses edge quite quickly and is hard to make as sharp as single-use x-acto and scalpels, but it is a lot less brittle.
Are these things just pilling up in landfills or being recycled?
kamikoto is in the family company that included established titles, so it's not a big surprise the knifes are more of a marketing trick rather than a real product
Whenever I hear of these scams I always worry they are from my home, Hong Kong.
And indeed they are.
Any company that does business in the west and is registered in Hong Kong, but does not seem to do business in China or Hong Kong, is automatically super untrustworthy in my eyes. So many scam companies hide here.
Not just western ones, but loads of indian and arab ones too.
@@NowhereBeats it's a tax haven, it's also far away and is under the cover of the PRC so any investigations would be quite hard so it's quite the juicy spot to set up a shady business
Nobody but me noticed how he bend the adge of the paper on the second try with the Japanese knife?
@@omeramrani2274 They are not even real Japanese knives
@@titanium4167 lol
The way Kamikoto describes their knives made me think of that old tweet where someone described their job as a cashier at McDonald's as "I'm responsible for handling the day to day financial transactions of a multi-billion dollar company" or something along those lines. Wordplay can be very powerful at times.
I make knives and have a decent blade shop in my basement (forge, belt grinders, buffers, drill press, etch tank, etc, etc). I've had people ask me what kind of kitchen knives I made for myself. They're often confused when I tell them I use a $49 set of Farberware knives I bought at WalMart.
One friend showed me his $500 set of Victorinox kitchen knives, and laughed when he found out I was using such a cheap set. So I started pulling his Victorinox blades out of the block to inspect them. They were almost all DULL as butter knives. I explained that he was welcome to dry shave the hair from his arm with ANY of the knives in my block. My knives likely will NOT hold an edge as long as his blades... but mine sharpen quickly, and I know how to maintain them at that level of sharpness.
Lesson: Don't invest big money in your kitchen knives... invest in a good sharpener, or learn how to stone them.
@@Mr.Ekshin that's just sad, spending so much on knives and not sharpening it; i only really ever use a single knife; the mac mth-80, and i sharpen them myself regularly, to make sure it stays razor sharp. being able to sharpen knives yourself is definitely quite an important skill, and stones would definitely be the best option, and your friend should definitely get a cheap set, just to practice sharpening, since cheaper sets have softer steel, and will sharpen easier, and if you somehow ruin the knife, it's only a cheap knife
well, you definitely already know this, and i'm only writing this for any other people that come across this comment
tl;dr i agree with your opinion on being able to sharpen and maintaining your knives yourself
also a different note, ceramic knives are horrible, there is no way to effectively sharpen them yourself; don't buy them
Nothing wrong with a "little upgrade" in the curriculum, huh?
"I'm a technician especialized in the maintenance of sanitary facilities in urban commercial centers" (bathroom cleaner at the mall).
@@Mr.Ekshin Sad Swiss noises... grumble grumble still good Army knives lol...
@@221b-l3t - Yup... it IS sad. I went over to a friend's house for dinner, and watched his wife using Wusthof blades. She was cutting food not on a cutting board, but on stoneware plates. And then she casually tossed hundreds of dollars worth of blades in the DISHWASHER.
Those are literally the two things that will dull kitchen knives faster than anything. All of them were dull from constant mistreatment. It made me want to weep watching fine German steel treated like that.
It was probably a thousand dollars worth of kitchen knives that they got from her uncle as a wedding gift, and they simply had no idea.
This video actually shows how well-developed modern material science is. You can get a totally serviceable knife out of cheapest steel.
they tend to be crap after a few months though. Better steel and design means you can re-sharpen and have a more comfy user experience.
@@richmondvand147 I have a set, a bit more than a month old. They hold an edge beautifully and hone to a fine edge with a steel. How old are yours?
If you want a knife that will seriously hold an edge, make it out of a steel file. It's high carbon and very hard. But the drawback is that it's brittle and also prone to rust.
@@cheapbastard990name checks out
@@flagmichael
"They hold an edge beautifully"
Has the check from Kamikoto cleared since then?
As a knife nerd, I assumed they were a scam the first time I saw an ad for them. The thing is if they were cheaper they'd be a fair play but for the money you can get proper high quality knives.
ngl this has always struck me as similar to Vector Marketing/Cutco, just without the MLM aspect - just the combination of overpriced knives and deceptive marketing practices (the 'company is actually owned by a different, bigger company with a dubious reputation' aspect is also comparable...)
Could I possibly trouble you with a recommendation for a proper quality knife brand? I've tried to do research but I always get stuck in a rabbit hole of dozens of articles that seem more like advertising than actual information. I would be very grateful.
@@greaserpup Anything, you see an add of is a scam.
If the product has realy good quality a friend would have told you or you already know it ontop the company spends money on the add, they could have used the money to improve quality further or lower the price.
Yeah their 7” santoku is a whopping $8 cheaper than a proper Wusthof 7” santoku. Absolutely outrageous
@@taumctauface1886 if you care about looks, go Tojiro if you don't go Victorinox.
My main takeaway from this is that I kinda want that Masterchef knife
Exactly how I feel.
I’m super happy with those crappy plastic white handled knives you get for under $30 at costco
@@donc9275 I make from bandsaw blade :D grind to shape and glue and rivet handle in place. Took less than hour to make and works year or two :D Flexes bit too much but its ok for less than dollar manufacturing price.
Here's a little wisdom the corporate knife world doesen't talk about: The secret to sharp knifes in the kitchen long term isn't what product to buy, but our habits. Learning to sharpen is one aspect of it, but much more importantly (and much more difficult) to find a routine that works for each person to keep that blade sharp in use. Again, it's not about what sharpening device to buy, it's about the commitment to develop a routine that can be sustained. Most people won't develop or stick to such a habit and end up with dull blades. In that case, it's a complete waste to purchase "nice" knifes.. as they'll only end up as blunt and not being used to their potential. Knifes and steels are fascinating, and the qualities of each material, style and manufacturing are wildly different. However, all of these have surprisingly little to do with how sharp knifes will be in your kitchen, every time you pick it up, long term.
The irony that humans are notriously bad at good habits and that's what stands between us and happiness. Commercialism tries to lure us in with the perception that we could buy our way to happiness on a shortcut.
I have the 900pts knife from Price Chopper, its better than some of the knives Ive spent $50-$100 on. I couldnt imagine buying $200+ knives, I just done see the point.
For the damage test, i would assume that the reason why the kamikoto knife didnt get damaged as much is because, as mentioned, its a softer type of steel so it was able to deform to the sword cut easier without chipping pieces off. Like how if you took a hammer to a glass pane vs a block of clay, one would shatter into a hundred pieces and the other would just deform .
Like states previously about 420J, high corrosion resistance, and high toughness. But Zero edge retention lol
Also the Kamikoto blade is a bit thicker, so a bit more mass to resist the cut. I'm not sure it is actually lack of hardness that is the issue - I'd suspect poor heat treatment (in particular - stuffed up the tempering stage) - which typically results in a knife that loses its edge fast but is hard to sharpen.
Tensile strength or hardness will affect how a steel reacts to other objects with certain strengths.
Take ceramics for example: really fantastic hardness, low tensile. Meaning it's great for cutting something with a lower hardness but will not withstand impact from something with greater tensile strength (concrete, steel, aluminum!)
Really enjoyed this review and exposé of marketing scheme.
The kami was thicker than the free knife. Both had the same result
Well said. My thoughts exactly
Something that was immediately sus to me about kamikoto was how the knives were advertised as taking a 19-step process and being “individually inspected” before being sent out. It makes sense for real high quality brands, but weird for a brand willing to give a sponsorship to random UA-camrs. Like there are certain kinds of brands, like expert artisans and craftsmans, you’d never see on a sponsorship unless maybe it was related to a channel that was targeted toward that industry and the person also had some level of knowledge about it and would advertise it to an audience that also knows about it well. Maybe I’m wrong in my reasoning, but the phrasing just felt off to me
To me it was how vague their marketing buzzwords were what made me suspicious. "19 step process", "traditional Japanese techniques", like what kind of process, which exact techniques? If they were so great, wouldn't they have some kind of name that one could actually research and verify whether it has any bearing on quality?
I'm used to that from the home electronics branch: premium brands like to exaggerate the effect of materials and technologies they used/employed in the product, cheaper but still decent brands tand to make up their own fancy terms for the same basic stuff that everyone does, but only the really cheap and shoddy crap doesn't bother throwing (made up) names at you and just tells you "supreme quality", "x times better than y" and all that shit that sounds good, but is so vague that you can't double check it.
Shad: "I'm offended by Australian stereotypes"
Also Shad: Telling us what's not a knife and what is a knife.
i am wondering how many people will actually get this refrence
Nice
Amazing reference!
@Benign Bobcats we dont talk about spooni...wait i read that wrong >_>"
Good job dude
You were WAY ahead of the curve with this one. You were so close to exposing the whole scam system
Shad: Gets sponsorship offer from low quality knife company
Also shad: "And i took that personally"
I want to like your comment, but it's sitting comfortably at 666 likes, and I don't want to break the magic.
@@alexl6644 feel free to like it now
@@rarelycold6618 Done.
The only thing this was missing was a comparison to a verifiable high-quality knife. But the fact that the Kamikoto is comparable to a free knife in any capacity is very worrying.
Ironically, this was a fantastic advertisement for the free MasterCheff knife, if I could get them where I lived I would.
Just get a cheap knife with the same steel
Sure edge geometry and other factors will influence handling, but everyone has different preferences when it comes to that and it's not like you'll waste alot of money if you buy two different ones for like 20 bucks in total
I feel like the ruler knife deserved more screen time. I wanted to see how that fared compared to other knives
Yeah me too
Same
The one knife to rule them all 😉
im guessing not well, but yes. i too want to see more
I'd love to see how well it measured up to the competition...
It feels terrible knowing how many legitimately entertaining and well-meaning content creators Galton Voysey (owners of Establiahed Titles and Kamikoto) managed to lure in.
I'm glad more UA-camrs are catching on to them.
Legal Eagle just did a video on how Established Titles is a scam.
Feels terrible knowing youtubers are money driven? Wild
Or should it feel more terrible that they just partner with companies without ever researching?
@@rustumlaattoe prove it
@@FrankYammy no. Feels terrible that GOOD UA-camrs who TRY to get sponsorships that are legitimate get roped into scams like these regardless. There's a different, you know. Call them naive, stupid or sloppy, but some people accept deals in good faith.
Thank you Shad.
Genuinely, thank you. You got offered a sponsorship for something not good, and you actually did the research and took the time to give us a review instead of just taking the money.
You should be proud of what you've done and how this is presented 🙏
For real, this dudes integrity is to be respected.
@@justingibson4111 and I saw a video from scimandan showing this as a sponsored ad. I wonder how he would think after seeing this.
I remember seeing "Sheffield Steel" on a knife blade and saying to my Grandfather "Must be a good bit of metal" because he lived in the area and worked in the business when he was younger. He told me it didn't mean anything, Sheffield was top dog in terms of steel quality at a point in history but he said that where he worked they produced everything from meticulously tested and graded steels to stuff that you wouldn't trust to sink if you threw it in a lake. He also said there were multiple foundries in the city and they varied wildly in production quality so the term was just branding to fool people who didn't know any better.
As a knife and sword collector, mostly antiques, I'll agree completely. This also applies to "Solingen" and "Toledo" stamps: Historically they were known for having top quality steel and/or blade quality, but haven't been relevant since at least the 19th century. In their proper era these are legit markers of quality. Just not on anything modern.
Just like "hand made"
@@babagandu Machines are a hell of a lot more accurate than a person 😂
Also, saying the steel came from Honshu, Japan is about as helpful as saying the Ford Mustang was assembled in mainland USA.
It's literally the largest part of the country 😂
Material Scientist student here: The number on the steel that they have as the industry standard is a number code that shows the weight percentage of each metal in the alloy. For example, AISI304 is a type of stainless steel used in structural pieces, and has roughly 18-20 wt% Chromium (wt% in this case being the unit symbol of "Percent by weight")
420j2 (also known as AISI 420) has ~12-14wt% chromium from what I could find, and it's not nearly as hard as 304 steel.
AISI 420 has a hardness of 192 HBW, which is a measure of kilograms of force per mm^2
304 has a hardness of 200 HBW at a minimum for the quality standard.
This allows the knives that Kamikoto makes to be surgically sharp for a few cuts, as we've seen in the test, but you'll need to sharpen them basically after every use to keep the same level of sharpness as a normal stainless steel knife.
420 hardness huehuehue
@@DysnomiaFilms topkek69
Aircraft mechanic here: It's crazy how different industries have different labels for the type of metal they use. Like one of our Aluminum alloys is 2024-T4 or 7075
Their heat treat is also wildly variant at 53 hrc +/- 2, so it's potentially as low as 51 hrc which is so damn soft that it isn't even suitable for any kind of cutting implement. I've sharpened about 20 of these in the last month and the grain structure is quite poor with the worst edge stability of any knife I've had to sharpen. The burr just disintegrates and takes your apex with it. What specifically enrages me about this brand is their marketing of Japanese aesthetic and claiming Japanese bladesmithing provenance when they're actually fake single bevels, Japanese single bevels have a flat lip and hollow grind on the non bevel side (uraoshi/urasuki) for sharpening and food release, these don't. They're garbage chunky grinds that even make Cutco look good.
@@thecookseye7383 Good points. Yeah making a single bevel knife out of that steel type is just wrong. I find it very frustrating - they obviously spent some time making them *look* nice. If they had used even a fairly low end reasonable steel (VG10 or VG5) and heat treated it properly...they could probably do that same marketing scam re price but at leat the knife would be ok rather than crap!
Found this a bit late but...
It is a Chinese company with a tiny office in Tokyo that handles the online presence. All steel is made in China and they have nothing to do with Japan other than the tiny office.
This type of thing destroys the reputation of authentic Japanese products that have taken many years, sometimes hundreds of years to create a reputation.
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY?!? WHAT ABOUT HONSHU, MR. ROBOT?! WHAT ABOUT HONSHU? THINK OF THE SPECIAL SAND!!!
fucking lol
worst thing is they are still dogsh!t even by chinese knife standards.
You can get a Chinese shibazi Cleaver with a core made of 9cr and a tested hardness of 59HRC for $40 on amazon.
Chinas vengeance is economic, not militaristic.
China always pulling this BS.
@@mjanny6330 for now...
This has aged very well and become very current! Well done for your awareness 6M ago and for being in front of the furore kicking off in November 22!
Shadiversity needs to be recognized as one of the content creators to expose the multilayered scam early on.
Ah yes, the incredible surgical knife. The one you use exactly ONCE and then throw away. Amazing.
Fun fact: Kamikato knives is owned by the same company that does Established Titles. It is a company based out of Hong Kong. That’s about as much as you need to know.
Hong Kong, a village on Honshu in Japan.
@@RenegadeVile hong kong a village of hong kong in hong kong, CHINA
@@beanzworld no shit sherlock
@@beanzworld They claim they’re based in Japan. That’s the joke. Of course Hong Kong is in China.
@@rubyy.7374 lol, NOT yet officially. supposedly 50 years from 1997 until we are China. Until then we are an SAR.
I value reviews like this one so much, Shad. It feels like sincere reviews of garbage brands are more and more rare these days, maybe due to some creators' fear that they'll scare away sponsors. I hope to see more content like this
Money unfortunately is the reason. The only way that you get honest reviews is if there's no financial incentive to promote the product. If your livelihood is dependent on pushing a product, hell yeah you're going to shill it for all you're worth. Patreon has helped some get away from that but it's still problematic.
Like Sayune (さゆね) mentioned in one of the other favorited comments, this doesn't look to be an actual Japanese brand. The name does seem weird; I'd usually expect the kanji they used rather to refer to music played on a koto (箏曲) rather than a koto itself (琴). And even then, it's a bit... anachronistic? I'd usually see it written with the more common kanji (琴曲).
And yeah, it doesn't matter where the blasted steel comes from even if it was a good grade for knives. The only differences you might see in that is some of the impurities and those are all *within certain tolerances*. This looks to me like this company is taking advantage of the recent Japanophilia craze to push their own cheap product at a premium price. As the saying goes: if you can't dazzle them with brilliance then you can baffle them with bullshit.
I saw these being advertised and immediately felt something was off, so I did my own research and found, quite literally, no info of the steel in their site, besides the fact that it's "Japanese steel", now they say its a type of stainless steel which to my recollection isn't part of a centuries old Japanese tradition. What bothers me also is the annoying use of buzzwords to make it sound more fancy, instead of directly telling us the type type of steel when you buy a knife.
Sorry for the ramble but I've been annoyed by this for a bit now, glad someone's talking about it.
Yeah. I actually feel less respect to the guys who advertise these fakes than to those who advertise mobile games.
Japanese steel is actually quite bad. that's why they had to fold it so much to work out impurities to get a quality steel. Also why they needed U.S. steel to maintain their war efforts in ww 2
@@truetheternal2314 Yes, no, maybe? The biggest drawback of tamahagane is the insane amount of labour it takes to produce. I can't comment on the quality of properly made and finished tamahagane I do feel like a big factor would be just time efficiency and costs
The folding doesn't remove impurities as much as it spreads them evenly so there's no pocket of impurity leading to a weak point.
Folding removes carbon, moving from steel toward iron. Folding too many times leaves you with low-carbon steel or worse, pure iron.
The trick with "Japanese steel" is to make anyone imagine their own best thing. Someone thinks "tamahagane", someone thinks "blue paper", someone - VG-10, etc. This is just how it plays with people's imagination.
I'm a chef, and one of my favourite knives is a cleaver I got at a Canadian dollar store, for five dollars. I bought it as a junk cleaver, and it ended up in my professional knife roll, beside knives that cost me hundreds of dollars/pounds(I'm dual, so just depends where I was when I purchased a given knife). I don't even use it as much of a cleaver, rather I use it as a chef's knife(like Chinese cleaver style chef's knives).
Incidentally, another favourite is a spring-steel knife I made from an old lorry suspension, when I was 15 years old. It's has a no frills rough wooden handle(I wrap it sometimes), but is a damn good knife.
Many times when cheap steel is used in manufacturing it can vary widely in hardness. My guess is you hit the jackpot and got one of a really nice hardness.
@@gearjammergamer8560 Luck of the draw was definately part of it - dad has a rockwell tester.. I should have him check it out, for curiosity's sake.
I wound up here after Scott Schafer did a video recently revealing another company - Established Titles - was a scam.
Turns out Kamikoto is owned by the same company. This company also owns Deal Dash, which, if you've been on the internet for a while, you've known was a scam for a long time.
Same
I ended up here after watching Scott’s video as well. This bro knows his knives.
So all the companies that get advertised through influences on UA-cam?
Imagine my shock.
What makes established titles a scam, just wondering? I'm not too familiar
@@bige8949 Pretty much everything that Established Titles advertises is false. You do not legally own the land you purchase from them, you are not eligible for the title in your name and you have no proof that any of your money will go to charity.
The very idea that Kamikoto sees Shad and thinks, “A sword guy! Knives are just mini swords! This is the PERFECT sponsorship opportunity!!!!!!!”
Mistakes were made. I’m crying. 😂
Ever seen that meme of a guy riding a bike and sticking a stick between the spokes and screaming when he flips over? That's how bad Kamikoto shot themselves in the foot thinking Shad would just take the sponsorship because "Derp durdur, sword guy!"
They saw one katana and thought "Yep this guy's a weeb let's make him push our overpriced product"
@@ChromePyramid at this point they’ll have to give these things away for free after you buy a certain amount of stuff at the supermarket.
To be fair, this kind of sponsorship is the most appropriate for a channel like this.
It’s that Scottish Established Titles sponsor that I would find sketchy.
@@NathanCassidy721 As far as I can tell, Established TItles is a scam site copied off of the real organization Highland Titles and it's sister Celtic Titles, which are pretty upfront that the title part is more a silly gag than a real title. They don't even seem to have a presence in Scotland. To be clear, Souvenir plots can't be registered in Scotland and the Court of Lyon does not recognize ownership of them to grant titles. This means that companies like Established Titles can sell the same plot multiple times. (Edit: This isn't to say that Highland Titles is completely legitimate or noble, their books are kept in the dark, but they do demonstrably own land in Ireland and do let you visit it.)
Story from 40 year ago: worked in heavy engineering as metallurgist
Chemist came to us with a set of cutlery he had bought in middle East, supposed high quality and expensive, but a knife had broken in a dishwasher. These were very good looking pieces, luxury handles, looked at fracture surface with microscope, just poorly worked steel, carbide and slag visible. Rip offs nothing new, caveat emptor. But I did have an old butter knife of my grandmother, put an edge on it like a scalpel, kept it for years, sheffield steel.
for about a hundred years the best quality steel you could get in any appreciable volume was American. For small things like cutlery this is meaningless, but for big projects like warships, tanks, rebar, and in the early stages bridges, it was American or compromise. Hell, part of the reason you hear terms like 'effective armor thickness' in warship and tank design discussions is because the quantity of quality steel the Americans had access to was unparalleled, and when comparing the armor of a Japanese or even Royal Navy warship to that of a US warship, the protection per thickness of armor was dissimilar. A 20% reduction in effectiveness for the Japanese armor dissimilar.
@@DSiren Really? what is your source? It is very contradicting to the fact that, for example, the Carnegie Steel Company Pittsburgh produced such low quality steel plates for the early US Navy and other countries that a congressional investigation commitee jugded that the "shameless character of this cheating [...] makes them unworthy of trust". Other sources cite that the only period where american steel had any higher significance on the world market was during the 1940s and 1950s (Todays market shares excluded).
BTW the term effective armor thickness is usually used for sloped armor. It describes the relative thickness of the armor plate caused by the angle. As result a sloped plate could be thinner but has the same effectiveness as a thicker straight plate. The term has nothing to do with the quality of the material.
@@minibob9252 the term has a double meaning. In tanks the angle of the armor has more effect than the quality of the steel but that changes on warships.
@@DSiren nice copypasta
@@AndyD25 excuse me?
A friend of mine swore by his set of knives, I started to realize that he was regularly sharpening them after washing them.... I had a good laugh when he bought a new one it was quite a bit larger than the old one he only had for about 6 months, LOL! He sharpened them so much the knife was literally shaved down!
As a folding knife collector who was a steel snob for a while, Kamikoto have always just screamed scam to my instincts, glad to see my instincts proven right.
For me it was just retail experience... They promise a heck of a lot with no real cause... Just look at the marketing you see from kai or global kitchen knives... It's basically 'we exist, we make knives using these steels and methods.. and this is the range we make' no promises . No weird name dropping
@@Simon-ho6ly Tbh tho, Kai has a decent amount of name tax these days.
They were GREAT a couple of years ago, but now they are a bit overpriced imo.
Still very good knives from a known brand, but not the first recommendation anymore.
Global is great tho if you want something good without spending a fortune.
@@MrMonsterjesus fair, my Kai knives are about 5 years old so my experience is more with them, i was fortunate enough to pick up a couple of knives in a stock liquidation sale so no real experience with the more recent ones..
Global I found a uk company who often has sets going remarkably cheap, usually slightly damaged boxes, also liquidation from other retailers, if you dont mind the shipping its "hearts of stur" in the uk, ive done well from them
I have to ask, I remember this from a few years back but there was a company that was selling a Damascus folding knife and prided themselves on the fact that the steel of the knife came from the Terpitz battleship from ww2. They were selling it for an extremely high price kinda like these kimikoto knives but I want to get your opinion on them of if they are just as scam-like as kimikoto are or not.
Have you ever, had the temptation to dismiss your gut, because you understand that you do not know everything?
Just curious, because I certainly have or have been tempted to.
Aye, Shad is the man. While I haven’t always agreed with him; he is a man of principle and proof that success doesn’t always cost integrity. Mad respect for him 🍻
Indeed, the case can be made that true success *requires* integrity.
Except he recently proved hes so pigheaded he absolutely will not admit when hes blatantly wrong. Some guys hes collabd with seem to be legit but shad here proved he has no integrity.
@@morsorcus8152 what are you referring to when you say "blatantly wrong"?
@@morsorcus8152
Nice argument senator, why don't you back it up with a source?!
@@morsorcus8152 you can’t make a statement without clarifying what you’re referring to. So far you made it seem as if you just described yourself..
Kamikoto's are an absolute, 100% scam. A friend of mine bought a few because some UA-camr told them they were great knives. Why you'd believe a gaming UA-camr who survived on Door dash shocks me but whatever. Anyway I happened to be at his house the same day they arrived and fresh out of the box they sucked. I drove home and grabbed my KME and sharpened them up and they were great for about 5 minutes. We ended up using my ZT 0562Ti to finish making dinner. Last I knew he was working on sending them back but he was having no luck. Honestly I'd just go on Amazon or to WalMart and find a knife in your price range with decent reviews.
Good choice of knife, I have the CF version.
lol bullshit, you had to use a different knife to fished dinner bwahahah. These sets are 10000x better than anything you will find locally.
@@HiddenAgendas They're trashed. And garbage. The knife I carry daily was 10 times sharper and it hasnt been on my KME in months. Go buy yourself a set of these garbage knives and let me know how they work for you.
@@HiddenAgendas how much are they paying you?
@@malachistice8111 nothing. I'm not an "influencer". Just a fly on the wall observing shit.
It's so strange to me that legitimate brands don't sponsor UA-camrs more often, considering how well it seems to work for crap-quality products (Manscaped, Raycon, All Mobile Games, etc...)
Yeah they spent more time basically making the quality products rather than do a lot of marketing
Risk Management. Remember Subway Jared? If a big brand ties themselves to an influencer and the influencer does something stupid or bad they then get negative publicity associated with their brand. It's not worth it for these companies to use this form of advertising in many cases.
@@BobfromSydney yeah I can honestly see why legitimate companies these days don't really use UA-cam sponsorships although Subway nowadays as fix up their reputation and been doing pretty well nowadays even thoug mentions of that guy ( anyways I can see the reason why)
although nowadays if I were to go for a modern-day equivalent of that guy and a much better version of him is Milad Mirg although he's more of an employee there but at least he feels like it Him minus the negative stuff
that is all
Raycon is a "crap quality product"? That's news to me. I've been using their products for well over a year and I'm continually impressed by them. Especially when you drop them on to a concrete warehouse floor from 30+ feet in the air and you just pick them up and keep on using them like nothing happened.
@@captaincory4358 how much did you get paid?
Hey shad, my cousin recently got the $306 set that you have as a wedding gift. Abs he noticed that the blades dulled unusually quickly too. Really goes to show how marketing can ruin the perception around certain items.
Tell him to take it to a bladesmith. A good bladesmith "MAY" be able to do a surface hardening of the cutting edge and put a good easy to maintain bevel on it. A bladesmith is someone who does all blades, not just knives and swords. I've had bladesmiths repair scythes, and other farming tools in addition to touching up my knives.
Now that I think about it, the bladesmiths I have worked with in the past are somewhat regional, so they might be called something else in other parts of the world or even countries. I originally found the first bladesmith by asking a blacksmith about repairing a scythe blade and he sent me to a bladesmith the next town over.
@@greylocke100 This is garbage steel that I would not even touch, I would redo the heat treat if it was 1084 or 1095 but not this junk.
@@thewalnutwoodworker6136 Which is why I said a bladesmith was needed. Thank you. You just cut about 3 hours of explanation out of any discussion. 😁
@@greylocke100 The steel is too bad to warrant redoing the heat treat. It was probably hardened as high as it would go, witch is probably in the 50-55 HRC range. I have redon the heat treat on a few old chisels that were overheated by the previous owner on a grinder. This ruined the temper and caused them to loose their edge too quick. I put them in my forge and heat treated them, tempered at 400 for an hour.
Softer blades can be better than harder less resilient blades, because most people don't use cutting boards exclusively underneath their knives and thus cut with ceramic or glass underneath instead. By not using a resilient surface underneath the thing you are cutting will quickly blunt any knife, even though the harder knives will take longer to blunt. The advantage with softer steel knives is that they are easier to sharpen with the steels, ceramic sharpeners or sharpening stones and most people are not willing to spend the greatly increased sharpening times to restore the edges. Therefore a softer steel knife is perceived to be a better knife because it is easier to return to a 'sharp' edge. Please only use cutting boards and don't use good knives to cut with ceramic plates underneath and then the harder knives will shine as the better knives.
I was a cook in the army for a few years. THE best knife ive ever used is a 7" santoku knife that was like $12 at walmart. Ive been using this blade for almost 7 years
Victorinox?
@@Sue_Me_Too kendo colors ,by hampton forge. its a purple bladed and handled knife i got in walmart while i was stationed in virginia
@@ATurkeySandwichGAME Stainless steel can turn all kinds of cool colors. Super pain in the ass to work with in the home forge though lol
@@Sue_Me_Too Still makes the best turning knives!!! My Victorinox bread knife is also great, though I prefer my old unbranded one.
I've also worked as a chef for fifteen years and agree, my favourite knives are either the unbranded ones, or the basic lines from both Victorinox (especially the turning knives) and Zwilling (pairing knife and butcher knife). My first knife-set was very basic and not from a brand and I still use it twenty-five years down the line and still love using it. Instead of getting an overpriced knife, rather spend that money on a good sharpening steel, though I often just use the rim of an old stoneware bowl to sharpen my knives, so even that isn't a must. Especially for my turning knives, the bowl works a treat. - Trick from my gran/ great-gran, btw.
This video also serves as a warning. Don't try to sponsor Shad if your product is bad.
always nice to see youtubers with some integrity...
It rimes. Should be on a T-shirt. Link to t spiring in the description
Ehh...bad in a way he is schooled in, yes. But hello fresh? That's more for people who don't know how to cook. At least he said he and his wife are no chefs earlier in the video. It's cheaper to get stuff at the local supermarket and whip up a meal if you know what you're doing than to go with HelloFresh. I'm not saying they're all bad, I'm just saying they should cater to people who aren't that good in the kitchen.
Same with Karl Smallwood
You should see his absolute teardown of raid shadow legends
@@kronos6948 hello fresh is kind of dumb but at least they're up front about it. Like They're not saying that these are ancient Chinese vegetables or something. You just pay more for the convenience of not having to leave your house
As someone who loves blades, I'm surprised you haven't gotten into the realm of nice kitchen knives. As a foodie and someone who loves to cook, I've had a lot of fun getting into entry-level carbon steel kitchen knives. Completely changed what I expect from sharpness and edge retention in the kitchen.
EDIT: I'm sorry this post is so long, but if you're here because you're considering buying Kamikoto knives, you should watch this video and read this comment.
I'm a chef and I've spent over half my life working in restaurants. I'm also a passionate knife enthusiast, which I'm sure is what brought me to this channel in the first place. My personal collection of culinary knives alone, is worth many thousands of dollars and consists of knives ranging anywhere from around $10 a piece, to around $1000 a piece. With the exception of a very small handful of antique kitchen/ butcher knives that I own, I have used all of the knives in my collection extensively. If I don't love a knife, I either sell it or give it away.
I have unfortunately seen many young cooks and aspiring chefs fall for the Kamikoto scam over the years. These are people who know a lot more about food than the tools used to prepare it and that's understandable. I also know a lot of cooks who's family members bought them these knives as a gift. I hate being the person who brings people down. Particularly in regards to people spending their hard earned money, but it got to the point where if someone walks into work with a brand new set of Kamikoto knives, the first words out of my mouth are "please tell me it's not to late to return those". At this point I inform anyone who comes to work for me that they are allowed and encouraged to bring their own knives, but Kamikoto knives are not welcome in my kitchen.
So, if this video wasn't enough to dissuade you from throwing hundreds of dollars in the garbage (where these knives belong) Please take it from me. I've seen dozens of Kamikoto knives used in a professional environment. Not one of them has ever proven itself to be anything shy of disgustingly overpriced trash.
BTW
If you're looking for reasonably priced REAL Japanese knives, I would recommend Tojiro. Kamikoto's most popular set is an 8.5" Slicer, a 7" Nakiri and a 5" Petty and I believe that sells for around 350$ You could absolutely get a Slicer, Nakiri and Petty from Tojiro for much less than that.
It's a mystery to me how anyone can see their advertising and not instantly know that it's BS.
People are so goddamn gullible.
i can agree. in my experience with knifes you get the biggest bang for your bucks with Tojiro Knifes.
I agree, but i do disagree with tojiro, cause it is also a cheap chinese trash pretending to be japs. Kai, Kanetsugu, Miyabi or Yaxell and a bunch of others are good japs, but some of them are europe-owned and in fact do not differ much from an average Zwilling.
U gotta go deeper to find the steel different to the one you get at Victorinox, Zwilling, Wuesthof, WMF etc.
I would strongly recommend to go with Kanetsugu, Yaxell, Kai for a true jap to get experience different to european knives.
P.s. do not go for kanetsune since they are sometimes dull out of the box.
@@sergeyk6136 I'd be interested to know where you got the information that Tojiro knives are made in China. I can't find anything contrary to their claim, which is that all of their knives are made in Tsubame-Sanjo Japan. I've also only ever purchased knives from Tojiro's DP line, which are made with VG-10 (a common Japanese steel). Yaxel, Miyabu and Kenetsugu are all great and are definitely worth a look for anyone looking for a Japanese knife. I have no personal experience with Kai. I also want to be clear that I don't recommend Tojiro because I think they're the greatest Japanese knives you can buy. I recommend them because I have never had a Tojiro knife that doesn't preform way above it's price range and I think they are an excellent introduction to Japanese knives. It's also worth mentioning that in regards to Japanese knives, I think it's often best to skip mass production companies all together. There are a lot of awesome hand-made/ forged Japanese knives out there for right around 200$. So it's right around that price point that I stop looking at the major companies and start looking at small shops and individual makers.
I've got nakiri knives I love them
Kamikoto: If you buy this ridiculously overpriced knife, you also get a whetstone to sharpen it with.
Shad: Ok, but can I just buy the whetstone?
That whetstone probably constitutes the bulk of the price anyway lmao.
Go with a Chosera or other reputable whetstone manufacturer.
Shad gets offered a sponsorship, and responds with research and a a roasting review of a poor product.
Lovin it!
That's why I'm a sub xD
Just got recommended in this channel... I am impressed that he did a 50+ min destroying the knife scammers.
Hell yeah! But just imagine how great the product will be when Shad _accepts_ a sponsorship from a knifemaker...
The sponsorship is from Masterchef not Kamikoto.
@@zany_zombie7276 And I am a dom, but it's unrelated.
A neat comparison is that KAMIKOTO sells 4 knives there for over $300 made with super low-grade steel, while a different knife company such as TUO sell an entire 8-knife set for less than that (sometimes on sale for a little over $100) made with the higher-end X50Cr15MoV steel
I hate that I actually know what X50CrMoV15 means 😂
It's corrosion resistant due to sufficient Carbon and Chrome, no numbers after 15 means it has some, but not a lot of Mo and V, and from what I can recall those 2 elements can make good steel for industrial production processes. Professionals please correct my memory if I'm wrong..
Sorry for the rant but it's probably better steel than whatever Kamikoto is using.
@@thatcopenguy It is, I believe. The knives that use it aren't the greatest for holding their edge, but they're still really not bad at that and are pretty durable. I have a bunch that I use regularly. Definitely better for their price-point than Kamikoto's.
Took a few months, but now since scots video went viral everything is coming together. This story arc is complete and we now know everything this company does is probably a scam.
The scammers already have their money. They'll move on to find other ways to convince folks to give up their money. Vigilance is the name of the game now.
somebody HAS to prosecute these scumbags!
They might just swap company purposes....Authentic Scottish Established Knives and Kamikoto's Genuine Japanese Titles....
@@benjamingrant5970 It's the (alleged) P.T. Barnum mantra!
More videos like this would be great. What makes this style of video work so well is that it's covering something that is relevant to almost every single person watching.
tis a great video
Another reason surgical tools are often made of cheap steel is because it gets thrown out after one surgery
They can be autoclaved too, but even then they would lose their edge and have to be resharpened.
@@AccidentallyOnPurpose autoclave is the worst enemy for anything you want to stay sharp, it works wonders for things like forceps tho. I think a better method is UV
@@mexcore14 Some parts of the world use ionizing radiation sterilization too. It works really well, but there have been many mishaps at sterilization plants though.
I have had these Kamikoto knives in hand right next to a set of knives i bought from Aldi....the Aldi knives were $7 for a chef knife, $7 for a carving knife and $7 for a paring AND utility knife....and side by side they were the exact same quality, build and handle shape. I swear they came from the same manufacturer
It's the same with guitars. Although guitars coming from China and Indonesia these days can be really good quality (Epiphones and Harley Bentons are excellent for their price). However a lot of manufacturers build their guitars in the same factory and just put a different headstock on which in turn justifies a 500% markup if it's an established brand.
Chinese factories frequently sell the same products known brands make them manufactuer under their own name, or another one's.
Thank you shad!! I am a professional chef and was taken by the “single bevil” part of their adds and almost got one! I’ll be more carful about checking the steel rating in the future.
If you want a single bevel knife just shop around for kiritsuke or sushi(aka yanagi) knives (double check that they are single bevel though). Plenty of brands offer these styles, usually single bevel, and usually at least VG10 or AUS10 steel.
Gyuto knives are basically the japaneese equivilent of a western chef's knife, usually dual bevel
Sushi/yanagi are similar to western fillet knives with a different blade profile better optimised for fish, western fillet knives are also often single bevel though so not a ton of difference
Kiritsuke is basically an inbetween of those two, more utility than the sushi knife, but not appropriate for harsher chopping tasks
I love how you didn't get snobby about the steel and act like "oh this rubbish should never be allowed to cut a tomato" it was always about what they're charging for it.
Cool I was hoping someone would test these things they always seemed kinda sketchy.
If you do lots of cooking I think quantity >>> quality. Cheap knives cut veggies just fine. Get the cheapest piece of crap stainless steel knives out there, sharpen them, use them for like 3 months, sharpen them again and throw them away after another 3 months. In the end you'll spend like $12-$15 a year on kitchen knives.
Modern forging techniques and traditional western technique both have nothing to do with the quality of the steel though, steel composition is determined by a factory
also, "traditional" western forging techniques, if you mean steel creation, were inferior to chinese methods up until the 17th century, because they used inferior furnace technology. The only reason europe was able to keep up quality wise in anyway was because they had decent quality base iron ore in the nordic region and germany
How would you even know they are "sketchy" without personally testing them? They are knives. They are steel, which is either mild or hardened, both of which must be treated differently. They cut. No scam here besides anyone paying full retail for them.
@@winsunwong5648 There were high quality swords in Europe in the 11th century.
You gave me the shock of my life. I got a really good Japanese knife for Christmas and my parents took a long time to check for real quality and when I saw the title of the video I thought mine was also made by Kamikoto but it wasn't. I really thought I "fell" for the scam only two weeks before you make this video
Your point about raising the price and people buying it more is so true, as I learned in marketing. Others in my group started charging less for their service and were barely surviving, but once they TRIPLED their rates they actually got more customers! And these weren't the "can you make a discount?" customers, oh no, these were the "I value your service and will pay what you consider to be the fair price." This is really odd, but, people, don't ever go cheap. It just doesn't work.
Makes sense to me. People tend to look at the price of something and make assumptions of its quality based on that. If somethings too cheap, the customer think "hmm, seems cheap. The quality is probably pretty bad". Bump up the price enough and those same people are going to actually look at the product once the price isn't so cheap anymore. Everything about your product is telling something to the consumer, and the price tag is one of them.
@@calsalitra4689 Precisely :D
@@calsalitra4689 that's the downside to making products cheaper and more accessible to common people. Makes alot of other people think it's a inferior product
There's also the possibility that by raising the price point, you've shifted your target audience/customer up a grade. The big paying buyers tend to want high quality over thriftiness, if what experience has told me. Therefore, if the customers feel the quality is superior, they'll gladly pay the premium.
@@RavenAdventwings yea. For me it's the complete opposite funnily. I just look at the price and almost nothing else
I only saw this Kamikoto brand's ad once, and it make me scratch my head when it said it gives a "special discount".
Authentic Japanese product that made for a long time (such us knives, bonsai scissors, etc) doesn't usually give off discount, because of how long it takes to even get into the order queues.
Exactly! I'm an amateur astronomer and there is a brand of telescope (Takahashi) that if you want a new scope... you will have to get on a wait list... and the wait is at about 20 YEARS!
Recently, I came very close to ordering these knives, but car trouble delayed my purchase. I had planned on ordering them soon....and am eternally grateful that I came across this video beforehand!
You have to be "special" to think that mass produced knives are special 😂.
@@PuerRidcully depends on your standars for comparison.
@@rubenjanssen1672 no, it doesn't. "Japaenese knives" were always shit
What do you expect out of a country whose historically KNOWN for having massive steel shortages to the point that they would scavenge nails out of house fires?
@@RazorsharpLT I get that you doesn't like Japanese knifes for some reasons, but your argument is pretty bad. If you are in a country that has limited access to a resource, it will be valued more, so more labor might be put into one single knife.
This might also the reason why, at least from my experience, there is a greater emphasis on folding the steel in Japanese knife/sword-making than in European, because folding is mostly done to get rid of steel impurities.
Global is a Japanese knife company, and their knives are quite good.
In regard to the sword test near the end, it seems like the "freebee" knife chipped where the Scamikoto knife rolled. Which would lead me to believe it is softer than the free knife.
Yes, almost 0 carbon in kamikoto`s make for a softer steel, it will bend and tear, while higher carbon steel will chip and break.
@@Megozelenka Have you had problems with your Kamikoto knives bending? Mine sure don't; they are the best knives I have owned. They take and hold a fine edge better than any other kitchen knives I have had in 50 years. Too many people talking about things they have never even seen in person.
@@flagmichael my comment is based on video I just watched. You have dangerous amount of copium in your body. I only use knives that I made myself
Agreed, the 420J2 is prone to plastic deformation rather than chipping usually. A steel that has no business in a kitchen knife, garbage is what it is.
I was a commercial cook for many years here in Perth WA. Picked up one of the Masterchef knives not really expecting much from it.
I was very pleasantly surprised with it. The ergonomics and balance are really good for meal prep, and the edge retention is fantastic for such a "Cheap" knife. Sad to say the offer had gone by the time i had decided i should pick up a couple more.
I bought cheapest Frederich Dick line ,3 knifes for 30€and i am super happy with them.
@@zumbazumba1 Frederich Dick make amazing knives! My set are still fine after 7 years so far.
I LOVE the way Mercer Genesis blades feel. Great handle, great balance, and good quality steel, not the best, it's certainly better than this steel. It's x50crmov15:
x50crmov15 Edge Retention: with more than 0.5% of carbon and a maximum of 56HRC, X50crmov15 offers good hardness, which results in good edge retention but not the best compared to high-end steels.
x50crmov15 Corrosion Resistance: With 15% of chromium X50crmov15 offers great corrosion resistance.
x50crmov15 Wear Resistance: The mixture of Vanadium and carbon offers the steel a good Wear resistance.
x50crmov15 Sharpness: The rule says the harder the steel, the harder to sharpen it, X50crmov15 isn’t hard to appoint to be a struggle while sharpening it, it’s easy to sharpen.
x50crmov15 Toughness: X50crmov15 is pretty tough, the steel offers more toughness than hardness.
I use a Wusthof pull through that's made for their Classic line and the standard cutters give 14 degrees. Like the analysis says it's easy to sharpen them, so while I may have to hone them on a regular basis and sharpen them if I do a bit of cutting, mostly to keep myself satisfied (paper test using flimsy paper, I want it to bite in easily and a very clean cut) it's so easy to get that steel to that condition. I use that line for all my cutting except I do have the Wusthof Classic 8" chef knife for heavier cutting.
If I ever decide to become a Sushi chef I'll invest in Japanese blades. Since I'm 60 though I don't see that happening 🙂
My favorite is Wüsthof, had an old rag I was going to throw away so I rolled it up to see how sharp my knife was with only honing and 3 years of professional use. It cut through 56 layers lol.
I got my FIL an "as seen on tv" pair of Forged in Fire branded a knives (chef's knife and paring knife). The paring knife was absolute garbage that won't hold an edge but the chef's knife is amazing.
Whenever I’d see a UA-camr do a sponsorship deal with Kamikoto and they got to the Japanese steel bit, I always laughed because historical Japanese steel was dogwater. That was what set me off to them being a scam.
Totally agree, one of my favorite channels started shilling these knives, and I remember after the second or third time they played the ad bit, I left a comment about how claiming it was Japanese steel was kinda silly, it was the folding that made the famous blades, not the steel, and was necessitated by the crappy nature of the steel. Glad Shad confirmed my suspicions that this product was crap.
Same, I'm subbed to "The Quartering", and I remember leaving a comment about how silly that ad is when he first started shilling Kamikoto. I knew the history, and the fact that the craftmanship and folding techniques were what made Japanese blades famous, not the steel. In fact, the opposite, the smiths had to overcome the poor quality of steel with improved methods.
The other thing that made me suspicious was the bit where they say they are hand-crafted. Nobody does handcrafted anymore, and certainly not for anything mass-marketed to the degree these knives are, they would be back ordered for years if they were made by hand.
I'm now thinking that I shouldn't trust anything shilled by the channel that promoted these knives (leading me to find this video).
@@consciouscrypto3090 there are some channels i dont care what they are shilling cause its either raid or nothing. countdankula (famous for his nazi salute pug) is like blacklisted from everything and despite having 900k subscribers thats all he has
Can't blame them, UA-cam is poopoo and people need money.
Honestly, at this point, I expect near all youtube sponsors to be scams
A lot of the sponsor products really are subpar and trash for their price points. These companies purposely go through youtubers because ppl are much more likely to trust things coming out of a person they like more than a random company.
I don't trust that food company he's enthusiastically crowing about either.
yep, the same goes for raycon earbuds, they are low to medium quality and you can find the same insides in some low price earbuds the only plus they have is the size, they are smaller than the equivalents. But if you want bettersound quality just don't buy wireless
(this is mostly what I got from reviews and some technical sites, never owned a pair... never will)
@@Skili19 I have some Jabra ones I am very pleased with
fucken same dude
This video is great not just for the Kamikoto issue, but your education on steel types is good to know information. Never knew this before.
I appreciate you exposing these scams, and it lets me know you do stand by your actual sponsors and I can greater trust that. I will say though, for an hour long video, I would've appreciated it if you had a guest chef, and/or a few >$100 cooking knives to show what one SHOULD expect from a higher-mid-range to premium range cooking knife.
go for it.
YEah that would be great BUT what if he doesn't know and actual "expert chef"?
@@monotech20.14 I don't know if you noticed, but Shad is a professional UA-camr, and this is his business. You can use a phone or an e-mail to ask a pro chef to come on, and you can use the internet or the yellow pages to find one. Duh.
Good point. That would've been nice.
My dad bought one of these years ago thinking it was gonna be a great knife. He always keeps it in the box and only uses it on special occasions 😂. I haven’t told him he got ripped off yet
Why not get your father a real set of premium knives? I guarantee your pop will treasure your gift much better.
If you think you own a great knife, what point is it to keep it in a box?
@@rolandfrerichs5625 trophy rules apply.
@@knightmonx1 what are trophy rules?
@@rolandfrerichs5625 Trophy rules apply to An object considered to be memorable or of value to a person. Even if it might not be, either of value, or, memorable to anyone else. Or even liked by someone else. Like the leg lamp from a Christmas story for example is a trophy. It was loved as a treasure by Ralphie's dad and hated by his mom and it confused everyone else in the town.
I feel really sorry for anyone who watches this video after buying that $7000 set... And I really hope they take a action to get a refund using this video as evidence.
Shad should start his own knife company:
*Meter Cleavers!*
_Quality blades that measure up to the task._
(WARNING: Knives are in fact, sharp, and may cut you if mishandled. Meter Cleavers assumes no responsibility for using our knives as actual measuring tools.)
I just ran across a 1-star review on what looked like a good quality, high-carbon steel chef's knife on Amazon. The reviewer was raging over the knife rusting after only a couple weeks. It was so bad, that even his $2 walmart knives were better quality -- they NEVER rusted!
I finally understood why some people can't even.
That's a bit... odd.
Carbon steel rusts if you leave it wet... I mean, duh?
Many people have grown up with cheap big box store stainless steel knives. They are great if you want something you can toss in a dishwasher and not worry about rusting etc. But there is really no substitute for a good quality high carbon steel for edge retention. As Shad pointed out, pretty much any Steel can be made equally sharp.
@@Skwisgar2322 edge geometry in the main ingredient for sharpness and some steels can definitely take a finer edge than others. i have some white #1 knives that can take an absolutely screaming edge with very little effort than i cant get on other super steels, but it actually wont hold an edge as long. i find alot stainless steels can only get so sharp as the chromium basically just start to microchip the finer you take it.
You should look at some amazon reviews on cast iron pans. People complaining they rust after putting them in the dishwasher. Or comparably, people buying manga and complaining they need to read it in 'reverse'. Some people don't have a clue and are too lazy to look stuff up, even if it's at their fingertips. Those are the people companies like Kamikoto target.
The first time I heard from Kamikoto (I think it was when they started their sponsor campaign for UA-camrs), I immediately knew there was something fishy.
"Used by some of the Michelin chefs around the world" doesn't mean a thing. Do you think Michelin star chefs always use cream of the crop tools? No.
"Comes in a beautiful box". No, it comes in a mass-produced box that looks like those boxes you get a 200€ katana set in.
Now seeing that "Woah, it's actually almost a 2000$ knife but you can get it for a low low price of 350$, just for a limited time and only for you!" is the proverbial nail in the coffin. Any company saying that is scamming people. It's always that same damn "sale for a limited time" that actually lasts forever.
Dude that’s not how it works. When they say “Used by Michelin star chefs” it just means that in their entire history they just had to have 1 chef use it 1 time who was probably paid $5,000 to use it that 1 time in the first place. Has nothing to do with if they buy quality or not. It’s simply marketing jargon.
My father often orders green tea leaves from China or Taiwan.
And we always notice, the fancier the packaging, the more expensive the product, but taste wise its no better.... Maybe worse😂
At one point we decided to just order green tea leaves in big bags😂
because of your channel i have learned so much about how swords work. in my own stories i wanted a magical metal and at first it was your standard "can be sharper then normal metal", after watching your channel i changed it to it keeps it's edge for a ridiculously long time. so thank you for making my writing more interesting.
and for allowing me to have a character say:
"i got this blade for my 18th birthday. never have needed to sharpen it..."
"im 75 years old."
also maybe it takes a long time to rust but the rust only affects the blade’s look, like how copper rusts but change the colours
I remember being kind of the same way. At this point when I do special metals I change either durability, weight, or maintenance properties while still keeping most of the overall performance, And I can see why Tolkien kind of did the same with his metal of Mithril, Makes me wonder how much he knew about metals and these kinds of things himself because it's a more and more believable change as I learn more.
Because I have a cousin who is similar to Shad, I ended up learning about these things ages ago... Simply because we had a friendly rivalry of who was not on, y smarter than the other, but who could cite more resources in backing up our statements. 🤣
Even though what he favored wasn't my Forté... He admitted that I long ago defeated him with my ability to absorb and reapply my more general knowledge towards far more technical levels of his knowledge. 😅
In other words... I'm a really OP BS synthesizer who happens to be skilled in ending up correct.
Plot twist. You never used the blade after your 18th birthday coz guns works better.
@Invictus idk, turn a minigun type thing onto a metal sheet and i'm pretty sure you can cut that.
you'll just have to spend a lot on ammunition
You were definitely ahead of the pack! Many months later, other YT channels are also exposing Kamikoto, along with Established Titles, as scams!
👉 You're video is sooooo much more entertaining & educational than those others.
Thank you!
I lost interest with his silly Renaissance Festival getup and the childish mugging. He lost all credibility with that.
@@flagmichael
It was my first time ever viewing his channel.
I suppose it's like the old saying, "Familiarity breeds contempt" or, maybe, "Too much of a good thing?"
Your* video (you're = you are).
I bought a chinese-made kitchen knife 3 years ago, but without the fancy pretend-marketing. There were honest about it. It's made from VG10 (and without silly gimmicks like fake printed weld-patterns) and cost 30 bucks. The edge was just machine-cut for faster production and cost cutting.
Sharpened it properly with my own wetstones like all my knives. Changed edge angle with 400 grit, sharpened with 1000 grit, then 8000 grit, polished with a strop. It's amazing now and I don't need a more expensive one than that. (I use it daily and gently re-sharpen every half a year with 8000 grit and strop to make sure the sharpness doesn't drop even a bit. VG10 doesn't have the highest potential for sharpness, but edge retention is great, so once it's as sharp as can be - it's gonna stay that way for a long time)
@Abraham Johnathan That's very true, most of these knives are trash these days and you have to be very careful when shopping for one.
In fact, I tried to find a good knife online (as a comparison) after watching this video and today it's much more difficult/expensive than a few years ago...
@Abraham Johnathan I disagree. China is known for horrendous quality. It's the result of Communism. The Soviet Union was the same way.
@Abraham Johnathan China is the capital of Communism. It has altered it's traditional Communist ideas into a more mainstream version of fascism (government control of "private" corporations in order to get more economic power from their authoritarian system) but it is still Communist, just in a 21st. century kind of way
@Abraham Johnathan no one likes Mao's policies, especially not CCP leadership. His closes aids and wife were put in prison right after he died. Deng - the next paramount leader after Mao was someone whose eldest son was beaten until he's in a wheelchair for rest of his life by the red guards. Xi Jinping's father was also crippled, and his sister was killed at the hand of the red guards during Mao's cultural revolution. Deng Xiaoping was the one who laid the foundation of China's policies since then.
A good term for them might be national syndicalism (which nazism and fascism are subtypes). Although Japanese stateism (another type of national syndicalism) is also fairly close.
Kamikoto were like "O hey a guy who likes pointy things, perfect sponsorship opportunity here!" and Shad is like "Nah, but thanks for giving me this nice idea for a video. I'm _sure_ you'll like it too." Lmao! Shad the Savage. MUCH appreciated.
I thought you were talking about a different Shad for a second there
But of course we smell a rat here.
I only became aware of the Kamikoto knife scam after the Established Titles one by the same company blew, but I've always been sceptical about these knives.
Now, I don't know anything about kitchen knives other than they better be sharp, but it's always been hella sus to me how much they would highlight that their knives are alledgedly made using "traditional Japanese techniques", but would never actually name these supposed techniques, making it impossible to research whether they're actually a thing that has a meaningful impact on the quality of the finished product.
Yes. A scam. As someone who sells Japanese knives professionally, they are undoubtedly a scam.
Any recommendations on some real Japanese quality knives?
@@braydodo8197 absolutely. What’s your budget?
@@cubeheadgameing like 300 to 500 dollar range something simple but gets the job done right. I honestly don't know how high the price can go so I'm hoping that's a goodish range?
I genuinely believe this video should be spread around more so other content creators who actually care about their sponsors can know that kamikoto is a scam company. I had a feeling the first time I saw these being advertised that they were b.s. especially when they talked about how gorgeous their "ash wood boxes" were. I'm no expert carpenter but I could've made those same boxes back when I was 15 in woodshop for no more than $5 worth of wood and hardware bits and it'd be done in an hour or 2 tops.
I saw them advertised by a political commentator that also advertises gold coins. So yeah. These guys are the Raid Shadow Legends of knives it seems.
@@MuNky1022 Did their name start with a P by chance?
I've already been sharing this with the UA-camrs I have seen with the sponsorships
Every single video I see advertising this, there’s always one comment mentioning this video.
It’s been making the rounds since the Established Titles controversy.
I actually got recommended this video from another comment on a Warhammer 40K video lmao. Person was talking about how crappy they are and how if you want people to take you seriously you should peddle something else and linked this video haha.
Thanks for this video Shad . There alot of people who have been lured into buying these knives because some of the bigger or more "trustworthy" creator's are making adverts for this knife and I bet most of those dudes don't understand what makes a knife good , so they just follow the advertising buzz words. But I hope this video clears some things up for people who are trying to save money and buy a good everyday tool .
I don't understand what makes a good knife. But if I was a creator, I wouldn't accept any sponsorship money from these guys, unless they could prove that these knives are of authentic Japanese make. Chinese knockoffs are common knowledge in all types of products.
@@rocketraccoon1976
They are made in Japan. But that doesn't mean anything.
i just understand when a creator reads a script, its not the creator talking to me, its the company
and that's why they went to the guntubers before they tried the knife/sword ones
I lose a some respect for creators like you describe each time they shill for things like this. They need to stay in their lane.
I just assume that 75% of products promoted by youtubers is garbage, 20% is at the very least half scams, and 5% is genuinely good products.
I FREAKING LOVE that you used your actual sponsor's items for the test of the sponsor that tried to use you!~
That’s my favorite aspect of this. It’s just… * chef’s kiss *
Too perfect. 😂
Your research on the steel instantly reminded me of how many times I've seen adverts for things made from "surgical steel." It's funny to realize it's a way to spin "we used just about the cheapest stainless steel on the market."
At least if you cut yourself with surgical steel and let the knife stay in, you won't get an allergic reaction!
A weird selling point, but probably the only honest point you could make.
I get a few of these cross my bench. I can get a pretty good edge on them and surprisingly the owners like them. They're home users though so not very demanding. I've been asked my opinion on them before purchase and luckily I was able to warn people off them. Once I actually suggested the Masterchef chef knife for $20 instead - sharpened.
I almost bought a set of Kamikoto knives but the customs fee was ridiculous at the border because they marked the $1500 value not the $200 they actually charge on the paperwork. I refused to pay the fee and they refunded my money.
I really dodged a bullet there.
That's actually part of a fun customs insurance scam.
I feel like there was a real missed opportunity for a joke with the home made ruler knife.
The ancient wisdom of the blade states; Measure twice, cut once.
But with this blade, I can measure twice while I cut once. So much more convenient!
I’ve lived in Japan several years never heard of them. The good quality knives are used by the sashimi restaurants. The blades give off a grey color with swirls within the steel from the materials used in the forging process, usually with natural or dark wooden handles. The cheapest is $1000 US.
The sharping stones aren’t cheap either.
Yeah, those knives actually look more like katanas from the forging.
And now it turns out the clowns behind these knives are also the same ones behind Established TItles.
The Damascus-style knives have a different process than normal knives but the ending result is absolutely beautiful and probably worth the price for high end places
My Sakai Takayuki 33 layer was only $300 but go off about a topic you know nothing about I guess. Kamikoto is obviously a scam but real Japanese knives don't have to cost that much
@@ksb7938 I could tell from just listening to the trigger words, but a Damascus knife being cheaper than Kamikoto is kinda outrageous with their marketing
I'll never understand why people buy things like this. There's a reason they have to push so much advertising at you. It's because the product is junk and the only way to sell it is to get a bunch of well-known creators to constantly push it. I'd much rather spend the same money on a knife that has zero marketing but very popular amongst professional chefs. The best products are the ones that speak for themselves.
In a few countries, it's against the law to market something as on sale when it had never been for the previously listed value. So unless they sold the knives for almost 2 thousand dollars at a previous time, they'd be in breach of consumer protection laws in a few countries. Bethesda Softworks was taken to court for it and settled
There are also laws against having things constantly "on sale" at least in Finland, I assume that other places have such laws also.
It can't be true in the UK, or DFS (Discount Furniture Store) would be shut down.
@@DavidSmith-vr1nb hahahah DFS (Dear Fuckin Sofas) always have sales on, how do they get away with it?
sadly they are from china so unless they have distributor outside the country they can do what ever they want. And even then it only affect those distributors. That is why you wont see any official add or proper marketing, they know what they are doing. On the other side you can banter and mock them without any legal ramification.
Same in Belgium. A new product cannot be on sale.
I hate myself for buying a 200$ set for my mom. She never even uses it. They scammed me, don't let them scammed you too