If you're shopping on the internet you may not have pictures that give you a good look at this award winning design. The rear half of the 18/10 stainless steel handle is flared horizontally to fit against your palm comfortably; the front half is flared vertically to provide an easy grip for your fingers, and a stainless steel pearl at the junction of handle and 301 steel blade serves as a bolster.

The 301 alloy isn't the only good thing about this blade. Chosen for edge retention and easy sharpening, considerable time is spent at the factory putting a precise flat grind on this 7" cutting edge. The resulting blade is thin but strong. The 301 knives are designed for slicing, not for heavy chopping tasks like cutting blocks of frozen food or meat with bones. Special sharpening instructions are included and must be followed--use a flat waterstone, not a sharpening steel.

In a skilled chef's hands the vegetable cleaver can do most of the work in a kitchen, and with a blade of this quality the work goes faster and you get better results. If you can only have one best knife, this versatile cleaver is an excellent choice.

Also see the Type 301 Carving Knife.

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Many top quality kitchen knives are now designed with a thin hard cutting edge that will chip when used on bone, and less expensive knives are often produced from lighter weight stamped steel. Neither is the right choice for heavy butcher block work.

The Henckels meat cleaver does the jobs the fancy knives can't tackle. In spite of its heft and strength, this knife is well balanced, with a simple triple riveted slab handle design that is durable and gap free.

Storage and sharpening are special issues where a cleaver is concerned. Many knife blocks don't have space for this wide blade, so the peg hole in the front corner offers a handy solution to that problem. Cleaver edges have a wide bevel that's hardly affected by a honing steel, and are too much knife for many patented grinding systems to handle. A flat whetstone in a medium grit is a handy accessory to this versatile knife.

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The Grand Prix is much improved over the usual chef's knife, with a thinner blade that zips easily through most work, and a streamlined bolster that won't get in the way of the cut as the older Wusthof style would do. The forged steel rat tail tang is hidden within the textured ergonomically shaped handle and permanently bonded to the polymer grip.

The edge of the Grand Prix is still ground with the short bevel that German cutlers prefer, which makes the cutting action not quite so slick as a knife with a thinner Japanese style edge, but users can improve on the version the factory ships. The high carbon stainless alloy holds an edge well, but will need honing daily to remain in top condition. This alloy will not chip in use, so it's not likely to be damaged if you run into a bone while slicing meat or poultry, but if you try it out on heavy chopping work you may turn the edge.

The Grand Prix isn't a knife you need to baby--unlike some high end slicing knives that break if you smash a garlic clove with them or drop one off a counter top, the 7" Santoku won't force you to change your working habits. You can do things the way you've always done them and the knife will survive.

If you add a couple of knives & a pair of kitchen shears, your Trident collection will be enough to get you through your kitchen prep in no time.

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The layered Damascus steel surrounding the core layer of SG-2 powdered steel, a uniformly fine grained carbide alloy with unsurpassed edge holding capability and very high tensile strength, is good for nearly any kitchen task except that crude butchering application. For that you need something less refined. I remember watching my aunt, a lady born and raised in Taiwan, skillfully using a cleaver (with a much less impressive pedigree) for everything from slicing meat for stir fry to cutting the eyes from potatoes. Awkward in my own hands, in hers it was a precise tool that quickly did delicate work.

Using the space age version of samurai steel, Shun's special alloys and forging processes create knives that are, like this Kaji Cleaver, far beyond the everyday needs of most chefs. There are other more economical options which suffice, but there are few blades that approach this level of quality and efficiency. Such a knife makes sense for the true professional, or for more ordinary people who appreciate perfection. If you run this knife through the dishwasher you should be ashamed.

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