Hayabusa Gyuto HAP-40 Damascus 240mm (9.4″)

Hayabusa Gyuto HAP-40 Damascus 240mm is a multi-purpose Japanese kitchen knife, suited for preparing meat, fish and vegetables. It’s a nonconformist piece that just screams futurism. Featuring a classic western style handle and a brazen look, it’s quite a unique knife. The wavy damascus curves on the blade are sharp and steep, reminiscent of high-frequency waves and are synchronous with up-and-down chopping motions. 

Made from HAP-40 steel, which is one of the most technologically advanced steels renowned for its extreme hardness, excellent sharpness and edge retention it provides to the knives. If you’re not a fan of sharpening your knives, this one is for you, as you really won’t have to do it often.

Fun fact: Hayabusa gyuto shares its name with the peregrine falcon (ハヤブサ), the fastest member of the animal kingdom. This knife may not reach speeds upwards of 350 km/h, but chopping with it will feel just as fast.

BLADE SHAPE:
Gyuto is the most versatile and useful blade shape in the modern kitchen. It has a wide profile for easy food transfer and tends to be fairly flat towards the heel, enabling easy and fast chopping on the cutting board. A pointed tip allows piercing and precise, delicate work. A slight curve between the tip and the midsection makes the belly great for rocking the blade back and forth when cutting. It can be used for cutting meat, fish and vegetables.

STEEL:
This knife’s hard core is made of a somewhat exotic and currently one of the most mysterious and attractive steels produced in Japan (at least as far as kitchen knives are concerned): Hitachi’s HAP-40 steel that fits into the category of modern and technologically advanced steels. HAP-40 is fine-grained enough to sharpen very well, and knives from this steel keep their sharpness 3-5 times longer than traditional knives. An interesting fact is that, considering it is a powder steel, it has an extremely small content of chromium (around 4%) and can react as a high-carbon steel in specific circumstances.

LAMINATION:
The core layer consisting of the hard HAP-40 steel was sandwiched between two sheets of softer damascus pattern steel. This technique is called san-mai and is used to protect the hard (but delicate) core from outside factors and physical impacts, which could lead to breakage.

GEOMETRY:
It has a double bevel (symmetrical) blade.

BLADE FINISH:
The blade has a unique damascus finish with sharp and steep curves that give the knife a futuristic appearance. The clad line is interesting as well, with consistent curves that aren’t frequently seen on Japanese knives.

HANDLE:
Classic western (Yo) style handle made from black micarta.