Sakai Takayuki45 Layer Damascus Wa Sujihiki 240mm (9.4")

The Bad:The only thing I really didn't like about this was the spine, which is not rounded, making pinch-gripping slightly uncomfortable if you don't have a callus yet. I rounded mine with 320 through 2000 grit sandpaper. Problem solved.The Good:Pretty shallow stock bevels. Sharp stock edge. Metal is easy to work (more on this below). Sexy aesthetics, wood, horn, damascus, tsuchime, it's pretty.Mislabling:Ads all over the internet lists the core steel as VG-10 (which is manufactured in Japan by Takefu Special Steel Co.), but the description, as well as several other vendors such as Chef Knives To Go, and more importantly, Sakai's own website, list the steel as either Swedish or AEB-L (manufactured in Sweden by Böhler-Udderholm). I have some VG-10 knives and I have to say that the raising and removing the wire edge on this blade certainly seems easier than on those, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's AEB-L. Both steels are nice, both are stainless, both can get damn sharp, but the AEB-L is a little easier to sharpen and will retain a working edge a little longer than the VG-10. Incidentally, AEB-L was designed for razor blades, which bring me to my next point...It's a 10 inch razor blade (my copy is 249mm (9.8")). It came with a sharp, reasonably acute (30* if I had to guess), 80/20 right-handed edge geometry. I'm rarely happy with stock though, so I took my bevels down to about 20* and then resharpened on waterstones to 12000 grit, then chromium oxide strop, and then a plain strop. Result? It shaves almost as good as my straight-razors, and almost falls through the sashimi with very little stiction. Probably not as easily as a heavier traditional single-bevel Japanese blade would, but very well for the amount of protein I carve with it.It's a medium stiffness blade with almost no distal taper; the spine stays about 2mm all the way out to where it drops down to the tip.Being a fairly long wa handled knife, it's blade-heavy. The balance point is well out in front of the grip - just about the where the center kanji in the maker's mark is located in the example pics.Bottom Line:Overall, I'm very pleased with this knife, it cuts very well, stays sharp, and sharpens easily. I really don't like sharp spines on knives, and this would have gotten a 5 if they'd rounded it out even just a little, that's a pretty minor point though. If I could give it a 4.5 I would.