At this point we might be more than familiar with the Hayabusa(隼, Peregrine Falcon) family that Hatsukokoro have been producing, as their budget friendly collection, the Hayabusa knives offers many blades with varieties of steel in a simple Migaki finish and a fairly affordable price tag.
However, the geometry produced by a grinding machine have lead to a rather average performance: the more flat bevel causes sticking and a higher thickness behind edge leads to resistance when cutting into food.
What struck me the most at first glance with this new Ginsan Hayabusa was its geometry, it have taken a completely different approach which may be due to tweaking with grinding equipment. The blades are now extremely thin behind the edge and stays thin until it transitions into a convex geometry halfway towards the spine. This has drastically changed the performance of the blade and made it much smoother to cut as the resistance when cutting into the food is greatly reduced, and the slight convex helps minimise sticking.
It's exciting to see makers putting more effort in optimising the performance of their machine manufactured blades, and I can see this Hayabusa can gradually replace the Ginso as the budget friendly Ginsan knife. When this performance and low priceis paired with the low maintenance, easy to sharpen steel, I can easily recommend this knife to anyone getting into Japanese kitchen knife who also want try sharpening themselves.
By
Hatsukokoro
