Petty solutions to big problems
This is my first petty knife.In the past I’ve used my chef and my paring knife to do just about everything, and while it worked, I did on quite a few occasions wish I had something a little larger than my paring knife but smaller than my chef knife to help me out.Enter the petty knife, it’s a jack of all trades, and master of none, perfect for minimalists or people who wan’t multipurpose knives!A petty knife can do work in the air and would be equally at home doing work on the cutting board. A little tip I can provide others when using petty knives on cutting boards is if you find that you don’t have enough knuckle clearance, just use the knife with the handle hanging off of the cutting board!Fit and finish on the knife was great, it’s got the same crowned spine as on the renaissance line, and also has a nice rounded choil.Out of the box edge was pretty good, I would go as far as to say perhaps better than my Mercer renaissance line of knives and closer perhaps to what you’d expect out of Japanese knives. I still took mines to my whetstones and put my own edge on it to assure the knife does not chip as easy as factory edges — and more specifically steels that harder such as VG-10, have a tendency to do that.VG-10 was easy to work with, taking a scary sharp edge, and maintains it for a good while when compared to my other chef knives, of which are either X50CRMOV15 or 1075 steel respectively.I like that handle and find the shape to not cause me any undue pain, or fatigue,and find that the blade height is just enough for me to not hit the cutting board ( I wear XL sized gloves )The profile of the knife reminds me a lot of my Tojiro gyuto, of which I love. Very versatile and capable. The tip is thin yet robust enough to not “easily” break if you take care not to do anything crazy. The tip also produces paper thin slices with proper technique.There are cheaper petty knives, however Mercers offering is unmatched when accounting for the steel used, profile, fit and finish, and price.I’ve found the profile of this knife lending itself very well to push cutting on the cutting board, that coupled with it’s acute blade grind and steel that allows for very good edge retention and sharpness really makes my cooking and prep very efficient and minimalistic in the sense that I typically only have to was nowadays my gyuto and petty, or even better when your doing smaller work, just my petty!What length should I get?I would say get the 150mm, as the other sizes in my opinion would be too close to a paring knife to really be more useful than one. A petty is a utility knife with petty just being the word the Japanese use for their utility knives, and with one in your arsenal, you may find yourself not needing your larger , and maybe even smaller kitchen knives when this petty will do just about everything you need day to day.In closing, I think a petty knife is a useful addition to any home cooks or professional’s arsenal, allowing for a lot of versatility, and also taking the place somewhat of more specialized knives. A paring knife knife is still useful, however you may find that a petty can do a fair amount of work a paring knife can do!EDIT: January 26, 2021: I’ve used it to debone a few steaks for stir fry and supreme a couple of citrus for guacamole. Worked fantastic and it didn’t chip one bit! Just a few swipes over my ceramic rod and it’s back in action.