Zhen Japanese Damascus 6.5" Light Cleaver Chopping Knife set

We have been using cheap cleavers for awhile and now want to upgrade to a higher end one. After some research, we picked this one since it's priced similar to high-end German knives but with better Damascus steel imported from Japan. Plus, we like to support our folks since we are Chinese and this is made in Taiwan. This is also my first Amazon review.

I don't have a Shun cleaver but do have two paring knives made by Shun. Putting this cleaver on the side of the Shun, you can see the devil is in the details.

You can immediately notice: the Shun knives have flawless finishes throughout, the surface has higher gloss with even dragon pattern. The Zhen has less shine, the alternating pattern is also nice but appears not as evenly distributed.

The craftsmanship: as another reviewer of the Zhen 8" cleaver pointed out, the attachment of the handle to the rear of the bolster is not as smooth. There is even maybe a tiny gap on the bottom side. There are multiple noticeable scratches on the blade, especially on the surface between the blade and bolster transition tiny scratch pattern makes you feel this part was not well polished. There is a rather deep scratch about 5 mm long on the edge of the end cap of the handle. Also, I noted the burrs a few strokes on a steel easily took care of it; however, I should not have to do this with a new knife, especially one with a price tag considered expensive for most people.

One thing I don't understand, this one claims to have 67 layers, but Shun claims only 16 layers on each side. I counted the coarse lines on the blade: both have 15 lines. So I assume they have same number of layers.

Again, none of the above affects the usability of the knife. It's light, thin and razor sharp, perfect for Asians with smaller hands. With the material used, I expect it to perform much better than the cheaper cleavers we have been using. However, at this price, the company really should pay more attention to the details to be able to put this side by side with the higher-end German and Japanese made knives (think about someone wants to give this as a wedding gift, appearance will be as important as function). The minors flaws mentioned above are easily avoidable but definitely hurt the presentation of the product, I don't even see these problems in my cheap JCPenny Cooks cleaver made in China. Hence the subtraction of one star.

Not much to say about the carving knife. It also has burrs on the edge needed a couple of strokes on a sharpening steel. For $10 extra, I picked this set instead of the cleaver alone to get a small, sharp knife made of VG-10 core: seems to be good deal.

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