3 Piece Damascus Kitchen Knife Set - including Chef's Knife, Cleaver and Paring Knife

These beautiful knives will take their honorable place in my kitchen right next to Mandy's clay pot and chop sticks. I use all of these items at least a few times a week. It didn't take long to realize what an excellent value her products are. Almost forgot my favorite- her wok- it's superb. I must've used it a hundred times now and it still works like new. Back to the knives- I just got them and have only used the chef's knive so far but they're all 3 equally beautiful and feel great in my hand. Especially the chef's knife- the handle, balance and weight feel perfect to me. Clearly a lot of expertise went into making this set and it's a steal for the price.

Knives came razor sharp out of the box. They have decent balance, full tang construction, and are light and thin enough to be agile slicers but not so thin that they feel flimsy. The chef's knife and cleaver are 0.1 inches thick at the spine and the paring knife is 0.09 inches. Fit and finish is solid, the handles appear to be some kind of a pakkawood-type laminate which is holding up so far to normal use. The blade edges are also holding up quite well, on par with my expectations for VG10 edge retention. For the price you won't find anything else comparable in terms of build quality and performance.

Do I know great knives? No.Have I worked in a kitchen 20 years? Also No.Am I incredibly happy with these? Oh you bet.They are laser sharp, seem to be well made, gorgeous to look at and when you use them you feel like a master chef. The packaging is top notch and makes a wonderful storage case. Get these for yourself and unlock your culinary greatness or get one as a present for a loved one, either way it's a smart buy. Enjoy

I have been looking for a set of Damascus Kitchen Knives as well as a cleaver. I have been using them for 2 weeks now, and they are wonderful. Very Sharp, and easy to maintain. The balance on the paring knife and chef's knife is good, and I found them easy to use. With the cleaver, I have been slicing meat and veggies and found it easy to use. I am considering getting a second set as a gift for a family member.

I watch her video's and she talked about these knives. I bought them and Amazon delivered the same day. They are really impressive, and super sharp. Well balanced. It quickly became apparent these are the best knives I have owned, and the price was a bargain. Even the packaging reflected the quality of what was inside, very much like Apple does with their products. I'm really happy with the product.

My son bought these for his first set of knives and we have been using them this summer while she has been learning to cook. They are the most beautiful set of knives I have ever seen and feel very balanced and wonderful in the hand.

Put my old clever to shame. i don't use the chef knife as much. I love my current one and this one is a lighter version of it. The paring knife is excellent and everything came wicked sharp.

A few quick mentions before I touch on the product. I use, and have used - almost exclusively - traditional Japanese knives for all of my cooking for more than a decade. I have no experience with cleavers, and the only experience I have with "Western" knives is what I got from a wood handled chef's knife I got at Walmart a few years ago, but rarely use. I mostly cook with vegetables, though I have used these knives to cut some cooked meat. At no point did I have the opportunity to test them with raw meat. Also, I used these knives for a week before writing this review. Lastly, I bought these knives assuming they would need to be sharpened once before use, but I do not expect most home cooks to feel that way.Now that that is out of the way, these knives are way more consistently produced than I would have expected at this price point. The quality control is just amazing. Seems between the handles and the metal are just perfect on all three knives. Nothing feels out of place, misshapen, or inaccurately executed in their construction. The "western" knives are well balanced. The cleaver is not something I can comment on, but it seems as robust and blade-heavy as I would expect a knife with its reputation to be.The knives are beautiful! The (artificial?) wood handles are gorgeous, and the wood grain in the handle varies from knife to knife as you would expect real wood to do. The Damascus blades are, from what I have read, likely to be actual high quality Damascus steel construction, and not just the imitations that many less expensive knives are.The knives have a half-bolster, as you can easily see, which makes me happy as I feel that no decent knife has a full-bolster(beyond my personal opinion of the aesthetics, they also make it hard to sharpen and maintain the shape of the blade over the years). The curvature on each side of the bolsters is also fairly consistent, though there are subtle variations that you won't see if you aren't looking.Speaking of sharpening, here comes the part where things seem a little less consistent. This might be a cost cutting measure, though it could also just center around the fact that the cleaver is the star of this show. The cleaver cuts very well. It isn't remotely as sharp as any of Japanese knives...not even the one that I practiced sharpening on the most, but it cuts very well with little user effort and doesn't appear to wedge its way through food. I'm tempted to think this may result from the weight of the blade, but if it weren't sharp, I would just expect the blade weight to help it wedge between slices. The western knives, however, are definitely not sharp. All of the care that was taken to protect the blades does not appear to be for saving the blade edge, I attempted to slice an apple with the paring knife and it was literally splitting the apple like a wedge instead of cutting it. The western knife made its way through an onion, but only after a fair bit of encouragement. Once I took both of these knives through the sharpening process that I use for my Japanese knives, they performed a lot better and they held their edge well. It did take longer to get a good edge on them, but that is the nature of VG-10 stainless steel. While I don't consider any of the items above to be a negative, I think they will negatively impact some members of the target audience for these knives.Lastly, with regard to packaging, as it was mentioned in the last paragraph, I do have some negative opinions here. The tiny plastic blade guards were all uniform in design, and not well suited to individual knives edges that they were protecting. Furthermore, with the lack of sharpness on the blades, they started to seem unnecessary. In addition to those, each knife was wrapped in a plastic bag. With the custom molded dense foam inlays that the knives were stored in, the bags and blade guards ended up seeming more like waste than necessary safety measures for a premium product. Furthermore, while the box itself may be recyclable, there is little evidence that any attention was given to how the packaging was to be disposed of once it had served its purpose.Overall, I think that this set could retail for 150$-180$, as the knives themselves are quite good. You could buy better versions of the same knives for a little more, but these would be a solid investment for the home cook with a suitable means of sharpening their knives. If you want a sharp knife that can mostly be handled with a honing steel, you'll want to look elsewhere. Furthermore, if you care about the environment at all, it would be good to look for a comparable set of knives at similar price point that is taking their impact on the world a bit more seriously.7.5/10