Despite living in Austria, I had never heard about Robert Herder knives from Solingen.
Years ago I saw Cliff post about his Herder pairing knife and I got myself the same one.
They excel at 2 things, ease of sharpening due to geometry/steel and cutting ability.
Fast forward few weeks ago I stumbled upon the Herder Mini-Yatagan - which is the subject of this review.
The name is inspired by the Turkish short saber called "yatagan". Calling the Herder a "mini yatagan" is a stretch but its certainly a catchy name.
They market this knife as a vegetable knife.
Specs:
Spine thickness: 1.3mm (starts to taper from the - near the tip - sharp corner on the spine)
Blade height: 15mm (in the middle)
Cutting edge length: 61mm
Blade length: 81mm
Grind: Zero FFG
Blade material: 1.4037 (DIN for AEB-L)
Handle length: 84mm
Handle thickness: 12-13mm (across the whole length)
Handle material: Cherry wood
Handle type: Full tang (tapered down-ways along the blade grind)
Food
The knife is very convenient for peeling foods or cleaning vegetable/fruit.
Due to the thin grind, short blade and not too tall blade height its convenient for peeling all sorts of food.
The pronounced tip is quite thin and works very well at cleaning potatoes for example.
Due to the decent penetration power its easy to get far enough into an eg. apple and then use the blade height as an advantage to twist and clean the fruit.
The limitations are clearly cutting through bigger foods as the sharp edge is quite limited at 61mm and it simply cannot cut thicker foods in one clean cut.
Field
For my use cases the blade is thick enough to be used as an outdoor EDC knife.
The tip would be too pointy for processing game comfortably. Obviously its a poor choice for chopping or splitting would tasks.
Works well enough for carving type works.
The blade can be bend with moderate force so cutting thicker plastics or generally materials that do not bend would not be ideal.
Other than that its compact and lightweight and does well with mundane cutting tasks.
What's great about this blade shape is that its fairly tall till the tip so it gives more surface to put all fingers on the blade for precise cutting work.
In addition to that its a lightweight knife and thus you won't feel fatigued doing this compared to many folding knives.
Grip
The scales are cherry wood and well rounded. The choil area is big enough but could use some rounding of the corners for extra comfort.
The handle shape is very neutral and I cannot find any obvious hotspots.
The big issue with the handle is the size. Works well for my small/medium sized hands but its too small for bigger hands.
They should have upsized the handle to fit bigger hands better imo.
Edge Retention
I use the knife in the kitchen so it cuts cuts and cuts... till my wife bangs it against some kitchenware.
No testing done.
Sharpening
Some 8pps at ~12ish degrees on my Sigma 3k and we are back in business. The knife push cuts newsprint afterwards.
This is what makes it special. I dont have a secondary bevel of any sorts that would increase my sharpening time and I dont have to worry about creating micro burrs.
Haven't found the motivation to check out how sharp I can get it yet.
Overview
excellent pairing knife
limited by cutting edge
easy to sharpen
handle might be too small
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/10/2021 06:52PM by mawecowa.
