Solinger Windmühlenmesser-Manufactur has long had an affection for Japanese knife culture. Occasionally, this enthusiasm for Japanese knives even manifests itself in the translation of a knife or blade shape into German - or should we say Solingen? The K Nakiri is one such Solingen Japanese knife: in Japanese, Nakiri stands for cutting vegetables, in particular (large-sized) leafy vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, savoy cabbage, spinach, chard and lettuce. Japanese cuisine includes vegetable specialties such as shiso, mizuna, komatsuna and napa cabbage (hakusai), which you can grow in your own garden here in Japan or buy in a well-stocked Asian store. Thanks to its wide, long blade, the K Nakiri can handle these with ease, even in large quantities. As with all knives in the K series from Windmühlenmesser-Manufactur, the same applies to this knife: The blade is made of extra-thin ground and blue-blasted carbon steel, the handle is made of steamed and finely polished apple wood.

The Windmühlen knives from Robert Herder in Solingen are remarkable not only because of the knife steel (at least 0.75% carbon content and a hardness of at least 56 HRC for the carbon steels), but above all because of the craftsmanship, which spares none of the traditional grinding efforts: Windmühlen knives are ground extremely thin. This results in their astonishing cutting ability, which is an experience in use. The most elaborate type of sharpening is fuller grinding, a special type of thin grinding in which the blade is tapered towards the back of the knife.

In Solingen, the process of smoothing the grinding grooves remaining on the blade is known as flattening, i.e. fine grinding. The most complex stage of this technique is blue polishing. The steel is ground finer step by step. You can tell that a blade is blue-fluted because it reflects slightly blue in the light.

The elastic blades of the blue-blued knives from Herder are ground using the Solingen thin grind and fuller's edge. Thanks to the very high hardness of 60 Rockwell (HRC), they keep their sharpness significantly longer. However: Due to the high hardness - and precisely because they are ground so extremely thin - the blades should not be twisted or even tilted, as this can lead to chipping of the material when cutting.

Carbon steel knives do not belong in the dishwasher. Wipe the knives dry after rinsing and occasionally apply some blade oil. Discoloration may occur on the blade material. However, this is not a sign of inferior quality, but only indicates the rather high carbon content in the material. In case of flash rust, the use of the rust eraser is recommended. A resharpening can be done with the sharpening steel.