Japanese Leather Knife

Also Known As: Korean Leather Knife

In Japanese: 革包丁, kawa hōchō

In Korean: 가죽 칼, gajug kal, 구두칼

family of general-purpose knives for working leather in the form of thin, flat metal sheets mounted in oblong wood handles, offset to one side, with perpendicular blades

While some English-language importers marketed these as “Japanese skiving knives” early on, they are designed and used for a much broader set of uses. They are also made and used in other countries, like South Korea.

These knife blades are typically of relatively hard pure or laminated carbon steel and beveled on just the top side. The cutting edges are typically completely straight, rather than bellied or curved, and set either perpendicular to the long axis of the handle or at at a shallow angle to it.

In contrast to European shoe knives, a skife, or a super skiver, but similar to a head knife or Chinese shoe knife, these knives are typically used for push skiving, rather than pull skiving.

Like European shoe knives, these knives are typically pulled for cutting, whittling, and incising. However, the position of the blade relative to the handle requires that this be done in reverse grip, with the blade behind the pinkie finger, near the wrist, rather than ahead of the thumb and index finger. As with a lip knife, pulling from the arm tends to straighten the wrist during the cut, which can help prevent the blade from wandering.

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