Origin of Hotta-San hunting knife at Best Made?

February 8, 2013 2:19 PM

I've been looking at this knife at Best Made for a while, and I can't seem to find its provenance. Many other products at Best Made are rebranded or what have you versions from known suppliers, but I cannot for the life of me find a knife that resembles the Hotta-san — after looking at hundreds online. Everything I find refers back to Best Made's info. Can anyone unravel this mystery?

I am looking to buy a nice wood-handled outdoorsy knife, and I have plenty of suggestions and leads. This one is just right up my alley, but I'm wary of the Best Made premium - $250 buys a lot of knife and I'm not sure this is comparable to others.

posted by BlackLeotardFront to sports, hobbies, & recreation (8 answers total)

You may want to look around at the Blade Forums, it's where I ended up on my search for a high quality camp knife.
posted by iamabot at 2:28 PM on February 8

The blade looks identical to the close-up picture titled "Engraved Groove" here.
posted by 2bucksplus at 2:32 PM on February 8

Following up on that, the knife appears to be a "Moriyuki brand BlackBlade w/ genuine leather case, 180 mm" which leads to this PDF of a 2010 catalog, price listed €165.00 or €138.66 before VAT.
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:00 PM on February 8

Or just their website directly: http://www.mehr-als-werkzeug.de/product/719284/Moriyuki-Outdoor-Knife.htm
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:03 PM on February 8

That really appears to be the identical blade, down to the buttons on the sheath - thanks a ton, 2bucksplus. Marking this resolved, although if you don't mind, how did you come across it? image search? I hadn't tried that yet.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:06 PM on February 8

I googled "Yasuki blue steel" + "white oak" and believe it or not, it's the first result.
posted by 2bucksplus at 3:08 PM on February 8

Ha! I figured the component materials would be too common to try that. Thanks.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:09 PM on February 8

By the way, if anyone is interested, there are a huge number of knives of this variety made by Kanetsune (I'm ordering a KB-213 Akatsuki).
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 5:00 PM on February 8