I was very lucky, and the small portion of the finger nail is totally came off, and it is kind of soar, but no blood came out.
I usually do not sharpen too much, but this yanagiba is often used as natural medium grit and fine grit stone try-out exams, so it was very sharp.
I have experienced cutting my finger tips very deeply like almost cutting through 1/4 or 1/3 of fingers several times, and every times, I felt I do not want to work this job (cook) anymore, and I also thank God to give us finger nails. If we do not have finger nails, it is much easier to reach the finger bone or cut it off.
I have never seen someone lost the finger during the jobs, but I have heard many sushi chefs lost fingers, and they left their jobs, because sushi chef does not have a finger making sushi in front of customers making scare the customers. It sounds joking, but it is serious story.
The most of people cut off fingers have done with cutting frozen ingredients.
It is slippery and hard, so we should leave a half day or over night in refrigerator or if we do not have time, use running water or micro oven to be at least making it little softer.
It is good thing to put on clean towel between cutting board and the frozen ingredient to prevent the slip.
One of my boss used to always tell me "do not sharpen the knife all the time".
"Try to cut the ingredient by guts or fighting spirit"
He had sharpened his honyaki yanagiba once 2 or 3 months.
It is hard to understand, but if I translate it, we should cut it by technique and concentration, etc. If we sharpen it, we have to sharpen really good.
Once we cut finger deeply with very sharp blade, it is hard to stop the breeding for at least a half an hour, so we cannot stand in front of the customers until stop it.
Especially, really busy time, over control the orders, it is happened.
In that situation, it is mentally screwed up before cutting fingers.
It is going to be very big trouble after cut the finger, so I think that at sushi bar, we need the sashimi knife that is sharp, but not cut into the finger by light touch or hit.
When I had worked sushi restaurant in Ikebukuro, Tokyo about over 20 years ago, there are so many sushi chefs work in the sushi restaurant, because the restaurants had several different locations.
One of sushi chef probably age 60 years old or older is very popular sushi chef among customers, but his yanagiba is stainless steel cheap Yanagiba, and it was very dull edge, but he is very charming and very fun to talk with him, so he was popular, but young chefs laughed at his knife.
He did not care for how dull the knife, and he sliced the fish with the dull knife more like slicing as sharp edge knife.
Recently, I worry about many people or retailers showing how sharp the blade edge to slicing tomato or round onion as sharpened extremely sharp edge, but even $20 cheap knife can make very sharp.
More important thing is how long it lasts, and how easy to sharpen.
Be careful your fingers during using sharp edge knife!
Yes, I will so.
Thank you.
