BEZIA Peeling Paring Knife 2.75 inch, German Excessive-Carbon Metal, Fruit Knife Kitchen Knife with Ergonomic and Full Tang Deal with, Black

Great paring knife.
Sharp as a razor and easy to handle. Very pleased with this product

Almost perfectly shaped paring knife but inferrier metal.
I’ve been using the 1960’s Era Wingen Solingen made in Rostfrei Germany (pictured here) for nearly my entire life. That paring knife is from a set of kitchen knives my parents brought back from Germany after my father’s deployment in the Army ended. I kind of swiped that one to use for peeling and cutting up apples with as grew to hate the standard style paring knives sold in most sets or individually, these days. When I saw this Bezia paring knife pop up with similar design characteristics as my old German paring knife, I knew I couldn’t pass it up.As you can see the Bezia is a bit bigger but does have a nice feel to it in my grip. Unfortunately due to the added size, when holding the knife in a hook grip (the handle held in the crooks of the finger with the blade facing in and the thumb pointing towards the tip on the sharp side of the blade) I have to choke up on the blade where my index finger is hooked around the back of the blade so that the tip of my thumb can reach the tip of the knife. This is typically the grip used when pushing food into the blade. If I only grip the handle, then angle is wrong and pushing hard veggies into the blade becomes difficult.After spending a few minutes honing the edge to razor sharpness with the use of ceramic sharpening sticks, my initial test was on an apple which I regularly peel and slice with my Solingen paring knife almost daily. With the Bezia knife I found peeling to be quite erratic and I changed my grip several times trying to gain optimal control. It wasn’t until I had moved my index finger up the blade that felt I had the best control. This is when I realized tip of my thumb was even with the tip of the blade, which is also where my thumb generally falls on my old knife when gripping normally cross the handle.After peeling the apple and cutting it in half, I began cutting it into slices and experimenting as to how thin a slice I could get. I did manage to get a nice slice the same thickness as the blade and got a couple of not so perfect slices about half the thickness of the blade. At this point I started realizing the blade didn’t seem to cut through the apple as easily as I was used to. So I picked up my old knife to see if it was the apple or the knife causing resistance in the cut. My old knife easily passed right through the apple while the Bezia seemed to bind up in the fibers of the apple.I felt that something wasn’t quite right, so I grabbed my 10x eye loop (magnifier) and began examining and comparing the edges of both knives. The sharpened edge of the Bezia looked rough and ragged even after running it across ultra fine grit ceramic sharpening rods. I had sharpened both knives at the same time while I had the sharpening tool out and felt my old knife needed a touch-up as well. My Solingen knife had a smooth continuous edge with no ridges or jaggedness, unlike the Bezia. Apparently the metal in the Bezia is such low quality that the edge won’t hone to a single polished line. I will spend a bit more time on the blade to see if I can get it smoothed down, but I don’t have much faith in getting it there.As they claim this knife to be “made with German steel” I guess that can’t be disputed if the material is scrap metal from Germany, but doesn’t make it quality “high carbon steel” when they mix it with other metals in the smelting forge. Looking up the metallurgic specs, they claim that X50CrMoV15 steel is supposed to have a Rockwell hardness of 56 HRC but this metal is soft. I have a pocket knife made of 440 stainless hardened to 56 HRC and that thing took me over an hour to reshape and even-up the edge and then resharpen it. And I’ve only had to sharpen it 3 times in the past 20 years.This metal is so soft I can see all 3 angles on the edge. The factory grind angle (what ever it is), my 40 degree coarse hone and my 30 degree fine finish hone can all be seen with the 10x eye loop. If this was 56c Rockwell hardness, I would only see the factory angle after less than 5 minutes of honing with just the ceramic rods which are not coarse enough to move a lot of material in such a short period.To sum this up, I feel the handle needs to be a bit smaller, the blade needs to be 2cm shorter and the metal quality needs to improve. Then I feel this would be an awesome paring knife.

Sharp!
This knife is quite sharp and easy to use with the handle being comfortable and the curve of the blade. I did cut myself peeling an apple when the tip of the blade poked me.

Very sharp and sturdy Knife
The price is right and the knife has a heft to it, which is the type of knife I like using. It’s def. very sharp straight from the package. A winner