Hatchet for chopping meat and bones

The Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­er of kitchen acces­sories brand Hata­mo­to has been pro­duc­ing prod­ucts for more than thir­ty years, which dur­ing this time in prac­tice has con­firmed the lev­el of qual­i­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of their exe­cu­tion.

On the ter­ri­to­ry of the CIS, the Hata­mo­to brand was pre­vi­ous­ly known for its ceram­ic knives, which are dis­tin­guished by their high man­u­fac­tura­bil­i­ty. Now the brand rep­re­sents an expand­ed range of prod­ucts in Rus­sia and the coun­tries of the Eurasian Eco­nom­ic Union. You will not see col­or­ful adver­tis­ing of this brand on TV or in store win­dows, but if you have used their clothes at least once, you will not for­get the Hata­mo­to name. These are such every­day and nec­es­sary kitchen uten­sils as grind­stones, sharp­en­ers with a sharp­en­ing angle hold­er, pock­et sharp­en­ers, elec­tric sharp­en­ers, knife stands, cut­ting boards, musats, tweez­ers, dish­es, steel and ceram­ic knives. Through the intro­duc­tion of advanced tech­nolo­gies and inno­v­a­tive pro­duc­tion process­es, the com­pa­ny sells high-qual­i­ty prod­ucts of wide demand at afford­able prices, devot­ing spe­cial devel­op­ments and improve­ments to each prod­uct seg­ment.

There is anoth­er extreme­ly use­ful thing in the Hata­mo­to cat­a­log — a hatch­et for chop­ping meat and bones. Mod­el Hata­mo­to HN-HH190 has a pre­cise­ly cal­cu­lat­ed chem­i­cal com­po­si­tion of prac­ti­cal stain­less steel and an ide­al weight, an opti­mized design and sev­er­al dis­tinc­tive fea­tures in the details.

Tojiro.ru review­ers are always inter­est­ed in study­ing the unique prod­ucts of wor­thy Japan­ese man­u­fac­tur­ers, telling their com­pa­tri­ots about them, and this time we present the Hatch­et, which is nec­es­sary in meat gas­tron­o­my for reg­u­lar or per­ma­nent cut­ting of meat car­cass­es of cat­tle, pigs, birds. Such a butcher’s ax is also quite appro­pri­ate for hunt­ing, where cut­ting large ani­mals on the spot is required.

There are not so many man­u­fac­tur­ers pro­duc­ing a hatch­et capa­ble of chop­ping bones, hav­ing a decent look and func­tion­al details. This is a spe­cif­ic cat­e­go­ry between large knives and axes. Even a large chef’s knife can­not cut bones and ten­dons, since the tip can break off from blows, the edge of the blade is chipped and cracked. The high­er the hard­ness index of the steel of the knife, the more frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble is its blade, so knives with a rat­ing high­er than 61 HRc require care­ful han­dling in case of tem­per­a­ture changes.

The one-piece blade of the Hata­mo­to hatch­et is made of 420J2 stain­less low-car­bon steel with good anti-cor­ro­sion resis­tance and high tough­ness. Hard­ened to a hard­ness of 56–57 HRs, the hatch­et blade is resilient enough to not chip when work­ing with hard bones, sharp­ens gen­tly, and has an aver­age cut­ting abil­i­ty.

The den­si­ty of the blade mate­r­i­al is well com­bined with the design of the HN-HH190, whose blade has a nom­i­nal thick­ness of 4 mm, a length of 185 mm, a width of 100 mm. The hatch­et turned out to be weighty 0.6 kg, which is just the most suit­able for cut­ting dense fab­rics, and, at the same time, not too heavy for numer­ous accu­rate and short blows. With such work, the han­dle of a lighter ax knife must be held stronger, it rubs and tires the hand. And for cook­ing broths and demiglaces (jel­ly, jel­ly), soups on the bones, you need to butch­er the hard­est bones and joints in large quan­ti­ties. If large parts of meat car­cass­es are cut in the home or pub­lic kitchen, a spe­cial hatch­et is sim­ply need­ed there.

420 stain­less steel has excel­lent san­i­tary and dec­o­ra­tive prop­er­ties, the sur­face of the blade of the new HN-HH190 ax shines with a mir­ror fin­ish and fas­ci­nates. At the front, the blade widens with an increased cen­ter of grav­i­ty at the tip of the cut­ting edge and a har­mo­nious hole for hang­ing on a hook. The chop­ping edge of the ax itself with a wide dou­ble-sided sym­met­ri­cal descent is sharp­ened to #5000 and is equal­ly suit­able for both right and left hands.

The over­all length of the ax is 310 mm and the thick han­dle is more suit­able for a strong hand, ready for uncom­pro­mis­ing chop­ping and slash­ing-cut­ting blows. Cut­ting with a Hata­mo­to ax is unlike­ly to be done, but with a wide work­ing part you can chop large butts, fil­lets, hams, meat and bone prepa­ra­tions, kebabs.

It must be admit­ted that Hata­mo­to spe­cial­ists took into account in the design of the HN-HH190 ax all the details that are impor­tant from the prac­ti­cal side, and also have a com­plete har­mo­nious design. The tran­si­tion from the blade to the han­dle from below has a round­ing, which excludes rub­bing of the wrist rest dur­ing pro­longed work. The upper line of the han­dle con­tin­ues along the butt, and expands on the heel for back stop from slip­ping.

The Hata­mo­to hatch­et han­dle is mas­sive, made of thick plates, rec­tan­gu­lar pro­file, fas­tened with screw studs. The over­lays are made of sta­bi­lized wood of a dark nat­ur­al shade with light veins, which does not absorb mois­ture, does not deform, does not fade over time.

With all its advan­tages, the prod­uct with ide­al char­ac­ter­is­tics and attrac­tive design has a mod­er­ate bud­get price tag, and any pro­fes­sion­al butch­er will be pleased to work with such a hatch­et!