Well, Randy, since you are a knife guy you should know how to sharpen them. When I was trying to decide between a 8” or a 10” Santuko, I read a lot of reviews on Amazon and other places that were not knife forums. I was amazed at all the people that were upset the knives were not laser sharp out of the box. Or if they were, they were upset that they did not stay that way. The cheap sushi set I bought had a lot of good reviews but the majority of bad reviews were about the lack of sharpness out of the box. I set the bevel with a Shapton glass stone, then worked through a progression with my Japanese water stones and then stropped on Diamond pasted leather. The knife set works well. I just use the set for slicing soft proteins like fish so they stay sharp for quite a while.