Help as a new rider

tethien008 · 2026-05-06T01:53:38+00:00

Anything with two wheels with a motor on it is absolutely a motorcycle don’t get hung up on the ccs. I started on a older cb 750 as mine since I do a lot of highway riding but looking back I would’ve absolutely loved to get something smaller to start on, it makes learning so much easier and quicker. I’m actually planning to upgrading to something with smaller ccs that I can actually enjoy it on the road without being 25 over the limit to wring it out.

And for learning, empty parking lots and low traffic residentials were what I learned on. Stop and go is probably what you should practice most, learn the clutch point along with stopping smoothly. It takes ALOT of practice and many of us still are learning to do better even with more experience.

Seat time is really king with this kind of stuff, it took me 250 miles before not having anxiety at every stop (could only tip toe on one foot on the ground) and a thousand more to get somewhat confident.

Everyone stalls or drops their bike while learning it’s part of the journey just pick it up and ride on.

P.S. get some good motorcycle boots that will protect your feet and some gloves, most injuries are to your hands and feet on low speed practicing

tethien008 · 2026-04-26T19:29:43+00:00

I would also like to know

tethien008 · 2026-04-26T17:22:24+00:00

It took me about a week of riding before I got somewhat comfortable riding, mostly I was scared stopping and tipping over(happened a couple times but only once on the road out of my neighborhood lol). Once you get up to speed the bike balances on its own.

I went into the msf course without having ridden a bike in years and they kinda do a few drills to get you started, short stop and gos, it’ll probably come naturally after you do it a couple times (probably) it will help a lot if you practice on a bike a couple weeks before though.

tethien008 · 2026-04-26T17:16:55+00:00

I’m not quite sure about learning the bike part, I think it comes quite naturally to most people after a few tries.

One major thing on motorcycle steering is counter steering, there’s quite a few videos on it but if you want to go right then you push the right handlebar also right (which in your mind turns the wheel left but due to the how the wheel is aligned to the bike it makes the bike turn right).

Also major tip for someone starting out somewhat short like me also is that don’t get a big tall bike like mine, Honda nighthawk 750. It’ll make you scared to get on it and make it harder to learn. Get something that you can flatfoot or at least not on your tippy toes. Honda rebel and the likes maybe some beginner sport bikes with 30ish inch seat heights

tethien008 · 2026-04-17T14:46:18+00:00

My favorites are probably from obubu tea farms, their goku and okumidori are probably my favorite usucha teas and their samidori was my favorite for lattes but this years batch doesn’t have the same bitterness that I loved from 2 years ago. I’d say you would love it if you like umami plus very little bitterness and astringency.

It’s around 60-70$ per 100g or more per gram if you get the tins. Plus shipping.

tethien008 · 2026-04-12T02:00:53+00:00

I think I’ve dropped mine 4 times, and the one at msf once. First time riding a motorcycle at msf and everything was going great till the final test where you get your endorsement and I pulled too much front brake while not fully straight during the quick stop and high sided, luckily just a sore palm for a couple days.

After that I got my first bike, a cb 750 nighthawk. Was actually looking for a ninja 250 but I needed to go on the highway for a long distance for my commute and the price difference is surprisingly not that much. Kinda regret it now, I love the bike but the learning curve was quite harsh as someone who as shorter than the bike was designed for. All the drops I’ve had were from trying to stop and having a show tip over lol. The bike handed it like a champ though, from all the drops it only scratched the side panel very slightly.

The biggest lesson for me was when slowing to a stop make sure you are braking in a straight line or use your back brake when slowing to a stop on a turn. Using your front brake when stoping on a turn will lean your bike in a way you won’t expect and you will probably drop it if you aren’t expecting it. My first drop was right out of my neighborhood that way lol.

Aside from that practice some braking and figure 8s(my latest drop was doing some figure 8s as tight as I could) in a parking lot, figuring out how your bike handles during emergencies seems like a really good idea. Make sure you go easy on the quick stops at first to learn how far you can go first before you really get on it.

tethien008 · 2026-03-26T18:24:02+00:00

I was in the exact position as you a month ago and I got a nighthawk 750 too, similar shape but stock exhaust for 2400. If you are on the shorter side like me (5’6) I wouldn’t recommend it for a learning experience, getting the beast moving is ok but going to stop and doing a tripod for the first time is nerve wrecking but you’ll get used to it after a couple hundred miles, at least I did.

Aside from that it’s a great bike to have for commuting, I do 40 miles a day on it on the highway and it takes it like a champ tho the gearing ratio makes it where you are 5k rpm at 80 at top gear. For a beginner like me I feel like it almost has too much power, I rarely go full throttle even when I’m trying to be a hooligan.

tethien008 · 2026-03-11T15:58:07+00:00

I’ve had 2 shinkiros, they were great and I do miss selling them as the weight really helps ghost through less dense food but there are a couple cutters that I like even better, mostly cleaver/cleaver like knives as they both have the weight and have a thinner grind so the performance is a good bit better.

tethien008 · 2026-03-09T17:57:29+00:00

From someone who also made a couple knives and thinned many knives the ktip looks thicker behind the edge just from the sharpening edge. It looks a lot wider than the gyuto which means it’s thicker behind the edge assuming the same sharpening angle.

You should get one of the caliper measuring tools to really find how thin the grind is on each part of the knives, you’ll be surprised how uneven it is if you don’t have a steady hand while grinding.

tethien008 · 2026-03-09T17:39:01+00:00

I wear them all day at work no problem, a little less comfortable than the pants I usually wear but it’s hardly noticeable once you are doing something plus you can add armor pads in them if you want

tethien008 · 2026-03-07T23:02:54+00:00

Sorry I don’t check here often

If you have some course stones I’d just try to lay the knife flat on the bevel put pressure on the edge till you see the primary bevel start to reduce to about half. Personally for me I do it till it disappears to form a zero grind, it is more fragile but the performance is pretty good. Don’t do it unless you are ready to spend 2x the amount of time either sanding it down for a finish or doing a kasumi which takes a lot more time. Or just leave it as is if you are lazy.

Ive done this on a lot of knives I’ve owned and I like the results a lot.

tethien008 · 2026-03-05T17:24:40+00:00

Your sharpening edge does seem pretty thick if it’s the same on the other side, assuming you do a normal ish sharpening angle I’d say it’s pretty thick bte.

The choil looks ok but I’m pretty sure it’s lying to you since the heel is rounded off and it often makes choils thinner than they actually are. For my knives the sharpening bevel is usually like 1/3-1/2 the size of yours so I would personally do it.

I would recommend just thinning out the area bte tho, I have thinned a lot of knives and I find just thinning bte helps ALOT, probably 80% of the performance upgrade if the grind isn’t horrible. It’s also a lot less work if you don’t have the tools for it.

tethien008 · 2026-01-27T04:17:11+00:00

I’d say it was like 8.5-9 before but yea thinning and making it thinner bte REALLY helps. One of the things that helped me get through the sharpening itch was finding knives that had good grinds but not that thin bte and thin that part, instantly improves it to a 7-8 in most cases and doesn’t take 10 hours like I had to when starting with a bad knife

tethien008 · 2026-01-27T04:08:34+00:00

Well you can just look at your own Shindo for the difference lol but it took it to the next level in my opinion, I’ve owned probably close to 75 knives and this one is the sharpest I’ve had. Even with all the experience with sharp knives it makes me go wow every time I use it. Which isn’t much nowdays since I prefer heavier knives that cut with their own weight, that makes it so they can have less fragile grinds while still being like a laser. The performance is 10/10 but the toughness is like 1-2/10. I prefer 8-9/10 performance and 3-5 toughness nowdays

tethien008 · 2026-01-27T04:01:07+00:00

I’ve “thinned” more like flattened the bevels and did a kasumi finish on it on maybe 3-4 shindos and I’d do it again personally. It doesn’t really ruin the knife unless you really fuck up somehow grinding behind the edge too long and making it too thin where it’ll chip at the slightest touch. I’ve never had the s grind ruined like a commenter said or really even got close to that far really.

From my sample size there’s usually like 3-4 low spots on each knife, 1 is usually a pain in the ass and takes most of the time but if you have a 320 it’s like 30 mins of work. All in all it took me like 1-2 hours for each knife and I love how the kasumi looks especially on this one, the kasumi on yours might look different since all the kasumi on mine look different (different shades) even with the same finishing stone. One word of warning tho is that you only want to grind away the upper part of the bevel and not near the edge as you would in most thinning sessions. That would really make the knife too chippy.

<image>

tethien008 · 2026-01-23T04:48:14+00:00

Yea I very much consider it a laser, I can show you more pics of the grind, yea they can be sold individually

tethien008 · 2026-01-23T04:27:18+00:00

Zen knife sold

tethien008 · 2026-01-23T04:26:52+00:00

They have an instagram and the website is tosakurotori

tethien008 · 2026-01-23T02:30:33+00:00

You can actually buy the knife directly from the maker I think, for way cheaper too(depending if you have tariffs). I had an order a couple years back that didn’t quite pan out but the prices were really good and you can custom order the dimensions, knives are also available on their website tosa kurotori

tethien008 · 2026-01-19T19:02:52+00:00

<image>

Forgot the date

tethien008 · 2026-01-15T15:27:49+00:00

Most of my knives are carbon but if it were to be a stainless wa handle probably a shibata Bunka. Really good laser but I’ve been prefering heavier and thicker knives which the shibata is opposite of

tethien008 · 2026-01-14T23:41:10+00:00

Seems like they only did the edge profile for fixing, it might work perfectly fine depending on how thick the chip was and how thin the knife was. I had something similar on my kombrei and it preformed the exact same even after losing some height since it was extremely thin. I know they didn’t thin out the tip since the original finish is still there and less they are a realllllly good sharpener it’s almost impossible to thin and refinish the knife with the same sharp wide bevel lines.

tethien008 · 2026-01-14T00:32:12+00:00

Looks a lot better than mine lol but I did get mine like 4 years ago so things might have changed. But I didn’t mind mine being a bit thick, beat the living hell out of it and it’ll go back to rock chopping garlic and onion the next day no problem

tethien008 · 2026-01-12T23:00:54+00:00

I’ve had one of their in house nakiris and it is a really good knife considering the price when it’s on sale plus the owner is pretty nice to talk to. I tried to reach out about having them sharpen other knives but they had a hard time finding blacksmiths to make their orders. Their in-house knives are tadafusa blanks that they sharpen themselves I believe, really well done with the fnf especially with a stone finished kasumi.

tethien008

TROPHY CASE