3.5" Paring Knife - Zhen Series (PM8O)

Reach for this when the knife leaves your hand and the food comes to you. Peeling an apple, deveining prawns, segmenting a blood orange, scoring the skin on a duck breast: these are in-hand jobs, and a 3.5-inch blade is the right size for all of them. You won't get the same control from a utility knife, and you definitely won't get it from a chef knife.

Built for In-Hand Work

The short blade stays inside your hand's field of vision while you're working. That's the whole point of a paring knife. You can feel where the tip is, guide it around seeds, and peel the skin off an apple in one continuous stroke without looking away. The full-tang pakka-wood handle is balanced for the lighter grip you use in-hand, not the pinch grip you need on the board. It won't feel nose-heavy mid-peel.

The Same Steel as the Bigger Blades

Don't let the size fool you. This is the same 67-layer Damascus build: 10Cr15CoMoV core, vacuum heat-treated to 60-62 HRC, wrapped in 67 layers of Damascus cladding. That hardness is what you want on a blade this small. A soft paring knife deflects mid-cut. This one holds its line through a whole session of deveining prawns or segmenting citrus, where the tip is doing fine, repetitive work on every piece.

Specifications

• Blade Steel: 67-layer Damascus with 10Cr15CoMoV core
• Hardness: 60-62 HRC (Vacuum Heat Treated)
• Blade Profile: 3.5-inch paring knife
• Handle: Pakka-wood, full-tang
• Use: In-hand peeling, deveining prawns, segmenting citrus, and precision tip work where a larger blade has too much length to control.
• Series: Zhen Series (PM8O)
• Model: PM8O-SG

Complete Your Set

Pair it with the Zhen 7" Santoku (PM8O-RS) for the board work this small blade isn't built for, and the Zhen 5" Utility Knife (PM8O-WY) for the in-between jobs where you want a blade that's off the hand but still compact.