If you were going to compare a knife to those chisels, it would be a 30 pound forged knife made out of solid steel.
I don't know how lucky you are buying your knives, there's a chance that they're not hand forged at all as quite a lot of the knives made in japan are rikizai (prelaminated material sold to smiths).
There are some makers who absolutely do everything by hand, and a lot who don't. Someone living in Tokyo warned me to check with him if I wanted a hand forged knife, but being the kind of guy who's totally happy with a chisel where I only need to regrind the bevel, I'm perfectly happy with rikizai knives that cost half as much as yours. Actually, quite tickled with them.
The thing I'm at a loss about here is that 600 quid shoes are comparable to 25 quid chisels, but 15-20 quid chisels are not comparable to 25 quid chisels. Those being your comparisons, not mine. Look to the finish level on blue spruce chisels if you want something compared to those. I don't favor the construction of those chisels, but the finish level applied to them is quite good. So much so that I'd say they might well suit someone who would wear 600 quid shoes and maybe not do quite so much woodworking.
The comparison that would be more accurate to AI chisels would be Stubai or Hirsch chisels. I have just prepared a set of stubai chisels, and i don't believe all of them were perfectly square, either. They are nice otherwise, to me, because not only will I grind a bevel if I don't like it, I will actually grind the lands, too. I only wear $300 shoes, though. Sometimes guys at my level still have to make things the way we like them, rather than buying them in perfect shape. Enough joking, though. The stubai chisels work well for a handle gripper because they don't have huge thick cross sections like the construction chisel types (heavy firmers or socket chisels), and if I don't like the lands, I'll make them so that I like them.
It may horrify some folks, but I've gotten garish $7 chisels and ground the lands to exactly what I wanted, and i'm very happy with them. They need to be sharpened often, but we learn to do that quite quickly after a while.
And one last comment - I mentioned buying three kiyotada chisels earlier. They are quite possibly the finest chisels that have ever been made if you can tolerate japanese chisels, as long as they are from a smith named Shimanura (san for the japanophiles). Two of them, I got used, so I can't comment on their bevels. The third I bought new. It was $220, and I was very lucky to find it for that - the market price for shimamura's stuff is about $600 per chisel from what I hear. The bevel was not perfect on it, the rest of the finish is divine. Someone like me should never have a tool so nice - really, my skill level will never justify anything remotely close, but someone gave me a chance to try the best chisels ever made -two people - and I'm down with that. But the bevel on the new one that I got still needed to be set to what I wanted. And if I recall correctly, I dry ground it - something that would absolutely horrify some.
My AIs definitely aren't square, either, but I could care less - the rest of the chisel is no less than spectacular for the price. I wouldn't trade them even up for the fat LN construction style chisels I used to have.
