OV9

Well do you?

We’ve always had crap kitchen knives. You can sharpen anything with a stone and a steel, but crap knives blunt quickly.

Nef had a post about proper knives some time ago on the old forum. It was like double-Dutch. But I remember feeling jealous and wanted one. Logical? Dunno.

JapaneseTorijo Damascus thingy ordered from a Japanese retailer. £70 but I expect some import charges. Definitely at the budget end of the pro knife range; but that suits my amateur cutting frequency status, 37 layers of steel. Properly hardened core.

Can’t wait for it to arrive. The thrill of chopping.

I got a set of good knives for my 40th. Amazing what difference it makes.

I still use the cheap double serrated Kitchen Devil knives I bought when I moved in with a girlfriend 23 years ago. I realise I’m DIW but they’ve never needed sharpening or anything.

I bought whichever ones I thought looked the most cool at TK Maxx when I first moved out. Think they’ll outlast me but that’s not saying much

Can't beat good knives in the kitchen. I have a set of I.O. Shen Japanese knifes and they're awesome. Once you've used super sharp knives for prepping food a dull blade will get you your tits .

Buy a quality sharpener too.

I bought a couple of reasonable chef knives a few years ago, but still tend to use a cheap set I was given as a house warming set years ago as they can go in the dishwasher and the posh ones are hand wash only

My best mate is a tattooist and has a couple of tattoo machines in Damascus steel.

It's a fascinating material.

Damascus knives are very cool IMO

Love em - different tools for different jobs.
I bought some while we were in Japan for our honeymoon.

I have a set of Robert Welch knives. They’re not a fancy design but they are beautifully balanced and after 9 years of use they’re not showing any signs of becoming permanently dulled.

mik wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 9:58 pm JapaneseTorijo Damascus thingy ordered from a Japanese retailer. £70 but I expect some import charges. Definitely at the budget end of the pro knife range; but that suits my amateur cutting frequency status, 37 layers of steel. Properly hardened core.

Can’t wait for it to arrive. The thrill of chopping.

7" Santoku? That's an amazing price if so, and certainly not the budget end of the pro scale.
That's a £150 knife. Equivalent Wusthof or Henckel (standard "premium" choice for pro chefs) would be £40-60.
In terms of RRP, it's also more than my single most expensive knife - MAC MTH-80 ($120 at the time, brought back from US by my friend).

Good choice BTW, do treat it with respect while you get used to it. Get yourself a diamond honing steel (c.£10 from a catering place) - much better than a regular steel for daily sharpening.

Interestingly it was Jack Wood (one of the regular highland hooners) getting excited on twitter about a Mac MTH-80 he’s just bought that finally spurred me into action.

I mention that this one is at the budget end as I see other knives at £350+. Yikes.

Will let you know what the final cost comes in at.

Buying from https://www.hocho-knife.com btw

DaveE wrote: ↑Sat Jan 12, 2019 11:57 pm My best mate is a tattooist and has a couple of tattoo machines in Damascus steel.

It's a fascinating material.

Damascus knives are very cool IMO

The process to make Damascus Steel was lost way back, Apparently now they have some new method for making "a bit better than stainless" and have decided to call it Damascus.

In a similar vein I am going to mix piss with petrol and call it Greek Fire! In fact I might get my mate Stel to do it as that will make it far more kudos!

On topic, I have a few knives of varying quality, one which was my Uncle's who was a chef. It is an oft sharpened Sabatier, I have two my Mum gave me when I asked for half decent knives I could sharpen and a block of ones you got from Tesco with stamps. I suspect they are all nearer the low end of the scale but they all take an edge and cut stuff.

mik wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 11:43 am I mention that this one is at the budget end as I see other knives at £350+. Yikes.

I don't know any pro chefs, even really high end ones, that use a £350+ knife. In watch terms that'd be your Patek Phillipe/Chopard/Breguet - an unfathomably large order of magnitude more expensive than functionally identical alternatives.
Dragging out the watch metaphor - your's could be considered equivalent to a decent Rolex/IWC and the industry standard Wusthof/Henckel option would be an Omega Seamaster.

As an aside, much as I love the MAC, it's not my favourite knife, but it is a fantastic all-round large chefs knife. Paired with something light and wieldy like a 5.5" Global and a little budget paring jobbie, it'd be all you'd ever need.

All that said, the Tojiro R2s in your link could generate enough irrational desire to justify yet another purchase

I’ve a 9” Zwelling - it’s awesome!

The rest of my knives are more everyday but recently got a new wetstone and they’re Now sharp as fvck again.

I don't seem to be able to sharpen a knife to save my life. I bought a set of Sebatier knives when I moved here 5 1/2 years ago and I could probably give them to my kids to play with now. I've got one of those sharpener things you pull it through but that doesn't seem to do much.

I was going to buy some of those ceramic knives that you don't need to sharpen, but I keep equating the price to carbon bits for my S1000R and it's putting me off

FYI - once you let a blade go past a certain point of bluntness you won't get it back with a steel - you need to sharpen again on a grinding stone and then use the steel/honing blade to keep it sharp.
On the same subject - sharpeners, steels and honing blades.
A steel isn't really sharpening your knife, it's straightening out the various little bends and dinks at a microscopic level on the very edge of the blade. It has a very mildly abrasive effect but its essentially negligible.
A honing blade is like a fine grade wet and dry. It's effect is primarily abrasive i.e. wearing away imperfections in the blades edge, and to a limited extent reshaping the cutting edge.
Domestic sharpeners (especially the "drag through" kind) are more like a rough grit sand paper are are primarily for shaping the cutting edge. Mostly, they have an arbitrary angle (not necessarily suited to a particular knife) and only shape the first mm/couple of mm. They also leave quite a rough edge (well, rough is precision knife terms). The combination of a poor angle and a rough hone means that a blade won't stay sharp for long.
If you want your knives sharp, you need to "sharpen" (i.e. shape) the blade, then hone it (smooth out the imperfections left by the sharpener) - ideally with progressively finer grit hones. If you've done it right, you'll have a cutting edge only a few micros thick, which is of course very easy to create lots of tiny bends into when you use it, so you use the steel/honing blade to straighten them back out again. Maintenance is far far better than repair - once your blade is properly dull, you need to remove quite a lot of material to get back to a sharp edge again.

Oh, and Sabatier isn't a brand, it's a generic moniker that can be put on anything to make it sound better. It used to indicate that knives were forged (as opposed to pressed), but I don't think there's even that stipulation any more. There are good Sabatiers out there, but there are also very cheap shite knives that add the name purely for marketing purposes.

tim wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:55 pm I don't seem to be able to sharpen a knife to save my life. I bought a set of Sebatier knives when I moved here 5 1/2 years ago and I could probably give them to my kids to play with now. I've got one of those sharpener things you pull it through but that doesn't seem to do much.

I was going to buy some of those ceramic knives that you don't need to sharpen, but I keep equating the price to carbon bits for my S1000R and it's putting me off

Is it a Smart Sharp Tim? Reviews are good for them.

I just don't see the point of expensive knives when they'll just blunt and I can't be arsed getting the honing equipment and spending the time you need to do it properly Kitchen Devil ftw.

I do love a good pocket knife though, Spyderco and Byrd are great.

We have a set of Global ones that I sharpen on a wet block thing - no idea what to do with them though - that’s the mrs’ dept.

tim wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 2:55 pm I don't seem to be able to sharpen a knife to save my life.

I'm the same and my wife is brutal on kitchen knives she literally will use them for cutting anything.

I've probably bought at least a dozen knives over the last 10 years.

I'm going to get a 3 stage electric sharpener from Chefs Choice to see if I can revive the 5 mixed knives I use.

Jobbo wrote: ↑Sun Jan 13, 2019 9:29 am I have a set of Robert Welch knives. They’re not a fancy design but they are beautifully balanced and after 9 years of use they’re not showing any signs of becoming permanently dulled.

That name rang a bell so I checked mine, and I have a pair of his knives. I still keep them in the box too, hence they only come out for special occasions