Knives!

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AcuraTech

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This subject is partially food related, but I'll post it here.

Let's talk about knives. Folding, standard, kitchen, whatever.

I'm kind of a fanboy, but I really like Cold Steel Knives for non-kitchen use. Amazingly sharp, versatile, and ridiculously strong. If you go to their website and request a catalog they'll not only send you one, but also you'll get a 2 hour long DVD that has torture tests of the knives that they sell.

For kitchen use, I really really like the handmade Japanese knives, but they're seriously spendy. (Edit: Spendy is the Minnesota term for expensive) For now I just rock the 8 inch Wusthof Chefs Knife, which is pretty killer in it's own right.

I work on cars for a living and can appreciate well made tools, so it carries over into my kitchen. Nothing worse than using a dull piece o [censored] $10 knife to prep food.

So what brand of knives do you use for kitchen AND non kitchen use?
 
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We have Cutco. Wife bought them 40+ years ago. Only the one we use several times a day needed sharpened. We replaced it a couple of years ago. They would have sharpened it but we just replaced it. They are probably overpriced but hard to beat. They are the only cerated knives I have ever seen that cut straight.

I have had a couple of Gerber Knives which were good. A Buck hunting knife and an A.G. Russell Damascus Steel 'one hand knife'. I'm really not a knife person.
 
I like Cold Steel also, have a SRK and a Recon Tantoo.
My pocket knife is a Victorinox Centurion.
I also have a Glock Field Knife that I like, and a couple of M-7 bayonets that I hung onto.
For kitchen use I like Dexter, but I'm not sure if they're still around. Used them years ago when I labored in the fish market as a youth.
 
Wusthof knives for the kitchen.

Buck 110 and benchmade for folders.

Buck for a fixed hunting knife.
 
I collect military grade automatic (AKA switchblade) knives. My current favorite is the Benchmade MiniReflex:

http://www.benchmade.com/products/product_detail.aspx?model=2550

Yes, owning automatic knives is illegal if you are not in law enforcement, active duty military or emergency response. You can, however, find them online if you want one. I always found the legal status of automatic knives laughable. These days who is going to carry a knife to a gun fight anyway? The Kershaw Ken Onion line of knives are essentially automatics minus the button.
 
It's easier on the pocket book to collect kitchen knives than other styles so lately I pick up more of those than other types. A favorite that I found for $10 in an antique store is a 1948 Gerber. They evidently were melting pistons for the handles back then and were using spent power hacksaw blades for the blades. It's not a daily user. One that we do use daily is another $10 knife from an antique store, a 10in Dexter carbon steel chef knife with a thin blade. A nice knife for veggies and such is an old 'HighTest' chef knife made from very thin (less than 1/16in) and hard stainless. Our daily use paring knives are some Victorinix models very thin blades, and while they don't hold an edge long they touch up quickly. A favorite paring knife is Russell Green River model, I only find it in restaurant supply stores, as it is thin carbon steel that does a nice job of taking and holding a razor edge, better than any stainless knife that I have. Our main set of knives is Henckels, a set from about 20 years ago. The Wustoff that we have are better knives, they are a bit harder and take and hold a better edge, and from what I've seen when stainless gets much harder they chip or break tips more often. Treasured favorites are some Nogent Sabatiers that I use to get from a knife store that closed a couple of years ago, a knife that was also evidently Julia Childs favorite.

My daily carry is an old Boker slim premium stockman, a carbon steel model that cuts better than a Benchmade ATS34 blade that I use to carry. I have a few Benchmade in M2, knives that I like a lot and one that I carry in my backpack. Also in my packback is a Victorinix Camper and an original Leatherman, two that complement one another well. I like Opinels a lot too as they cut well.

My 'one knife to rule them all' is a Bark River Gameskeeper, a thick convex 4.5 blade of A2 steel. When I called the company to ask about it vs another model that they had the founder picked up the phone. After a few questions I commented that it seemed like an excellent field knife that could double duty as a larger hunting knife. He said that a Marine unit bought a number of knives on the open market for testing, and they called to him to ask about his knife and whether they could get with a few changes as his was the only one that they didn't break :^)

I have an old Hubertus 'scout knife' in carbon steel that I like a lot, along with a few handfuls of Eriksson mora knives and some Cold Steel Red River knives, both that I picked up for less than $10 a knife. Another favorite is a Dozier Master Hunter in D2 steel (I like tool steels) that my father gave me.

Anyway, knives are fun, so keep looking for those good deals. I kick myself for not getting some as they're not available anymore, a trend that will continue as fewer people carry a knife and more manufacturing moves to China.
 
A few notes about kitchen knives.

The biggest leap in knife technology is the move from carbon steel to stainless steel (70 years ago?). Both hold a good edge. Stainless allows the chef to put the knife away wet without worrying about corrosion.

Edge retention is directly tied in with metal hardness. The metallurgy of a knife is basically 440 stainless steel, quenched and tempered. It isn't rocket science to produce. Any manufacturer that can't provide a knife with decent hardness shouldn't be rewarded with a purchase. Tool steel can provide remarkable edge retention, but it isn't as corrosion- or stain-resistant as stainless steel.

Since blade steel is (or should be) easy to make, I think the main difference among kitchen knives is in the handles.

I also see many people don't bother sharpening their kitchen knives, nor do they know how to properly use a sharp knife... (probably the same people who have their car serviced at Jiffy Lube!) I've sharpened kitchen knives for others, but I've stopped that practice a long time ago after a few of them cut themselves badly.
 
I have Henkels in the kitchen and carry a SOG twitch II in my pocket. I last knife I bought was a santoku shape and I use it the most.

Rant:
I am nearly obsessive about sharp knives and using the correct knife for the job. My wife on the other hand, I'm not sure she cares which side of the knife she is using. she also believes (as does the MIL) that the knife size is correlated to the size of the material being cut. small carrot get cut with a small knife (usually paring) big stuff gets cut with the long skinny boning knife. forget about ever using the chef's knife for chopping. she lets it go in one ear and out the other when I try to explain how much faster, easier, and safer it is to cut using the proper knife.
 
"Edge retention is directly tied in with metal hardness."

Typically, within a type of steel, but there is a wider range of steels, heat treatments and quality levels being provided these days. 420 stainless is probably most common, at least in the US, as 440A and 440C are typically more expensive. Plain carbon 'plow steels' are common, but so are lightly alloyed steels like a 'chrome vanadium' carbon steel.

Hardness is resistance to indentation, which is different than wear resistance. When looking at a tool steel a common first cut is wear vs impact resistance, which varies by type of steel and hardness. Some alloys like Talonite have very high wear resistance and are used as knives, but the typical low hardness (high 40s Rockwell C) can produce blunting problems. Wear resistance is directly related to the amount and type of carbides in a steel, with increasing wear resisatnce going from iron to chrome to vanadium carbides. CPM has a range of high wear resistance 'V' steels which have high levels of vanadium carbides, and are offered in more typical hardness ranges. They're candidiates for being a optimum cutlery steel as one can pick a impact resistance level and the wear resistance will be higher than that offered by other steels.

In past comparisons among 'field knives' I recall a fairly hard, highly alloyed stainless like VG10 being described as light duty in a 3/16in thick blade as it was kind of brittle and relatively easy to break with typical abuse. I pointed out that the sterotypical 'sharpened pry bar' was a Cold Steel SRK, a well known affordable hard use knife, and it too was 3/16in thick but of 'Carbon V' as it was called. Cold Steel Carbon V knives were made by Camillus, and is an alloy more commonly known as 0170-6C (as I recall), a lightly alloyed chrome vanadium steel that had a reputation for being tough, and taking and holding a nice edge.

I don't now what makes the Green River carbon steels cut well, they just seem to handle meat and trim fat better than the stainless knives that I have. Some common stainless steel knives that I have that work very well are some of the Eriksson Mora, which I think are some thing like a Swedish 12C67.
 
Originally Posted By: Lyondellic
The Kershaw Ken Onion line of knives are essentially automatics minus the button.



They sure do open [censored] fast don't they. I have one, and is a great knife IMO. Only thing I don't really like is the fragile safety. I've broken two over the past three years. Luckily my dad has about 20 spares he purchased :) I have the leek model btw :)
 
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I used to carry the kershaw "chive" but didn't like the safety, that of course I broke on the two that I owned. I bought that SOG twitch and find it superior in all functions. it has a much better safety design and the belt clip in on the correct end.
 
im a knife fanatic, i think about them alot. for folders i really like benchmade with around a dozen or so of them but i also have a few kershaw, buck, spyderco and gerbers. for nonlocking knives(slipjoints) i like case and great eastern cutlery but have some henckles, boker, bulldog and puma.

recently ive found out about bark river knife and tool. when blackjack knives fell on difficult times the head knifemaker there went off and started up his own company, he makes fixed blade knives that are convexed ground and they are hair shaving sharp. since discovering these in november last year ive aquired 30 or so of them. heres a few of them:
HPIM0156-1.jpg


you really have to check these out, they also have a line of kitchen knives. ive never handled another brand that are as sharp as these and with the convex grind they really keep an edge for a long time.

please dont start a gun thread........
 
Originally Posted By: tom slick
I used to carry the kershaw "chive" but didn't like the safety, that of course I broke on the two that I owned.


Martin Yan taught me that you can not only chop but also cut anything with a cleaver. That's why I carry a big meat cleaver.
wink.gif
 
"I also see many people don't bother sharpening their kitchen knives, nor do they know how to properly use a sharp knife... "

I gave a friend some of the thin Victorinix paring knives. One night at his place while helping to put a meal together with a bunch of people one of his friends asked if the knife was sharp as he needed to slice a few veggies. My friend said yeah, and when the guy used it he said wow, it was sharp. Then my friend told him to use the sharp side and not the back of the blade :^)
 
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