Advice on Kitchen Knives Please

originally posted by: AugustusMasonicus

originally posted by: IAMTAT
Sorry.


...also you forgot to edge the driveway this week.

I was busy fertilizing. Again.

That reminds me...stop s#!tting in my shrubs.

i buy blades based on the steel that is used.

stainless is a no go. i use 1095.

i use "old hickory" because my grandmother had one (and was less than $20). sharp as a razor and holds an edge like trump holds a grudge.

heres the problem with 1095 steel. it will rust if you let water dry on it, so dry it off after you wash it. it will also develop dark spots from acids called a patina. looks super ugly in the beginning, but eventually the blade turns bluish black with use. my grannies was black.

so my 2 cents is focus on the steel (1095), then get a brand with a good warranty. and use a wood cutting block (plastics will dull your blade real quick).

a reply to: stormson

I think many of us knife guys know all about carbon 1095 steel. It's kind of where we all started. To this day, it is one of the finest knife steels known to man, but it is also the least durable for edge retention.

I was almost going to mention Old Hickory knives, because you can get these exquisitely sharp, BUT they don't stay that way long. And, they rust if even exposed to the slightest moisture, like humidity. Again, I think we all know good carbon steel is the best, but when we're talking about kitchen knives, maybe not so much...unless a person knows exactly the steel they're dealing with.

What I would do is soak the knives in mustard and vinegar to get a good patina on them, and then re-sharpen. Just a little oil on the patina, and the knives stay sharp and resist corrosion. The vinegar will wipe out the edge, but it can be re-sharpened better than ever. The mustard adds a cool patina effect.

I've got some Mora's I've done this way and they are brutally sharp and they stay that way, even with the Skandi grind on them.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

everything ive read, and personal experience, says 1095 holds an edge rather well. my old hickory, while cheap and ugly, works very well. it is by far not the best knife, but i like the steel.

what i was primarily trying to say was get good steel, and the rest will follow. i went old hickory for nostalgia mostly, however, i wont buy anything stainless.

the best steel makes the best blade. then the cutting edge and cross section of the blade. then the handle. the name comes last.

a wustof 8" chef knife of "high carbon stainless steel" (what ever that is) is $144 on amazon. looks great! great name, but $144 great? with unknown steel? im skeptical. hows the warranty?

the vinegar mustard trick works really well for 1095. also the patina is easy to clean off if you hit it from time to time, or so ive read. my knife is so cheap that im just gonna let it do its thing and see how it turn out.

originally posted by: IAMTAT
Calling all professional and amateur chefs...as well as people who generally know their way around a kitchen and all cooking tools utilized within.

I am wanting to buy Mrs. TAT a set of top quality kitchen knives.

We recently bought a new set of Hessler that I'm extremely happy with. The wife was skeptical, but she loves them too...

I really like the in-drawer wooden holder that is easy to clean, and the steak knives are extremely sharp. the best things are you don't need to sharpen them, and they have a lifetime guarantee - and I even had to test the guarantee because the really cool whisk (push it down and it spins really fast) wasn't working very well - all they needed was a problem description picture of the box as proof of purchase, and they sent a replacement, no questions asked, and no need to return the defective one.

originally posted by: stormson
a wustof 8" chef knife of "high carbon stainless steel" (what ever that is) is $144 on amazon.

That's cheap for a good chef's knife, my professional-grade ones were significantly more when I was cooking. For a home chef $150 is a fair amount for something that you will less likely devote time to maintaining as much as professional knives and it won't dramatically impede performance as it would with a higher end knife.

I sharpen my Wusthofs a couple of times a year depending on which ones they are and they've held up for going on 15 years now since I stopped cooking professionally.

a reply to: stormson

Well, here we go, right back to angles again. 1095 steel is a great steel for knives, certain knives, but not all. 1095 has a Rockwell hardness of about C 55 which is at the lower end of the scale for edged tools. This is a good thing in some respects though. And, it all has to do with angles. Because 1095 is a softer steel it can take a much finer edge than a harder steel. You can put the same edge on both, but the harder steel edge will be much more prone to cracking and chipping.

You mentioned you didn't know what "High Carbon Stainless" steel was. It's kind of a bastardization of terminology really, lol. What it probably should say is "Stainless with less chromium in it" steel. So, an example of a high carbon stainless is something like 420 C Stainless. It's not as hard as 440 C stainless (at a Rockwell hardness of 60), but it's still "stainless" because it does have chrome in it. 1095 steel, on the other hand, is considered "High Carbon Steel" (notice the omission of the word 'stainless'?) and is therefore not considered stainless at all.

On the other end of the spectrum (and to really confuse matters here) we have products like D2 steel. D2 steel is often referred to as "tool steel", meaning they make cutting tools for machinery out of it. D2 is very high carbon steel with very little chromium in it (only about 11%). A D2 steel would be considered "semi-stainless" and has a hardness of C64, so it's way up there on the hardness scale. D2 is considered one of the best knife steels, but it is very difficult to work with sharpening wise, so you don't see it very often in low to mid-grade knives. It's also pretty expensive.