Stocking a Kitchen

[foodguy]

Originally Posted by Dmax

I prefer a fine grit ceramic steel for Japanese knives which makes honing easy.
On some Japanese knives I have to use a piece of sandpaper to dull the heel of the blade to protect the middle finger when using the pinch grip. Sometimes I also sand the edges on top of the blade right in front of the handle to protect my index finger.
i use a fine grit ceramic and it is easier ... but still ... when you've got different angles on either side of the blade, getting them to agree has been a challenge for me.
I know other people who have done the sanding of the spine, too ... something called a dremel tool is apparently quite useful (if it isn't in the kitchen, i dont' know about it). I guess my knife callous has built up enough, but it's never been an issue for me.

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by foodguy

it really does depend on what kind of cooking you're doing. when i first used gyutous, i was really sold on them. but i have found that in the 2-3 years since, i've reverted back to my wusthoff. the japanese knives are great for precision cutting (hence their popularity in restaurants that serve microscopic portions prettily arranged). For most home cooking chores -- chopping, rough dice, etc.-- the heavier germans just seem to do better. or maybe it's just that i had 20 years on that wusthoff already and reverted to what seemed more familiar. I will say that for me ... a fumbling knife geek ... the japanese do seem to be more of a PITA to keep honed. the Germans are so easy.
I think I agree with this. Especially on the precision cutting and think that that explains why they are ubiquitous in fine dining/long tasting menu type restaurants. I'm sure your familiarity with germans had something to do with it, which explains why I prefer Japanese (pretty much all I've ever used professionally), but what you say above seems right.

Originally Posted by Dmax

I prefer a fine grit ceramic steel for Japanese knives which makes honing easy.
Ceramic does make it easier to hone, but they are still harder than German IMO. Japanese are hard knives to maintain well, but I think they are very much worth the work. Plus, taking an hour every Saturday morning to sharpen my knives is kind of zen for me.

 

[HgaleK]

When yall say that they're a pain to keep honed, do you mean that they lose their edge quickly, or that when the edge is gone it's a pain to get back?

Edit: Also, what's the right edge for a chef's knife like? smooth paper slicing sharp, shaving sharp, cut you if you glance at it sharp?

 

[foodguy]

it's hard to get back. they usually have an unequal bevel (i'm sure there's a term for it), so you have to sharpen one side at a different angle from the other. often it's a chisel edge, so you only sharpen one side (but you still have to take some off the flat side). a chef's knife should be as sharp as you can make it.

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by HgaleK

Edit: Also, what's the right edge for a chef's knife like? smooth paper slicing sharp, shaving sharp, cut you if you glance at it sharp?
I want my knife so goddamn sharp that if I even think about the blade, my finger starts bleeding. The sharper the better, and, counterintuitively, the sharper it is the safer it is.

Originally Posted by foodguy

it's hard to get back. they usually have an unequal bevel (i'm sure there's a term for it), so you have to sharpen one side at a different angle from the other. often it's a chisel edge, so you only sharpen one side (but you still have to take some off the flat side). a chef's knife should be as sharp as you can make it.
Yep. Although this is more true of "true" Japanese knives than Western style Japanese. My Shuns, for example, both have a symmetrical bevel, but my gyuto's blade is assymetrical. Which is harder to get, but still, it's all about muscle memory and repetition. BTW, I think the term is just "single bevel knife" but I'm not absolutely sure on that. Speaking of, do you have a favorite producer for true Japanese style blades? It looks like my next job might have me breaking down a lot of medium to large fish, so I think I will pick up a deba in the next few weeks.

 

[HgaleK]

Ah. I'm not sure about the uneven bevels, but I hate chisel grinds. Give me a flat grind or a convex edge any day of the week over either.

As far as the edge goes, once a week is considered a long time between edge maintenance by a lot of knife people, especially for a blade that receives regular use. Sharpening daily is almost a necessity for a higher end steel, where it is capable of being hardened well and has a composition that's conducive to abrasion resistance. Because it's a good steel, it should have minimal damage after use, and take only a few strokes to return the edge, while at the end of the week, you'll have to remove a lot of metal that doesn't want to move.

Having been bored and curious in the last half hour, I've done a bit of research, and here's a breakdown of the steel used in a few popular Japanese and German knives. With the exception of Global (it's Japanese, right?), they have very distinctly different opinions on the "right" steel.

Wusthof and Henckels: They use X50CrMoV15, hardened around 54-56 RC. This is actually a low carbon steel (high carbon steel is about 1% carbon and up), though advertised as a high carbon steel. It's got a ton of chromium in it, which allows for excellent corrosion resistance and better edge retention but can leave steel brittle. Due to its low carbon content and high chromium content, it can't be hardened very well, thus leaving it soft and easy to sharpen, but unable to take and hold the same edge a better steel.

Chroma: They use 301 stainless. I'd like to actually take a moment and cry for anyone who paid the outrageous price for these "high carbon" blades (.15% actually

). 301 is junk steel that kids in shop practice on. Some of the low end chinese freebie kitchen knives that they give away use this. It hardens between 52 and 54 RC, is considered unusable for cutting applications by most people.

Shun and Tojiro use VG10, which may be perfect for a chef's knife. It's a true high carbon steel with an alloy makeup that allows it to take an excellent edge, hold it well, and not be too painful to sharpen. It tend to have an RC from 59-61.

Shun also uses SG2, which has super high carbon (1.25-45), vanadium, and molybdenum (both at almost unheard of levels) and hardens reliably around 64 (part of what makes the super steels super is that they have the "toughness" to get incredibly hard without becoming impossibly brittle- though this is often accompanies by abrasion resistance that makes them almost impossible to sharpen without specialty stones).

Takeda uses Aogami Super, which is also a super high carbon (1.4-1.5%) and, along with several good alloying elements, has a very high tungsten content. It's apparently used by Takeda consistently at 62RC.


*Whole point of this post is that the german knives tend to use low carbon steels, which could probably be sharpened on a dinner table, while japanese knives tend to use steels that are hard to the point of sucking to sharpen (with the exception of VG10, which is a great compromise).

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by HgaleK

Ah. I'm not sure about the uneven bevels, but I hate chisel grinds. Give me a flat grind or a convex edge any day of the week over either. As far as the edge goes, once a week is considered a long time between edge maintenance by a lot of knife people, especially for a blade that receives regular use. Sharpening daily is almost a necessity for a higher end steel, where it is capable of being hardened well and has a composition that's conducive to abrasion resistance. Because it's a good steel, it should have minimal damage after use, and take only a few strokes to return the edge, while at the end of the week, you'll have to remove a lot of metal that doesn't want to move.
Are you interchanging the words sharpening with honing? Honing is used to maintain an already existing edge. Sharpening creates a new edge. I have seen some major knife enthusiasts at work and at their best, and the thought of actually sharpening on a wetstone, even if it was just a few strokes on a super fine grit finishing stone, would make them cry. That said, in an 8 hour shift at work, I might hone my knife up to 20 or more times, depending on what I'm doing.

 

[HgaleK]

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

Are you interchanging the words sharpening with honing? Honing is used to maintain an already existing edge. Sharpening creates a new edge. I have seen some major knife enthusiasts at work and at their best, and the thought of actually sharpening on a wetstone, even if it was just a few strokes on a super fine grit finishing stone, would make them cry.

Maybe? You have a bevel, and then a microbevel (the cutting edge, which you can see as glint on the edge of a blade as you turn it). After use, the microbevel chips, folds, and tears, at which point to drag it across a stone/stick/strop of your choice to restore the cutting edge to its previous condition. It involves removing a miniscule amount of metal- unnoticable without a magnfiying glass, but its still kinda creating a new edge. Is that honing or sharpening to you?

 

[kwilkinson]

Originally Posted by HgaleK

Maybe? You have a bevel, and then a microbevel (the cutting edge, which you can see as glint on the edge of a blade as you turn it). After use, the microbevel chips, folds, and tears, at which point to drag it across a stone/stick/strop of your choice to restore the cutting edge to its previous condition. It involves removing a miniscule amount of metal- unnoticable without a magnfiying glass, but its still kinda creating a new edge. Is that honing or sharpening to you?
Ahh, yeah, that is textbook honing to me, if done on a stick/steel/strop. I don't think anyone would do that on a stone, as then they'd just have to hone it again on the steel to get the edge perfectly symmetrical.

 

[HgaleK]

Ah- my mistake then. I call reprofiling an edge what you call sharpening.

While on topic, here's a pretty cool picture of a knife edge at 230x zoom after a pass with a 100 grit stone. I used to have a few laying around of a ZDP-189 edge after a full sharpening and polished stropping, which was perfect even at high magnification. They took a picture every time they passed it through a small piece of nylon rope, and it was pretty incredible to see.

 

[Trompe le Monde]

i hone (using a steel...honing steel) every day with use. until i feel uneasy just drawing my finger across the edge.

sharpening... only when honing becomes ineffective. this could be 3 months to 6 months. on an oiled whetstone at home, or dropping off it a local store