Sitting at work…

Well it is that time again. A test is running here so I’m stuck waiting for it to finish.

I’ve been spending some time trying to figure what I should replace my incredibly crappy knives with. My knives are the “gotten free in College for filling out online surveys” kind. Plastic handles, cheap thin stainless, crappy serrations.

I started out by looking at the normal names, and I found myself completely unimpressed. The workmanship of even “high end” Henckels was extremely inconsistent. They had double beveled edges, and the sharpening was not the same angle throughout the blade.

Since I’m also into Japanese swords, I figured I would look at Japanese made knives. After some googling (and a trip to the local kitchen store) I found “Shun” knives. They are made in the same san-mei style that a tanto would be made out of, and also they use the same steel that is used in performance swords. The steel is probably overkill for a kitchen knife, but the workmanship is quite good.

I also found some videos for them done by Alton Brown (the guy from good eats): (Warning! the following videos contain advertising!)

This is an ad for their steel. Its just a tool steel, not a “super steel” as they would lead you to believe, but they do discribe the san-mei process used to make the knives.

This video is actually kind of useful. Alton goes over ways of cutting things so that you keep all your fingers.

I picked up one of their knives, a 6 inch utility knife in order to “try them out” before deciding on buying more of them.

It looks like they are priced like Dell. They have something like 10 different sets, each with different knives in them. It also looks like the sets are the same price as just buying the knives individually. So much for saving by buying in bulk. Will post more later… maybe I’ll grab a photo of the knife tomorrow when I’m at home.