i don't care much about cooking but i live alone and have to cook for myself, but my cutting game is lacking, i assume it's in part due to using some shitty knife i bought on wallmart like 3 years ago that has no sharpness left. anyone knows a good beginner-but-still-better-than-wallmart-quality knives i could buy and the best sharpeners out there?
Victorinox Fibrox Pro is your knife.You might want a diamond sharpener eg a Sharpal 162N. Not a bad price for a beginner.You can also add a sharpening/honing steel rod, but the fine side of the Sharpal is supposed to work as that as well.
>>21941090Victorinox Fibrox Pro *8-inch chef's knifeAlso, buy a small paring knife while you're there.
kiwi knives are solid, the steel is soft enough to give you a new edge with a honing rod.
>>21941106>solidOpposite this. They bend and flex too much. Won't say they're not soft, though, but a 7" chef's knife is not ideal.
>>21941035what's with the oval/egg-shape pattern on the middle one near the blade?
>>21941138granton edge
>>21941142neat thank you
>>21941172They are meant only for slicing, but don't really offer any value for chopping/dicing. The piece of whatever it's going through has to span the blade fully across the dimple or else it provides no value. Hence, it won't help you chopping onions, etc., or anything else with small pieces.
>>21941110OP is clearly a home cook, a 7" santoku would be fine
>>21941405Not one that bends all the time and is too short unless he wants stitches.
>>21941035get a stone with 240 and 1000 sides. pick an angle and stick to it forever. i find a bit of detergent in the water helps things along and then once you're done, dry the blade and run it through some paper 5-10 times
>>21941408>anyone knows a good beginner-but-still-better-than-wallmart-quality knives i could buy and the best sharpeners out there? okay then OP should buck up for an entry level shun or miyabi santoku, pay the $100-$150 or whatever and learn how to take care of a knife, buy a 1000 3000 stone or a 800 6000 stone, a honing rod, and learn how to sharpen a knife and take care of it, but for a home cook that maintenance is probably 1 year and by that point they might as well just take it to a professional sharpener once a year and just buy a honing rod and a knife and skip the whetstone
>>21941035I would just go to a local knife shop and feel whichevevr feels like the best one, research shapes too, there's lots of different styles of chef knives. I like a chinese cleaver, I find it to be the most versatile and best for home cooks.
>>21941405>knife, chef '\_(>__<)__l>knife, japan \(@Ä)/
>>219414057" is big though
>>21941035Here's a pretty complete guide: https://keplite.com/how-to-buy-kitchen-knives/. It's a pretty long read but you'll be able to make a decent decision based off of that.
>>21941441oh, then a 6" petty knife is all they need
give me your opinion on chef knoif vs japanese form
>>21941093>>21941090Biggest scam in the kitchen knife world. They're worth 12 dollars tops. The only good thing about them is that they have a distal taper.
>>21941035Sam's club has a two pack santoku knife set for $11 and it's made of a steel that keeps sharp and doesn't barely need any maintenance.
>>21942308Forgot image
>>21941035I wouldn't bother learning to sharpen yourself, in all honesty. it can be fun for hobbyists but it's not worth it for the average person. why? because it's a pain to learn properly, and it costs like $5-$10 to get your knife professionally sharpened. buy a decent knife (doesn't need to be top of the line, but don't go bottom tier either), take it in to get sharpened roughly twice a year, and maintain it with a honing steel in the meantime. that's more than enough maintenance for the average home cook.
>>21942312Not hard to learn. A good stone costs like 40 bucks. Once you are proficient it takes 2-5 minutes to bring a knife back to shaving sharpness. Most "pro" knife sharpeners use uncooled powered abrasives that ruin the edge temper making your knives go dull faster. For cheap knives twice a year sharpening is extremely generous, but totally dependent on knife usage.Takes an hour or so of concerted effort to get a decent edge as a total newb.
I use fujitora knives from amazon jp because they're very cheap, just barely more expensive than a victorinox fibrox for me and sharpen them on a sharpal 162N diamond plateI recently got a leather strop and I'm about to buy some diamond compound but the edge I get from the sharpal is decent enough
>>21942376Btw people say Fujitora/Tojiro have thick grinds but compared to western knives they definitely aren't thick
>>21942308>made of a steel that keeps sharp and doesn't barely need any maintenancethis is impossible
>>21942508All I know is I can bone a whole ass chicken with one of those and it'll slice a tomato after.
>>21942312>>21941090any honing rod would do?
>>21942382for knive people anything that doesnt buckle under the thumbnail is a thick grind
>>21941090im looking into diamond sharpeners, they dont need to be wet like normal sharpeners?
>>21944243All sharpening should be done with coolant. Water is a lubricant as well and helps keep swarf clear and the grit cutting efficiently.
>>21942308>>21942310I got this set off Amazon a few years back for $20-some.
how come I can buy a cutting tool for my lathe that will chew through 1000 feet of steel before it even thinks about needing sharpening, but a knife that doesn't cut through anything harder than an onion needs constant maintenance? it can't be because the knife is sharper if I consider how many times I've sliced my hand up picking up endmills.
>>21944359ultimately its down to chip thickness.tooling can have thick wedges for cutting edge, almost no reliev and still cut, because the chip is cunt hair thin and happily bends away. Look at a generic spiral drill.A knife is supposed to cut through hard vegetables in a 50/50 ratio. Try pushcutting a carrot or onion with a splitting axe
>>21944359Edge geometry and steel type. My very hard carbon steel knive's edges last for months with no honing. Get something better than a kiwi if you don't want constant maintenance.
>>21941035Don't buy a full knife set btw, you really only need a single chef's knife (OR a single santoku knife) and a bread knife, maybe a paring knife if you know what you want to do with it. Don't fall for the trick of buying both a santoku and a chef's knife, they're used for the same shit, and whichever one you use is just personal preference. Knife manufacturer's add both types to knife sets to pad the cost.
>>21944359Almost like a lathe isn't a knife or somethingfucking wackadoo, I know
i dont think u need any quality knives. buy a whetstone and sharpen your cheapy knives you own, even badly it will get the job done. ive seen too many people who dont know proper technique get some gnarly cuts
>>21944243Diamond plates do not need to be wet, you should not use any They won't generate enough heat to affect the heat treatment
>>21941035>buy serrated>never worry about it againunless you're a professional chef, you don't need straight edge blades.
>>21944698Why shouldn't I use water?
>>21945058>proofen
>>21944243The instructions for the 162N do not mention water. Don't know if that holds true for all diamond-plate sharpeners.>>21942544It has to be steel harder than the blade, at least 9" so you can slide a blade easily, preferably with a hilt so you don't slide your knife into your gripping hand. The good name brands (Victorinox, Wusthof) sell them under $50.
>>21945443Try using a diamond plate dry and you'll notice it cuts slower than with water and gets clogged with swarf. You don't need water, but you really should use water.
>>21945446You might want to tell Sharpal, then. Nevertheless, their instructions don't mention to wet the stone, only to clean it with a brush afterwards.
how easy is it to mess sharpening up? i just ordered a good knife but i could practice with my cheap one while i wait for it
>>21945841Surprisingly easy. If you're not doing it right, it gets duller. So you think you need to keep going. It keeps getting duller...
>>21945865It gets even worse if you can't sort it out, because if you give up, you either have to toss it when no one's looking, or have it professionally repaired. But any pro would look at it and immediately know that you tried sharpening it yourself and failed miserably, so you now feel ashamed.
>>21945841unless you are using a grinding wheel it's basically impossible to ruin a knife by sharpening it. even if you make a mistake you can just correct it.
>>21945841The most common way that noobs "ruin" a knife when they're sharpening is by putting big scratches on the flats. If you're paying attention to what you're doing you won't destroy your edge, especially if you're checking your work after every 10 or 20 passes.Get your practice down with a cheap knife and then move to nicer ones. The most important concept for any beginner knife sharpener is proper burr formation and removal. Forming a burr means that you have created an edge where the two sides of that edge are "touching". If you do not have proper apex formation it is impossible to refine an edge further than that.Getting shaving sharp edges with a 1k stone is a sign that you've done all the foundation work correctly and then you can start edge refinement with higher grits after that.A more advanced method, but totally valid is to work an edge right up until you create a burr. This can be done with low grit stones to make super sharp edges, but it takes a good feel for the process.
>>21945838If you're just sharpening an edge it's fine dry with light pressure, in theory bad practice, but still fine.I reserve my diamond plates for mainly very heavy work that will clog it up. In that case water is important and makes a big difference.
>>21945996Again, you might want to tell Sharpal about your findings.
>>21946000Their instructions are only for sharpening an edge. Not for thinning knives, edge repair/chip removal, flattening blade roads/single bevel knives or any of the other heavy use stuff that you may use a diamond plate for. Adding a lubricant = faster cutting, more easily.Diamond plates are also great for flattening whetstones and you NEED to use water for that. Try it for yourself and see the difference. I've spent hundreds of hours grinding away on diamond plates and whetstones. Lastly I noticed one of their selling points is that you don't need messy water or oils to use their plate. They aren't going to contradict themselves.
>>21946011Yeah, definitely want to tell Sharpal. You might even trigger a recall.
>>21946015Lol retard honelet
so water or no water for diamond sharpeners wtf
>>21947277Light work: not necessary, but it is good practice and makes things more efficientHeavy work: recommendedFlattening whetstones: essential
Basically you never put them in the dish washer, and dry stainless steel thoroughly.Don't pay a lot for c100 steel knives, despite the brands and retail cost they are all relatively even in quality. Some have better handles, better profiles, more suitable bevels but ultimately all your c100 knives are domestic and you should only pay domestic prices for them. Knife wankers Begone. The only professional grade knives I have are a victorinox boning knife, because you can't really have a c100 boning knife, a small carbon steel sushi knife for very fine cuts, which i rarely use, and a professional kitchen knife which I always use but isn't really that much better then a domestic one, I just happen to got it at a good price. Fake Damascus, that wavy pattern with an acid etch, goes hand in hand with overpriced domestic knives with stupid grips and bevels.
Sharpening, dead easy. Use a steel occasionally. Every few work hours. At home nobody cuts anything for hours on end and commercially you use a guillotine, food processor, for most bench work so only senior chefs will spend hours working bench during service. Use a stone only when needed, when your bevel is poor, again most chefs send their knives to a local knife guy for this every few months because these guys only charge like $5 a knife. I send mine in to the local butchery specialist even though I can do it myself Never use diamond tools, they're far too aggressive, and anyone who uses one of those stupid V sharpeners should be slapped because they literally shave off both the knives bevel and the stainless coating, and the tempered steel. Slapped twice. Laminated knives, the very thin Chinese ones only hold a rough edge so you should sharpen them with ceramic. The bottom of a coffee cup, these are $5 knives.
>>21947277Read the instructions.
>>21947277Don't be a retarded NPC like that one guy. Use your brain and think for yourself. Imagine being so fucking braindead retarded you need to read a manual about using an abrasive plate correctly and then revering it like a holy text on sharpening.
>>21947277it doesnt matter, you should follow up with something finer anyway
>>21944351what absolute dogshit
>>21944359Because your lathe cutting tool is a piece of carbide/diamond and kitchen knives are made of just steel
