Me and my Miracle Blades

[gogoblender 3,072]

Yay I bought em!

 

 

 

 

Chef tony approved!

 

lol, when I was cashing them out, one of the attendants begged me to come back after writing up a review of the products. Well they're home now, and... well they ARE pretty sharp. Rather thin though, and kind of wavy. I've never seen the add, but they were so cheap. 19.99 and we split the price, so ten bux each. Course that depends on how long the blades of eternal sharpness...stay sharp for

 

Anyone bought this? Yeah I may have been suckered... but the knives we were using were pretty much squashing tomatoes instead of cutting them. And test prove that just the weight of the knife alone is enough to cut through a twirling pineapple in mid air.

 

Where can I find a pineapple twirling in mid air

 

 

gogo

[Dragon Brother 619]

Nice knife set I work at kmart down here in Aus (general merchandise store) and a couple of months ago we had a man coming in a selling similar knives. He was cutting through steel with them, and chopping boards and tomatoes...so they definitely look impressive. And these ones were meant to be guaranteed to stay sharp for ever I think. And all of it for a cheap one time price too lol...he got pretty annoying though...taking up space and making crowds in the middle of the store.

[dreeft 9]

Chef Tony looks a little suspect.. I'm not sure he's trustworthy

 

Can never have enough knives though and for $10 a set, even if they last 2 months, that's still good value.

[Ryanrocker 200]

Chef Tony looks a little suspect.. I'm not sure he's trustworthy

 

ROFL! Thought the same exact thing first time I saw him

[chattius 2,535]

If these are the same I looked at a presentation then it are saws and not knives. They have little tooths. So you do not a clean cut, but more a sawing, destroying fine fibres of the food this way. If the handle/grip of such a 'saw' is mounted a bit out of line you will never be able to do a clean cut.

 

Folded steel or pattern welded, ceramic, or dual metal rat tooth are real knives.

 

Rat teeth are self sharpening and always growing. They have a hard front and a soft back. The back gets used up more quickly and so a rat tooth is kinda self sharpening. Which is different to staying sharp by not loosing parts as in ceramic knives.

I think rat teeth knives are very expensive, like 1000 euro. The hard part is like diamond.

 

Homepage of german knife maker Nesmuk

The rat tooth is copyrighted by the above company. The start page shows a pattern welded steel. If you click at collection and then diamor you see the rat tooth knife. There was a german science show about sharpest knives in the world and the Diamor won.

 

It's still best to make your kitchen knife yourself

I did mine 20 years ago and it is still sharp, pattern welded, 801 layers steel. My oldest daughter will do her first kitchen knife in autumn breaks. A local smith does workshops, from iron making in clay ovens, katana or kitchen knife making or how to rebuild a historical weapon. His rebuild of a sword found at Sutton Hoo is now at the german knife and sword museum. He learned from several sword makers and said that trying to find out how a historical sword was done is most of the fun.

Pictures of the remade Sutton Hoo blade

 

I remember him saying at one of the workgroups: If german fighters would have needed a katana they would have forged it. There was the technology. But germany was 90% forest and a two edged shorter sword was more effective, no room in forest for swings, it was more thrusting and hacking.

 

Vikings and normans used to buy multilayer swords in germany.

Rebuild of a 9th century sword

 

If you look at the last picture how much the sword could be bended without breaking... And if you let it go it swings back to its traight normal shape.

Edited September 7, 2010 by chattius

[podgie_bear 184]

Loved the post Chattius, I couldn't persuade you to come over and teach me all about knife making could I? I haven't had a really good kitchen knife since I used my Grandfather's favourite knife. That one did not look very special, but it would slice through meat and bones as if they were soft butter!

 

PS. Bring your tuba, along with my wife's clarinet and my trumpet we could play some polkas.

Edited September 7, 2010 by podgie_bear

[gogoblender 3,072]

Chef Tony looks a little suspect.. I'm not sure he's trustworthy

 

ROFL! Thought the same exact thing first time I saw him

 

 

Hey... Dreeft and Ryan leave Chef Tony alone ... okay he does look suspect

 

If these are the same I looked at a presentation then it are saws and not knives. They have little tooths. So you do not a clean cut, but more a sawing, destroying fine fibres of the food this way. If the handle/grip of such a 'saw' is mounted a bit out of line you will never be able to do a clean cut.

 

Folded steel or pattern welded, ceramic, or dual metal rat tooth are real knives.

 

Rat teeth are self sharpening and always growing. They have a hard front and a soft back. The back gets used up more quickly and so a rat tooth is kinda self sharpening. Which is different to staying sharp by not loosing parts as in ceramic knives.

I think rat teeth knives are very expensive, like 1000 euro. The hard part is like diamond.

 

Homepage of german knife maker Nesmuk

The rat tooth is copyrighted by the above company. The start page shows a pattern welded steel. If you click at collection and then diamor you see the rat tooth knife. There was a german science show about sharpest knives in the world and the Diamor won.

 

It's still best to make your kitchen knife yourself

I did mine 20 years ago and it is still sharp, pattern welded, 801 layers steel. My oldest daughter will do her first kitchen knife in autumn breaks. A local smith does workshops, from iron making in clay ovens, katana or kitchen knife making or how to rebuild a historical weapon. His rebuild of a sword found at Sutton Hoo is now at the german knife and sword museum. He learned from several sword makers and said that trying to find out how a historical sword was done is most of the fun.

Pictures of the remade Sutton Hoo blade

 

I remember him saying at one of the workgroups: If german fighters would have needed a katana they would have forged it. There was the technology. But germany was 90% forest and a two edged shorter sword was more effective, no room in forest for swings, it was more thrusting and hacking.

 

Vikings and normans used to buy multilayer swords in germany.

Rebuild of a 9th century sword

 

If you look at the last picture how much the sword could be bended without breaking... And if you let it go it swings back to its traight normal shape.

 

Chattius, you NEVER stop hooking me with your posts. Best read here of the morning.

 

Loved the post Chattius, I couldn't persuade you to come over and teach me all about knife making could I?

 

 

No Podgie... First my place...THEN yours... I think after this Chattius is gonna get booked up a year in advance for Blade Mastery Courses

 

Really well said on the part about not having a good blade. I dunno, it's just something we let go. I'm kinda strange about sharpening knives, I never really understood it, and it seems like so much hassle

 

Yes, dreeft... EXACTLY what I was thinking about this...it's just a plain ole good deal for 20 bux.

 

And I get to meet Chef Tony in the mail. He's going to send me an official congratulatory certificate of purchase that I can hang up in my kitchen.

 

Stoked

 

 

gogo

[chattius 2,535]

Well I learned to do my own knife, but it will take me a month to do one and I would need a smithy

 

It is somehow more fun if you do something with your own hands: use your self made knife and pan, products from your own garden and do the lunch yourself, somehow it tastes way better. (even if you 'ruined' it, strange paradoxa)

 

I get the tickets for the weaponmaking workshops more or less for free since our company sends our apprentices

to his smithy to learn real smithing and he sends his apprentice to our company to learn advanced welding technologies.

 

To speed the process of knife making my daughter will start with premade damascus steel. It is hard and after a while boring work to do pattern welding. Trying one welding process should be enough to understand it. So she will use pre-made leo-damast. Leo damast is made from old gun barrels of Leopard (nicknamed leo) tanks mixed with another high quality steel. It results in a pattern looking like the spots on leopard fur. Also the smithy has a 1 ton hydraulic hammer, which eases all a bit.

 

 

 

German video about knife making, but don't drop dead if you see the price of the knife when it is sold at shop: 3000+ Euro

But hell, it is sharp. nearly same technic I was taught 20 years ago.

And if you look at the cook comparing his old knife (which wasn't cheap too) with the new one...

I can't imagine how sharp the rat tooth technology would be, even sharper than this.

 

And speaking this long about knives, I think I will visit my daughter in evening at hospital and buy her a first swiss army knife before.

Only 58mm long, scissor, pincer, fingernail tool, file, orange peeler, pen screw driver with a perfect size for the ones at glasses and a sharp knife to cut apples. All you need at hospital or if she is okay again for summer camps. And so small it even fits on a keyring.

 

[FrostElfGuard 9]

Re: knives... if they bend... yikes! Careful! Good luck with the knives!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmmm.

 

Garage Sales for the Win!

 

We sold a knife block full of knives (sharp ones too) for $1 CDN (about 0.80 cents US) at our garage sale. {Made me cringe considering how much they cost to buy}...

 

So, my advice to everyone out there is: Garage sales and thrift shops... you never know when you'll find something of amazingly high quality for very little.

 

My Mom got a mink coat (I kid you not!) for $10. $10 tiny dollars! Mink! (Ok, so it was the 70s... and $10 was about worth $100 is today {judging by how many groceries you can buy with it today}).

 

I bought 3 ultra-high end golf clubs at a thrift shop for a friend... they wanted $9.99 each (new would cost $450 each IIRC).

 

Buys like these don't last long in the shops... but think about it: When people divorce, or move, or give up a hobby, ... or... shudder... die... someone who has no connection the items wants to dump them... and a charity shop is a good idea...

Edited September 7, 2010 by FrostElfGuard

[gogoblender 3,072]

I'm trying to keep me eyes open as much as possible for garage sales. It's amazing what's not valuable to one person...but so valuable to another.

 

Chattius what you said about these knives being saws... yer right lol it's taking me some times to get used to it... I may end up adding a singular knife if I can find something cool on sale too. Chattius I'd heard a while back that sharpening a knife also had something to do with aligning the molecules of the blade... this true?

 

 

gogo

[Lord of the North 10]

I found that the best knife for cutting tomatoes is a bread knife, and if you look at garage sales also look to the ones that are fund raisers. Dawn and I bought a queen size sleeper sofa for $145 US and we got it from a fund raising yard sale for Habitat for Humanity . Biggest thing about a knife comes down to personal preference. How does it feel in your hand, how is the weight of it, is it part of a set or can you buy individual pieces. Also look at second hand shops, church thrift stores, etc. You can find all kinds of things if you look around. Look through the old clothes, you might find your next Zombie costume for Halloween .

[chattius 2,535]

@gogo

Depends on the knife. Pattern welded knives have layers of hard and soft metal. So the soft is used up and there will be a sharp edge at the connection to the hard layer. If the soft layer is used up too much, you have to sharpen the knife by removing some of the too much remaining hard layer. What you have to use depends on the metal pattern and shape of the knife. I use a band sander for mine, something like this, 2 times a year, and the knife is used daily:

 

Homogen steel knives can be sharpened by abrasing damaged parts with a honing steel, band sander or some of the sharpening tools from TV-ads. I prefer a honing steel. Using it is somehow automatic, if I wait for water to boil or something like this, I sharpen knives. The honing steel has an easy to reach place at kitchen wall.

 

Then there are scythes/sickles. These are the only ones I remember right away where crystal structure is changed in the sharpening process. In sharpening process I mean sharpening after you used it and it got dull. Sharpening at making a blade is something else.

You do cold hammering to do a strain hardening. In german it is called 'Dengeln' in english I think 'peening'. You hammer just 1-3 millimetres of the edge, hardening it this way. Scythes have a thin blade compared to knives to save weight and so the peening is a good way for sharpening. If you hit stones you have to use a band sander or whetstone to remove damaged parts.

 

Peening a steel scythe

 

Peening a copper sickle

 

I have to admit I am not good in peening like the old farmers around me. I hope I got all the english words right. Added pictures and videos to show what I mean.

[chattius 2,535]

Totally forgot this thread:

My daughter asked me what type of knife she should do in the work shop and we agreed that a good kitchen needs at least 5 real good knives, 4 of them we had already:

 

A bread knife, toothed: you need it for bread and to 'saw' ham or frozen stuff - bought one when we married, 80 german marks, not having much money then it was outch, but it is still sharp after nearly 2 decades, so no mistake.

 

A chef's knife: heavy enough for hacking, rounded blade to fine whip herbs. I made one of those myself

 

A paring knife: also self made , an absolute must have

 

A boning knife: bought a good one with a stiff blade (boars, deers) 5 years back for around 80 euro. You sometimes have to do brute force with these ones, so you want to be sure that they don't break.

 

What we thought was missing: a fillet knife. thin and flexible blade to move along the backbone of a fish or to remove its skin, long enough to cut a carp in half (11 inches),

 

My oldest finished her first self made knife in autumn breaks and added the wood handle last week: a 11 inch fillet knife, spending around 70 hours of work (including learning the technic).

 

 

QUESTION

There are hundreds of different knife types, but which ones do you really need and then at best quality?

Edited November 25, 2010 by chattius

[gogoblender 3,072]

Great descriptions. Here's the million dollar question. If you could only choose one... which one would it be? I've been finding that we've been having a lot of fun with the new bunch of knives we got... but I always mostly return to a long one that alligns properly to the edge of the board. I'm not sure I'm so happy with all my knives being mini-saws now...the cool STar frit knife which was a real blade and which we could actually sharpen had huge breath of use.

 

 

 

gogo

[chattius 2,535]

The funny answer: none of the 5 I mentioned. There is a size between the chef's and the paring, the so called universal ones. They would be the best compromise.

 

But when having a chef and a paring already, there is no real need for the universal in my using. The chef knife is sharp enough even for tomatoes. I have to sharpen it with a special beand which I wet with water and put on my band sander.

 

One tip: If you spend 100$ for a knife, ask the seller how to sharpen it. Best is to use the same steel if the knife is from homogeneous steel, or wet wetstone for the folded steel ones.

 

We do more fishs now adays. This is because a fishing club uses the lakes around us for breeding young fish now. So a good supply of fish, but you have to prepare them yourself, so the fillet knife was needed. No other knife allows it to bend a blade in a way that it can follow a backbone.

 

Edited November 25, 2010 by chattius

[gogoblender 3,072]

No other knife allows it to bend a blade in a way that it can follow a backbone.

 

 

 

lol! I was wondering why that last knife I hardly ever used was so flexible. Didn't know it was created with that purpose in mind.

 

good headsup

 

 

gogo

[Delta! 987]

A decent set of knives is very important in a household.

 

Heres a picture of my current knife set, I add more on a frequent basis, from left to right: Filleting Knife, serrated pairing knife, tournee/bird's beak knife, palette knife, bread/serrated knife, 23cm chefs knife, and a boning knife, m.I.a. is my small pairing knife which was stolen. but all of my knives are Victorinox, a very good entry level professional knife, that is affordable but you will look after them and they don't need frequent sharpening as they maintain their edge very well.

[chattius 2,535]

I bought one of these knives. Just forged, not sharpened, no handle,... but 100 Euro. It is to teach the kids how to do it: sharpening, doing a handle perfectly fitting into hand, balanced, ...

If you care for a good knife it lasts for a lifetime. So by knowing how to do the sharpening process I hope that they will learn how to sharpen it if it gets dull from kitchen usage.

 

 

If this gets okay, I will buy a raw blade with 68hrc. This will be harder than glas(63 hrc), so you should not chop or hit bones with this knife Ao-gami steel would have 67hrc. Oops, forgot that I work daily with steel and the rockwell scale might not be known by everyone: Rockwell_scale-hrc

[gogoblender 3,072]

I bought one of these knives. Just forged, not sharpened, no handle,... but 100 Euro. It is to teach the kids how to do it: sharpening, doing a handle perfectly fitting into hand, balanced, ...

If you care for a good knife it lasts for a lifetime. So by knowing how to do the sharpening process I hope that they will learn how to sharpen it if it gets dull from kitchen usage.

 

 

If this gets okay, I will buy a raw blade with 68hrc. This will be harder than glas(63 hrc), so you should not chop or hit bones with this knife Ao-gami steel would have 67hrc. Oops, forgot that I work daily with steel and the rockwell scale might not be known by everyone: Rockwell_scale-hrc

 

 

That's awesome Chattius! All these cool skills and superpowers your lucky kids get to get form you. I'm gonna swipe you for a week if you ever come to Canada to visit!.

 

The designs on the blades are absolutely beautiful. Is that a kind of bloom?

 

 

gogo

[chattius 2,535]

Ever tried to sell products to small craftmanship companies if you are not a master craftman or an engineer? I did technical maths at a university where maths were a part of philosophy for centuries. So when doing a doctor degree in maths there you are a Dr. phil. - a doctor in philosophy and not a rer. nat, for nature sciences as in most others. So I have to show that I am not only theoretical but also technical trained. People should notice that I know what I am trying to sell even on the technical site. So I try to learn some craftman techniques whenever I have the chance and time.

 

I was lucky and I grew up in a wood working and producing family with some farmland around. Grewing up on a farm is probably the most universal craftman training you can get as a kid. Learning to repair wooden and metal tools, build your own ones instead buying expensive ones, ... Nowadays add electronics and computers: GPS controlled fertilizing and seed planting. Machines protocol at which places harvest was good and at which bad, so you can optimize usage of fertilizer- less needed, better for environment and less costs: win win. Obviously maths are needed too... Our oldest will start to study arboristic (tree doctor) and forest economics next year,which is nearly as broad covering. So she will do the knife handle as some training in wood working amd the sharpening is also useful if she will have to sharpen axes and motor-saw-chains. Even better if the training results in something really useful.

 

Back to the steel:

 

Damascus Steel

 

You get these patterns by mixing different sort of steels, certain heating,folding, twisting anf welding techniques.... It is very old technique,found even at swords and axes in germany (probably other parts of europe too) from 500-100 BC (yes this is before christus!). The name damascene is because in modern times the art of sword making was lost in europe, no need for hightec swords if there are firearms. The smithy I learned knife making was specialized in recovering these old forging techniques, the smith was even the only european allowed to call his katana's originals. This is because he did some years as apprentice at a japanese sword maker, He was already a specialist in european swords then, else he would never have been accepted.

 

More than 2000 year old sword found in germany: cleaned and acid used to show the ancient damascene patterns:

 

You normaly start with some layers of different steel:

 

Then twisting, folding,,...

 

and depending on your starting piece and used techniques, you will get different patterns:

 

rose pattern

 

band pattern

 

...

 

I never got more advanced than 'simple' folding techniques.

[Bondbug 32]

Fantastic (in the best sense)as always Chattius. I just hope you haven't let Podgie loose on lotro with one of those 9th century jobs, he is a bit of a crafting nutter there.

 

However I think I will stick with the old steel family carving knife that I sharpen on the back step.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Bondbug

[chattius 2,535]

Got a new knife:

 

 

A bread knife/saw with a 9 inch blade. Blade is broad and and slightly bended to cut through our 8 pounds farmer breads.

 

[Delta! 987]

Nice blade Chattius, I like the serrated edge.

 

Delta!

[gogoblender 3,072]

I like the serrated blade as well. Currently my favorite one in the kitchen is like that. It's almost not too bad on tomatoes too^^

 

 

gogo