I think we can all agree that Japan makes the best knives. By

I cook better than you and I use an Ikea knife

It's not the tool, it's the person using the tool

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>>7224141
So what you are saying is, we should all drive Ford Pintos?

>why haven't they done anything to improve their products in the last 50 years?

When you reach max level, you stop leveling

>>7224136
> The question is, why haven't they done anything to improve their products in the last 50 years? If a car company did that they would be out of business overnight.

Have you seen a Wusthof/Zwilling-Henckles catalog recently? Or visited their website? They've made many changes and improvements to their knives (better steel, reduced bolster, new styles). A lot of Japanese cutlery borrows heavily from European styles too. The full tang, riveted handle is a decidedly European style.

The modern chef knife is a product of hundreds of years of tool "evolution". There isn't much that can be done to drastically improve it.

>>7224141
agree 100%. have a cheap large ikea knife and their sharpener -> perfect.

>>7224136
THOUSANDS

>Japanese knives

Meme tier. Only people that buy them are people who haven't grown out of the edgy ninja phase they had in middle school.

>>7224177
Superior a-Japanese number one knife. The steel is folded thousands of times, it's the strongest knife in the world. All other knife inferior, especially baka Amerika-gaijin knifu. BELIEVE IT!

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Finns make the best knives. They just aren't used for cooking.

>>7224186
>folded steel
so what? better invest in a good food processor etc.

>>7224141
I agree with this to a certain extent, however it's always good to have very very hard steel with good edge retention, especially working in a professional setting. But then again, it's all preference of the user.

>>7224186
FORDED A WHORE MIRRRRRION TAIMUS

>>7224141
>>7224169
Shit knives for shit cooks.

>>7224203
well then lets see some of your produce. deepfrozen pizza cut in slices doesn't count.

>>7224136
What is the best brand of Japanese knife? What style of Japanese knife is best for all purpose types of things?

>>7224141
Ikea's kitchen wares are surprisingly decent for the money.

OP is a fag who recently finished watching Kill Bill

>>7225145
Op here. Kill Bill was the only Tarantino movie* I actually stopped watching. I barely made it through the first half hour. It was unbearable. Almost as bad as Waking Life.

>*yes movie, not "film", you fags

>>7224143
No matter how expensive a car you get it wont make you a good driver.
That's the point.

>>7225236
People don't buy expensive cars to become better drivers. They buy expensive cars because they're more comfortable, more pleasurable to drive, have better safety features, and as a sign of financial status.

It's a shame that poor people spend so much effort justifying why nice things aren't actually nice, when they could be studying hard and improving their situations.

>>7225711
subject is japanese knifes are superior to every other make. can't see more safety in a jap knife than in any other make. they all cut. as you have not even produced a defined cause for buying such an accessory it has the same value as vanilla scrented toilet paper. just another item without reason.

>>7225163
It's more of a flick desu senpai

>Implying edge retention isn't the most important

Buy a high grit whetstone, sharpen away and make your knife sharper than anything you'll buy from Japan etc.

>>7225744
A sharp knife is safer senpai.

Japanese knives stay sharper for longer because they are not made of WW2-era stainless steel.

Much like America was clinging to carburetors and denying the usefulness of antilock brakes and airbags until well into the 1990s, Germany still thinks it's the world leader in cutlery, while everyone else is laughing at them.

They'll come to their senses and start using VG10 and 19C27 and stuff like that, but it will take time.

>>7224136
>who makes the worst
the answer is always china

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>>7224136

>>7226521
Actually it's Pakistan. China has come a long way with it's manufacturing and they produce knives on the entire spectrum of quality.

>>7226141

Pure carbon iron steel is older than 1.4116, so is that trash too?

>>7227541
>implying germans are pushing boatloads of hitachi blue #2 on the masses
Not what's happening senpai

The reason stainless has a terrible reputation among your grandpa's generation is that it's your beloved 4.116

I don't understand why this thread didn't 404 yet.
obviously OP wanted to find a reason for the expensive knife as it doesn't fullfill him cutting spam and frozen pizza with it.

>>7225163
/tv/ you're drunk, go home.

>>7226936
That's a funny way to spell Vietnam, anon.

>>7227549

I'm implying nothing of the sort. I'm implying that the way it's worked is more important than its ingredient list. If my grandpa's generation were given humble Fibrox knives they'd love them. If you gave them the choice between Fibrox and top of the line HC knives most of them would pick the Fibrox too.

Until they can make a stainless just as strong or stronger than HC steel I'm not interested in high hardness knives. I don't want to deal with rust fast steel and I can do without (micro-)chipping.

>>7224136
>Not buying a handmade custom knife from your local blade smith
It's 2016

>>7224136
I don't care about all that, but those knives are pretty as fuck, goddamn.
I can't wait to get my own apartment so I can begin stocking /fa/ cooking stuff.

>>7224136

I have one good Japanese knife I picked up at a smith's shop in Sakai City. It's good, but since I don't abuse knives I don't break cheap Chinese shit from Don Quixote either.

The only thing I've noticed is the Japanese knife seems to keep an edge longer than the cheap shit.

What do you all use to sharpen / how often do you need to sharpen?

>>7227738

>what do you all use to sharpen

The bottom of a coffee mug, the unglazed part

>how often do you need to sharpen

When the knife doesn't cut your food well, sharpen it

>>7227738
Lemme hop on this too.

I bought a fancy Japanese knife a few months back and I'm already thinking about sharpening options. From internet research I think I'll get a dual 1000/3000 grit stone. Is that going to suffice or should I be thinking about this differently?

>>7227800
How good are your sharpening skills? I'm not trying to be snobby, this is a legitimate question. The reason being that if it really is a expensive knife, you don't want to be ruining it by improperly sharpening it. If you're inexperienced or really bad at sharpening, I would consider getting it professionally done.

In terms of sharpening stone, 1000/3000 grit is a good to start, maybe even get an extra 6-8000 grit to polish and a piece of denim to finish and remove any remaining pieces of burr on the blade.

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I like my Shun classic chef's knife. 10"

>>7227821
You can't "ruin" a knife with a 1000 stone, at worst you'll make it look retarded.

The thing is that's why assholes recommend never getting a coarse stone. Because they know you can't do shit to hurt the knife permanently with a 1000 grit stone. But you also can't get your job done with only 1000 and up. Everyone needs a 400-500 grit stone in their setup, and everyone should know how to use it. If they don't, they have no business using a 3000 grit stone, and they also have no business buying fancy knives they don't know how to take care of.

>>7227821
I don't know how good I am because I've never done it before!

So I intend on buying a shit knife second-hand and practicing with it first. I'd get it done professionally, but I'm an expat whose grasp of the local language isn't very firm and I'm worried about them not being as gentle as you're supposed to be because they're probably used to the cheaper knives preferred locally.

>>7227833
Can you elaborate on the need for a 400-500 grit stone? If a knife's edge is kept up with a 1000 stone wont it not need to be sharpened with a 400-500 stone? Or will all knives, no matter how well kept, eventually require a rougher grit?

>>7227866
Most knives come from the factory with a machine edge and almost anyone who knows what they are doing prefers to put their own primary bevel first thing. This would take about a century on a 1000 grit stone, so reasonable people have a coarse stone in their setup for this kind of work.

>>7227874
So if my knife cut perfectly fine out of the box (in my uneducated opinion) I would be fine returning the knife to its factory sharpness with a 1000 grit stone and bypassing the purchase of a coarser stone?

>>7227892
If you're awesome with a stone, maybe

Good luck matching the exact angle on that clamshell grind by eye :^)

>>7224136
Why does this shit always pop up on/ck/? Literally the most boring discussion ever. It's a fucking knife. If you have stupid amounts of money to drop on an item which will make the most minuscule difference to your cooking, good for you. For the average person it really doesn't matter in the slightest/at all/even a little bit. Nobody fucking gives a fuck about your stupid fucking knives.

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>>7227899

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>>7227899
>you

>>7227899
Go to bed, the big boys are talking now.

>>7224141
what do you get when you combine a very good tool with a very good chef?

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>>7227899

>literally the most boring discussion ever

How about the endless fast food threads, posting the same food over and over again, the entire point of which is that it's the same wherever you get it?

Or the constant e-celeb spam that the shitposters wont let leave the first page?

What about the non-stop influx of picky eater threads, vegan troll threads, yuropoor vs 'murrica threads, or threads made so people can anonymously bitch about their family/roommates because they're too scared to actually confront them in real life?

No, the thread that apparently doesn't belong on the food and cooking interest board is the one discussing the most important tool used in food and cooking.

I have a couple of french and swiss knives that do the job, and im using them 50 hours a week.

Usually I just sharpen at the beginning of the week and hone throughout. Jap knives are decent for jap food but if you are breaking through dozens of squashes and cauliflower florets honestly you want something with a fat blade.

My slicer is a french knife, I use it specifically for slicing tuna, its 10 inches long and sharpened through a 200-1000-2000-4000 grit process with my stones and its way sharper then anyones jap knife I've ever seen, you can push cut a whole loin in half no sweat.

really just depends on how you keep your tools.

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>>7227866
Here's a guide on sharpening if you're interested.

Tl;dr, a coarse stone is used for repairing chips, flattening other stones, and setting the initial bevel.

The most common mistake people make when sharpening is that they don't sharpen all the way down to the edge. That means there isn't a new cross section of material that is microns thick. Kinda like sharpening a pencil without making a new tip. You know when you've created a new cross section when a thin lip of metal called a burr is on the edge.

The second biggest mistake is not removing the burr. The thin lip of metal HAS to be removed or it'll just roll over and make the knife seem as blunt as when you started.

>>7227947
>going from 150 to 1000
Coming from the same guy who made a guide that thinks "bread eaters" is a type of people...

>>7227930

Very nice cuts I'd imagine

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>>7228007
>120 to 500 instead of 250 to 500
>4k to 6k instead of 4k to 8k
>10k to 12k and then 30k
>going from a 30k to a .5 crox
>not going to a clean horse strop afterwards

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>>7227951
DMT Coarse is 325 grit. I don't know where you got 150. The 120 sandpaper is just for flattening.

Some people eat lots of bread.

>>7228018

You're cutting food with it, not shaving cunt hairs. Why's it got to be so sharp?

>>7228018
Clean horse strop does nothing. Same thing as newspaper, balsa wood, canvas, and denim strops. They do NOTHING!!!

All they are possibly doing is removing leftover burr, and you can do that better and faster with felt.

>>7228031
I'm not the autist who deleted his own post. I only go up to 8k and then a hanging strop for my kitchen knives, and even that's overkill.

The point is, doubling the grit is the rule of thumb, when discussing knives in the abstract. Exceptions are made in real life, and it's often fine, because not all stones behave in the exact same way, but actually going out of your way to RECOMMEND not doing the double grit thing is dumb.

>>7228038
>using felt after 30k
Yeah. That's why it does nothing. You're raping your edge.

>>7228031
That's where you're wrong. I've had several woman use my knives to cut food and they were so impressed with their sharpness that they requested that I shave their cunts with said knives. Jokes on you, I'm drowning in pubes here!!!

>>7228040
>Only goes up to 8k
>Has the nerve to criticize anybody

Lemme guess, you're using a shitty fake 8k like King.

>>7228063
Actually the king gold 8k has a really good reputation in the razor community, but I suppose you wouldn't know that since you mostly frequent stabby tactical fantasy dagger forums

Anyway no it's a shapton.

>>7228076
yeah. to cut frozen pizza..

>>7226141
>A sharp knife is safer senpai.

This is a lie and you know it. For a novice knife user, they are safer with a somewhat blunt knife than with a very sharp knife. This is because they are guaranteed to fuck up several times; it's the difference between doing it lots of times with a blunt knife and leaving red marks on their hands, and doing it once or twice with a sharp knife and taking their thumb off.

>>7228076
I've been to Straight Razor Place. Hell, I even bought a Dovo razor and a boar bristle brush for shaving.

Is it a Shapton Pro or Shapton Glass?

>>7228094
A knife so blunt that all it does is leave red marks on your hand has no business being used in the kitchen for anything but frosting cakes.

>>7228094
Listen buddy, you ever try to cut an onion with a blunt knife?

It can't be done no matter how hard you press down

>>7228107
It's a glass

Also there's nothing wrong with boar if you're into soap, but for creams silvertip is much nicer. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

>>7228151
We already went over this, it's because you were using a fucking spoon you dolt!

>>7227903
hah.. vanilla scented toilet paper. same value of such a knife.

ck could use a split in shit food and cooking..

>>7228156
I have a cheap badger brush and every time I get it wet it smells...like a wet badger. I don't know if the expensive ones are better about that. I've pretty much given up on using the straight razor, it irritates my skin too much.

>>7228384
Was this written using a random word generator?

>>7228394
>I've pretty much given up on using the straight razor, it irritates my skin too much.
>I got a Dovo
Let me guess, you tried to shave with the Dovo factory edge?

>>7226141
>>7228094
>A sharp knife is safer senpai

A giant lie indeed. One little mistake and you have half your hand hanging off your freshly exposed bones. You have to constantly be super aware when handling a really sharp knife. What otherwise would've been just a little scratch, with a regular, relatively blunt knife, suddenly ends up being a deep cut. You could even end up taking off a fingertip real easy.

Sharp knives are fucking scary, they slice through flesh like it's air.

>>7228430
I've cut myself with knives sharpened by me, and knives not sharpened by others.

The wounds from the first heal fast because they are clean, perfect cuts.

The wounds from the latter fester and take forever to heal and you have to smear antibacterial creams on them multiple times a day.

>>7227947
This is pretty useful, anymore?

>>7225163
>Almost as bad as Waking Life
Come on now. No way anything is as bad as that piece of shit. [spoiler]I haven't watched Kill Bill yet[/spoiler]

Sharpness was not the issue. I got it plenty sharp. It passed the hanging hair test and the forearm test and every other supposed benchmark.

I just didn't feel that the time and effort spent on a cutthroat shave produced better results unless I did several passes going in different directions.

>>7228875
Those are just *absolute minimum* tests, implying that they're proof a razor is going to give you a comfy shave is like saying a restaurant is going to give you a good meal because they passed their last health inspection.

If you're just starting out, and aren't experienced with bevel setting and honing and stropping and all that, it's a good idea to have your razor prepped by someone with a reputation for knowing what he's doing. Don't even think about stropping before your first shave. All subsequent shaves should be judged by the comfort of that first shave.

I'm not telling you to take up straight razor shaving because it's basically just gearfaggotry, but at the same time, you took it up without really knowing what you were doing, so keep that in mind.

>>7228892
who gives a shit if you can onehandedly chop a frozen pizza with a 100$ knife? all that matters here.

>>7228892
>you took it up without really knowing what you were doing, so keep that in mind.
The shaving part, maybe. The sharpening part, not really. I've been hand sharpening all kinds of things for almost ten years now. I've read all the honing guides at SRP and about honemeisters and "judging every shave by the first one" with a honing done by Lynn Abrams. Typical hobby forum elitism.
Same thing that was happening at Knife Forums and their resident sharpener.

>>7229259
The reason for that these are people who want to promote their hobby, and they have an internet reputation they want to maintain. It's not gonna do them much good if some neophyte goes around saying "I did what so-and-so said and it came out shitty". Hence why they are "elitist" about their recommendations.

It's no different than when an electronics manufacturer says the warranty is void when you pop the cover. Sure you may be a PhD in electrical engineering or you may consider yourself an expert (rightly or wrongly) but they don't know that. All they know is some guy on the internet says he got electrocuted after buying Brand X, and now they have a PR problem.

>be a dearmed Nation
>Have to use sticks to eat food

>>7224136
This is literally the good old Katana VS Longsword-nerdfight, isn't it.

>>7224186
I folded my dick into your mothers ass over a 1000 times last night desu

>>7226141
Japanese knives don't stay sharper longer. They (generally) start out sharper than other knives and remain sharper if you maintain them regularly, but they lose their sharpness much more rapidly than other knives. This is because there is a point of sharpness that necessarily detracts from durability. Sharpness is achieved by thinning out the very edge, after all.

>>7229274
I don't blame the product. I like my Dovo razor and my Naniwa Superstones. I just don't find straight razor shaving to be a more comfortable shave. It does make you feel like a badass when doing it though.

>>7229330
But that blade has a higher carbon content, making it harder but more brittle. That's why it keeps its edge better, because the metal doesn't deform as easily and it keeps it shape, the tradeoff being it can't be dropped.

>>7229652
B-but the internet told me japanese knives will shatter if you cut anything but sushi with them! Muh german meat axe!!!!

>>7229659
How true is this? I know I can't drop it too far and shouldn't be cutting through bone with it. But can I use my MAC MTH-80 to crush garlic? I'm legit too scared to crush garlic with my knife because I don't want to tell my girlfriend that I'm buying a new $140 knife because I broke the other one on a clove of garlic.

>>7227899
in all honesty i just want some info on a decent set of cooking knives that come with a lifetime warranty... and all you /ck/ faggot want to talk about is fucking ramen.

>>7229685
http://thesweethome.com/reviews/the-best-knife-set/

tl;dr buy the knives separately

>>7229685
Any knife that comes with "free sharpening for life" or any of that horse shit is a pleb knife aimed at idiots.

Just get one of those electric watercooled grinding wheels if you want easy mode. Something like a Tormek if you're a cheapskate, or an F. Dick SM-160 T if you want to get fancy.
>>7229682
>But can I use my MAC MTH-80 to crush garlic?
If you do this, and it breaks, it's defective. MACs have an unusually good reputation for quality, I wouldn't worry about it.

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>>7228875

It's not better, it's just fun if you like the hobby. For a professional barber, the straight razor is ideal for a few reasons, including that he is standing over the patient and able to make much better passes than you can yourself

for self shaving, the good old fashioned safety razor is the best option, and you can even polish the blades yourself if you want, but there's no better shave than the double edged safety razor, espcially if you take the 5 minutes to set up and polish them a bit.

>>7229704
God bless you, I've been keeping my old knife to the side when preparing a dish with garlic just so I can use something to crush the garlic.

>>7228169

>2016
>doesn't know about Murray "Spoonfucker" Carter

52100

>>7229858
I chat with Murray Carter every year at the Blade Show (the years he comes, since he took a 2 year break from attending). He complimented the edge on a knife I made.

>>7229716

>tfw bought a nice safety razor and a couple hundred blades
>decided to grow out the beard and haven't shaved for over a year

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>>7229716
I got one of those too. I bought two at an antique store for $8. Had to clean the hair out of them. Looks cool, but doesn't shave better then my 3 blade razor. Pic is of my Dovo, safety razor, and brush.

>>7230362
Your face isn't the only place that needs shaving. You can use it on your legs, groin, chest, etc...

>>7230428
It doesn't shave any worse, the blades are cheaper, and there's less waste to dispose of.

all the chefs at my work and most of the cooks have a mix of jap and jerry knives, the most common being the wusthof 10-inch

>reading through this thread as it slowly goes from bait to actual advice to shaving circlejerking
>hear about how sharp these razors get
>can push through arm hair with minimal effort
>involuntarily imagine testing a super-sharp knife on my armhair and losing my grip or balance
>accidentally pull knife down arm and shave off thin layer of skin from elbow to wrist
>flap of skin flops off arm over hand and drips blood
>arm is bleeding uncontrollably, no idea what to do
>flinch
>can't get image out of my head

fuck this thread

>>7225744
Actually, a japanese knife has a sharper angle than a western knife, thus making it easier to cut through meat and vegetables. If you're making very fine cuts it's even better. Though, I do agree, for a home cook, a $300 japanese knife is nearly pointless since most people don't need to make such fine cuts. A $40 vitrinox is just as good, will last as long, and won't rust since it's stainless.

>>7231250
Why would you pay $40 for a victorinox when you can get a legitimately good japanese knife for $50?

>>7228430
A sharp knife requires less force to cut. Most people get cut because of how much force they're using to push through, then slipping. Other times they weren't properly trained and were cutting dangerously anyways.

>>7231253
You know that some people have more than one knife?

>>7231296
What does that have to do with you buying crapknives to save less than the cost of a pack of cigarettes?

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>>7231253

The Fibrox is a known quantity.

With a cheap VG10 knife you can get poorly hardened edges which chip when you sneeze at it or something like pic related (that's a Shun by the way).

>>7228038
>newspaper

No. Use one of those really thick magazines like a special edition. They use clay to get that higher end feel, which works as good as any stropping compound.

>>7228107
>boar bristle

silver tip badger or nothing

>>7231401
Maybe you should try not soaking your blades ya dingus, it won't rust if you take care of it.

>>7224141
I pretty much agree with this in it's basic point.
I've been a professional cook (I won't say chef), and you can do all the work you need to do as long as your knives are sharp and you're using the right blade for the right job.
Germans make perfectly wonderful knives. I don't use them anymore, but it's not because they're bad, just because I have my own personal favorites, most of which are French or Swedish carbon steel. I only own one Japanese knife (which was given to me as a gift, I didn't buy it), and it's not better than my French knives in my hands.
Now, go be a weeb somewhere else, you're not impressing anyone here.

>>7224136
>Why doesn't everyone love my meme knives

FTFY, OP.

>>7231253
cause victorinox is a swiss brand?

>>7231933

Or maybe Shun shouldn't put a pocket next to the tang which can trap water.

Handles are to the Japanese what steel is to the Germans.

>>7232113
Please, just shut the fuck up.