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Comment by 0xff00ffee | Hacker News Reader

And copper pots!

Funny thing this article doesn't really talk about REALLY expensive knives. Just "Mall Fancy" (gatekeeper's delight: if you can buy it in a mall, it's not 'real' bling.) There's a custom knife store I visited in Portland last year that goes up to $3k for handmade knives.

Expensive knives are silly. $49 Victorinox is probably one of the best knives out there unless you're a sushi chef according to just about every review. I have one, it's great. Better than my Shyun for the price and easier to put on edge on.

But don't take my anecdote for it: go talk to a chef and ask what kind of knives they use. Know what the answer will be? In most restaurants they are from Sysco. Source: friends that work back of the house.

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The Victorinox Fibrox has been a popular pick (and rhetorical tool for debunking Veblen knives) for years because Cooks Illustrated championed it, but it underperforms in tests and, in particular, has an apparently bad factory edge --- you could correct that, but I doubt many owners really do.

I think the Fibrox still works as a rhetorical tool. It's true that most people would be just as happy with a $50 Fibrox as they would be with an expensive Shun. But it's not the case that the Fibrox holds up well in serious tests against other knives.

The flip side of professional kitchens getting their knives from services is that they're also constantly refreshed with new sharp blades (the service takes the dulled blades back and replaces them with new ones), which is something that isn't true for home cooks. I wouldn't read too much into that.

(I have a Mac MBK-85; it's great. Just get a Mac.)

I know if you look at the woodworking hand tool community, it's almost dogma that the first thing you do with a new set of chisels or a plane is to put your own edge on it. And in the case of planes, the people who have been at it longer also polish the face down flat(ter) on a piece of float glass.

In fairness, it's also a lot easier to sharpen a chisel than a kitchen knife, and it's very difficult to work with a chisel at all if it's dull, unlike a chef's knife, which will blunder through most tasks at mostly the same speed even after you whack it against a brick.

> a chef's knife, which will blunder through most tasks at mostly the same speed even after you whack it against a brick.

What? this isn't true. a sharpened knife is a joy to work with and you can "feel" the difference.

It's true that a sharp knife feels great, but they said 'blunder' for a reason. A sharp knife will leave a clean cut on meat and not squish vegetables, but the question is if the average home cook cares enough about slightly squished vegs that he had to push through more than slice or a feathered meat cut when their goal is to put dinner on the table.

Yes. I think this is a distinction that might only be clear to people who have used woodworking chisels, which are simply useless when dull.

Yeah, most people don’t keep their knives sharp, so it doesn’t matter much what they have. The knives I use most at home are a couple of Dexter-Russel knives I got cheap at a restaurant supply shop on the Bowery a long time ago.

> that the Fibrox holds up well in serious tests against other knives.

I'd love to know more about this. What have you read on the topic?

I sharpen my 3 busiest knives every few weeks (10", boning, paring) while I'm doing my chisels and plane irons, so it is part of my meditation. Ommmmmm....

Just the WireCutter and Serious Eats reviews.

I need to be better about sharpening my knives. I took a class a few months ago (highly recommended! do this!) but haven't gotten it into my routine. The truest thing you can probably say about knife value for money is that it's entirely irrelevant if you aren't keeping your knives sharp, and most people don't.

My routine is to give my knife a couple passes over a leather strop loaded with 0.25 micron CBN abrasive every time I use it. This approach can keep a knife sharp almost indefinitely unless something chips or severely blunts the edge.

Underrated comment. Even a cheap knife sharpened with a cheap sharpener every once in a while will do better than an expensive one not sharpened for months at a time. I wouldn't necessarily waste time on advanced sharpening though - it's not something you're going to do regularly, unless you're really into knives. I have a set of sharpening stones I used exactly once. The result was great, but it took like half an hour to sharpen a single blade - no one has that kind of time. A cheap Accusharp sharpener does a good enough job that I can slice homegrown tomatoes without any issues. And it takes less than a minute to sharpen a knife with it.

I also enjoyed my class. We used a water stone, which I had thought about buying before. I also thought about getting a Belgian Stone (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgischer_Brocken)

The lesson was meditative, and I really liked it, but I realized that this way of sharpening knives is totally impractical for my day-to-day life.

In the end I followed the teacher's (also store owner) recommendation and got those two:

https://ioxio.de/sharpeing-rod-duo

https://www.windmuehlenmesser.de/en/product/streichriemen-ki...

That's enough sharpness for me, I don't need to slice a tomato horizontally without holding it with my hand. Although it looks cool on YouTube, and I certainly watched that more often than it would be sensible.

The best part: it's fast. Using the strop (before every use) is a matter of seconds, using the ceramic rod (every now and then) takes a minute or two.

Thanks for the pointer.

I'm surprised serious eats gave a knife with a bolster #1 spot. That's a hard stop in my book. I can see their point, the fibrox is a thick blade, but now it is wandering into subjective territory.

One of my biggest problems sharpening is cutting my 8000 grit stone when finishing my boning knife at the S-curve by the handle. I sometimes just skip that part, but I like to sharpen the entire blade.

>> I have a Mac MBK-85;

The crucial question (and the point of the article) is not that. The question is whether you actually use this $200 knife for cooking. :-)

Uh, yes. I cook a lot. (Also, I paid nothing close to $200 for it).

I have a pair of very fancy nakiris that Erin picked up when she was in Tokyo that I avoid cooking with (one, a blue steel not-especially-stainless one, I never use at all). That's something closer to a Veblen acquisition (though the nakiri I do sometimes use is a blast to cut with). The Mac is a workhorse. And: I mean, get _any_ Mac knife.

Heh, personal tastes matter.

A friend wanted a decent chef's knife but didn't know which one would be good. I have a Global, the handle of which he found too "flimsy". His hands are wider than mine, so I took a risk and bought him a Mac as a present. (~€90/~$130 at the time.) For me, the Mac handle is a bit too large - for him it was just about perfect.

More than a decade later the knife remains in active use. Friend went a bit posh, too: he bought a sharpening cradle with a slot for whetstone and alignment supports to make sure the angle is correct. He liked it so much he didn't want to risk mistreating the blade with bad sharpening.

Moral of the story? Try out a few decent ones and get the one that fits your hand well. Then maintain it properly. For a home cook (which I am), a good chef's knife - when not abused - will last for pretty much forever. I've had the Global for nearly 20 years and plan to have it around for 20 more.

The fibrox is fine, but a single 8" Shun chef's knife is near the price of an MBK-85 for a not-dissimilar level of performance.

I have a Fibrox santoku, Shun 7" Chef's knife (VG-10), Ohishi 270mm (VG-5), and some of the Ikea 365 knives (e.g. 6" chef's knife), as well as some K-Sabatier. For the money, the Ikea 365 knives outperform the Fibrox - they hold the edge much better. The K-Sabatier are better than the fibrox for not too much more money (and they're pretty classic). The Ohishi was the best value and is my favorite knife but it's a bit on the large side. I also have a few other random knives (arcos ham knife, dexter russel boning knife, mac bread knife)

I recommend the Ikea ones to most people. They are super cheap, sharp, and hold their edge pretty good. If they wanted an upgrade pick, I'd recommend an Ohishi or similar (there's a few similar ones online that are high quality), but I don't think buying a Shun isn't a terrible proposition - they are readily available in most markets and good quality. Buying a knife block isn't recommended though.

Relatedly - I usually buy family members getting married decent set for a gift too - and the smaller sets of Victorinox are usually nice.

About a decade ago I looked into this. I had a Shun Santoku (VG10), but my brother wanted to get me a nice knife as a wedding gift. I did a little research on the knife forums (very interesting world, I could see spending a lot of money on a combination of metallurgical tech and art if you get sucked into that).

Exotic stainless (e.g. powdered steel) sounded like it would be challenging for an amateur to sharpen, and I wasn't sure I could be trusted to take proper care of a carbon blade, so I hedged and went with a semi-stainless (SKD) 240mm Yoshikane wa-Gyuto. I kinda wish it had a little more belly, but it's sharp, cuts well, and is easy to sharpen.

I bought the Fibrox a few years ago, because it was cheap, had the Wirecutter recommendation (back then) and – it feels good in my hand.

I have pretty large hands, and generally less-than-stellar motor skills, so the heft of the thing and the feel suit me well.

I do sharpen it regularly, though.

The Fibrox is a great knife for the price, but it definitely isn't even close to being one of the best knives out there. If you're happy with it, that's great but even a modest upgrade to a VG10 blade will allow for cleaner, thinner cuts.

Personally I use a handmade carbon steel janapese blade, which cost a few hundred $. Freshly sharpened, you can throw a piece of paper into midair and it'll slice cleanly through it, which is good enough for my needs[0]. Those $3k custom knives you see in portland are more about creating a work of art than an actual working tool.

0: I from time to time cook things requiring very thin slices of things (e.g. slices of ginger you can read a book through, often used as a garnish) - a task made much easier by an extremely sharp knife.

Learning how to sharpen your knife will go a lot farther than the type of knife you have!

Even hand made/custom sushi knives are < $200 (in Japan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq_JmJLOqxo

(Like anything from Jacques Pepin, this is super useful).

Learning how to sharpen knives, and having all the equipment to do it, will almost certainly never pay off, except in intangible enjoyment.

> Learning how to sharpen knives, and having all the equipment to do it, will almost certainly never pay off, except in intangible enjoyment.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "pay off". In my experience, a sharp kitchen knife means I can cut faster and more safely.

As to cost, I use a $30 diamond stone[1]. Mine is more than 20 years old and it still works great. I love diamond because I can use it dry, so it really cuts down on sharpening time.

___

1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00004WFTW

Sharp knives make better food. Blunt knives squash rather than slice food, forcing out moisture and damaging texture. You can make a knife decently sharp with a $15 waterstone, a 10 minute YouTube video and a modicum of practice. In a world where Soylent and Huel exist, what is a kitchen for except intangible enjoyment?

I wasn't suggesting to have dull knives, only that it's economical and convenient to let a professional sharpen them for you.

>Funny thing this article doesn't really talk about REALLY expensive knives.

This one in the Wall Street Journal does:

"Why pay $24,000 for a kitchen knife?" — https://archive.is/5cyWJ

> easier to put on edge on

The corollary to this is that they lose their edge quickly, which is annoying.

>> easier to put on edge on

> The corollary to this is that they lose their edge quickly, which is annoying.

Part of making a knife easy to sharpen is the materials. Your claim applies pretty well here.

Part of making a knife easy to sharpen is the geometry - specifically: a very small secondary bevel. Depending on the geometry, "easier to put on[sic] edge on" is only loosely related to "lose their edge quickly".

> gatekeeper's delight: if you can buy it in a mall, it's not 'real' bling

Huh? Burberry and Louis Vuitton aren't 'real' bling? Tiffany and Cartier aren't real bling?

If you have to ask...

I don't. I know that they are.

These are brands where nearly 100% of the price of the good comes from the brand label.

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