A Knife Forged in Fire
chicagomag.com
chicagomag.com
I'm a materials junkie. My wine glasses are made of ZrO2 stabilized by Y2O3. My daily work is to convert carbon-bearing gases into diamond through plasma chemistry. I've long considered making diamond knife blades, although recent literature searches have put me off a bit, given their demonstration that brittle ceramic blades like Zirconium oxide shed sharp microparticles that I doubt are good for the ingester.
Nevertheless, I have made several small solid diamond blades (~15 cm long) that I've used to cut filet mignon. With load cells attached, the draw force to cut with a diamond blade is <20% of the draw force needed for an equivalent steel blade coated with titanium nitride and overcoated with a thin Teflon layer, about 5% of the draw force required by a custom Japanese knife. I have one diamond blade in my kitchen that I use as a paring knife. It's the very best tool I own.
I'm gratified that our ancestors figured out how to make superlatively sharp blades knowing essentially nothing of the science underlying their work. They were very smart and attuned to the aesthetics of their work.
Thanks again for the post. Materials are endlessly fascinating.
15cm is not a small knife. Infact a 15mm diamond knife is pretty massive. The longest diamond knife I'm finding with some lazy searching is about 4mm, and it's 2200$.
To a layman, or expert pro chef layman, good steel is enough, durable, worry free, cheap.
It’s some of the chemicals formerly used in manufacturing or that it breaks down to when exposed to excess heat that have health effects.
In the end if you want something usable you have to match application to material. There is nothing that is good for everything. I would not use diamond for knives except for fun.
so you fear harmful microparticles, so instead you suggest something normal, like
> steel blade overcoated with a thin Teflon layer
eh?? isn't teflon that scary(tm) substance you must never scratch off your pan or you'll poison yourself?
how's that any better than zirconium?
(Of course I'll pay for it.)
The material science side of the blade is a blast - but one of my favorite bits is actually all the variety in handle materials. https://gcarta.bigcartel.com/products has some amazing patterns.
I'm learning how to use a power hammer in work. It can save a lot of time but I love hand forging.
I haven't done much experimentation with handles. I've been rescuing bits from my firewood for handles so far :-) I also like curving the tang round to make a handle, which people call a "blacksmith knife".
Author Laurence Gonzales writes, "In a sense, the knife marked the birth of civilization", which reminds me of the first knives that the survivors of Verne's "The Mysterious Island" make in their desperation and ingenuity:
“Ah, if we only had a knife!” cried the sailor.
“Well?” asked Cyrus Harding.
“Well! I would soon make a bow and arrows, and then there could be plenty of game in the larder!”
“Yes, a knife, a sharp blade.” said the engineer, as if he was speaking to himself.
At this moment his eyes fell upon Top, who was running about on the shore. Suddenly Harding’s face became animated.
“Top, here,” said he.
The dog came at his master’s call. The latter took Top’s head between his hands, and unfastening the collar which the animal wore round his neck, he broke it in two, saying,—
“There are two knives, Pencroft!”
Two hurrahs from the sailor was the reply. Top’s collar was made of a thin piece of tempered steel. They had only to sharpen it on a piece of sandstone, then to raise the edge on a finer stone. Now sandstone was abundant on the beach, and two hours after the stock of tools in the colony consisted of two sharp blades, which were easily fixed in solid handles.
The production of these their first tools was hailed as a triumph. It was indeed a valuable result of their labor, and a very opportune one. They set out.It might as well have been, but I think you meant to say "Family" :-)
My aunt from the US had gifted me a Wenger model SAK when I was a teenager.
"Contains: Iron TriChloride (FeCh), Iron DiChloride (FeCh), Hydrochloric Acid"
Plus a long list of warnings. Apparently it's for etching damascus steel.
Just get a boring stamped carbon steel knife and learn how to hone and sharpen (or just pay someone to sharpen it!), and don't leave it sitting in water. I haven't sharpened my knives in 2 years, they are all <$80 and sharper than most people's. Life doesn't have to be complicated.
My kitchen knife layout (on a magnet bar on the fridge):
3x 3.75" stainless paring knife (precision by goodcook)
1x 5.25" stainless paring knife (precision by goodcook)
1x 6" victorinox
1x 7" random japanese high carbon knife
1x 8" zwilling chefs knife
Using a very sharp nakiri made of a very hard steel is incomparably more enjoyable than using one made of ordinary steel, due to the reduced force required for slicing, and it avoids the need for frequent sharpening.
As long as it is used for its only intended function, i.e. cutting/slicing/chopping vegetables, nakiri has the optimum shape, at least for people like myself, who do not like the rocking motion required with French-style chef knives, but who prefer to slice or chop with precise rectilinear motions.
For some things that might require the use of the point with European knives, like removing some defect in a vegetable, the heel of a nakiri blade is actually more convenient.
Of course the nakiri shape is not versatile. If you want a multi-purpose blade, I prefer the kiritsuke shape (i.e. a trapezoidal blade, not much different from a box cutter with a longer point), because that kind of point allows a maximum precision in cuts.
Using a Japanese peeling/paring knife with very thin, sharp and hard blade is much more enjoyable than using an ordinary paring knife made of stainless steel, due to much less effort for using it and more precise results (i.e. lower vegetable waste).
A long time ago, I had been using knives like those described by you, but replacing them with up to 3 better knives (paring/peeling, cutting/slicing/chopping and boning) has completely changed cooking from something that was more of a chore to an enjoyable activity.
> many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker's forge making slow sweeping movements through the air, trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth
Damascus steel was originally a crucible wootz steel that came from India or Iran and was sold to Europe through Damascus. The alternating colors came from the grain structure of the steel, not from different steel types layered together. As far as I am aware, we still do not know the exact process used to create it, although we have come close, and it's likely that modern CPM (Crucible Particulate Metallurgy) steels surpass it due to more consistent measurements for the components of the alloy.
I am only an amateur blacksmith, but I have spent the last 15 years dreaming and researching to prepare myself. Given that I live in an apartment, I am limited to a small mobile forge that I can wheel out to the complex's grill area where I am actually allowed to have a fire, which limits the projects I can do due to the forge size and temperature. Crucible steel is a dream one day, but for now I just nitpick and try to tell people about the original Damascus, which is (in my opinion) much more fascinating than what gets the label today.
Pardon all the questions but it’s a topic I’ve been curious about.
Watch any episode of Forged In Fire to get a feel for what’s involved from a hobbyists perspective. The second half of each episode follows the finalists’ progress on the challenge in their own workshops - some have full-blown black smithing businesses, but others are (literally) backyard operations.
My starting costs were reduced by gifts, and my dad giving me an anvil he made with a piece of railroad several years ago. A basic gas forge from Vevor is around $75, but you can make your own small one from a coffee can, some refractory wool, and a handheld propane torch.
Right now, I just make tools and trinkets for myself. I'm _very_ amateur at the moment, I have more theoretical knowledge than practical experience. Once I get comfortable, I'll make more trinkets and tools for friends and family, then maybe one day make things to sell.
As a secondary nitpick, the term is perfectly acceptable for the process commonly used today. As you’ve already mentioned - the original process has been lost to time, so no one actually makes it.
Agreed. There was a much smaller emphasis on Damascus steel in early seasons. If you go back and rewatch you can see the frequency pick up as they praised and required Damascus more and more.
On top of that, I believe it is easier to run into problems with delamination, or that a small flaw can more easily be a larger problem.
If anything, it seems like an added challenge to demonstrate that you can do it, as a way to distinguish the blade in the final judging if it performed similarly to the others.
Ultimately, though, it's still just showmanship and not an actual indication of the quality of the blade itself. It's a TV show, after all.
The simplest carbon steels can be made very hard with an appropriate heat treatment, if they have high carbon content, but then, as you say, they chip too easily.
The various kinds of alloyed steels that can be used instead of carbon steel attempt to improve the tradeoff between ductility and hardness, so that one may choose a heat treatment that results in greater hardness without making the blade as fragile as a blade made of carbon steel with the same hardness.
The alloyed steels made using powder metallurgy are said to achieve the best tradeoff between hardness and ductility, but I have not tested this yet, because they are also the most expensive.
In the past I have used softer German style steels, but I do not like having to sharpen them, so now I prefer to use only harder and sharper Japanese knives, which must be sharpened much less frequently.
For a little more, and a little more freehand style, you can try Spyderco's Sharpmaker [3]. My dad has one of these, and growing up he would sharpen kitchen and pocket knives to a razor edge very quickly with it.
I personally freehand sharpen my knives using Shapton stones [4]. I have the Kurumaku at 320, 1000, 2000, 5000, and 8000 grits, although the higher grits don't get used often; usually the 1000 grit alone is enough for getting a razor edge fairly quickly. I got mine from Amazon, but you can find them various places for $30-50 each.
[1] https://www.lansky.com/deluxe-5-stone-system.html [2] https://www.worksharptools.com/products/precision-adjust-kni... [3] https://www.spyderco.com/catalog/details.php?product=77 [4] https://shapton.co.jp/en/#products
To do it once and for all buy belt sharpener - Work Sharp with Blade Grinder Attachment being probably the best price vs quality vs functionality.
For quality sharpening that requires a bit of time buy rolling knife sharpener.
For quality sharpening which is fast and anyone can do buy electrical ChefMate with two slots and follow the instructions.
PS Do not bother with anything that requires clamping the knife, etc. You’ll use it once - it’s just too much hustle to setup and adjust these systems. You spend most of the time unpacking, bolting it together and then readjusting the knife instead of sharpening.
This is why rolling sharpeners work really well - fast magnetic attachment, angles are pre-set.
Once you can get a knife sharp with that it'll only take seconds to get it ready for normal use. The next step would probably be some kind of a strop/compound for removing the bur and polishing the edge. Doing so will improve edge retention substantially.
After that, it's like anything; you can get as far as you'd like into the hobby; but you'll already be able to slice off translucent tomato windows without squishing anything, so it starts mattering less for normal use, especially with the battering a knife can take in the kitchen.
Have a big enough collection of knives that you can take two out at a time, and bring them to a local, reputable sharpener (most shops that sell fancy/expensive/actual chef's knives will do this.).
If you want to get into sharpening as a hobby, then getting a couple of whetstones is probably the easiest recommendation; but I just never got good enough at it and the process never got fun.
I get the feeling that it becomes another aspect of a hobby for some; but I already make espresso at home, I have enough fiddly and frustrating kitchen hobbies.
IKEA BRILJERA knives are the mid-range not cheapest ones. But they are not expensive.
But they are made from (The Chinese version of) VG10 steel, which will hold an edge very well, and is still stainless.
I have tried sharpening them, I have a Lansky knife sharpening kit/jig that I use for my other knives, and it works fine at least for the first or second time, but spending ~20 mins on an $8 knife instead of getting the spare out isn't something i choose to do.
(And now I've typed that out, I feel somewhat guilty and wasteful about it...)
It's only wasteful if you're throwing them in your trashcan.
Making a knife that _keeps_ sharp; and that will not chip/shatter/handle won't disintegrate is the difficult part.
(You can also argue about blade geometries, how thin the blade is etc for hours; but "can this be made sharp" is not a problem with cheap/bad knives, generally.)
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My (very limited!) understanding of knife steels is that "powdered steels" are not what you'll find in a random big box store; but rather more expensive, "fancy" lines.
You don't have to spend $450 on hand-forged, artisanal blade from Japan, but a $50 buck no-name is not going to be Buy-It-For-Life powdered steel knife either.
https://www.messermeister.com/products/oliva-elite-6-5-inch-...
This is how I feel when I practiced welding. It really is truly sorcery. All the fantasies and stories of olde, with wizards wielding wands that spout lightning. This is it! We can actually do it! But I'm not very good at it :)
Prose has a function, which is to tap into metaphor in order to help words describe a sensory experience that's otherwise difficult for words to capture.
The article does have that kind of prose. But it also has plenty of prose for prose's sake. Prose for prose's sake – especially in journalism – is self-serving. It obfuscates the point, for the sake of prose (and ultimately, for the author's own satisfaction with himself).
Edit: that being said, I liked the article overall and I think the author did great at choosing an interesting subject and pretty well at writing about it. I certainly couldn't do better.
> some of the things in this sprawling realm of clutter might have come from another galaxy, like the ballistic cartridge for the table saw. If you accidentally touch the blade, it senses electrical conductivity and retracts. It’s gone so fast that it can’t cut you. It’s all part of the magic of this place of transformations.
This is just a SawStop, but the author describes it as evidence of the otherworldliness of the subject. Why? There's a bill to make this mandatory in table saws. It's not otherworldly.
> The room lit up to an intensity such that Sam was cast as a silhouetted troupe of antic spiders dancing on the walls and floor and ceiling, sparks flying around him like a cracked nest of hornets and in his hands a burning blue hole at the center of things.
The author is describing aspects of welding with mixed arthropod metaphors. To me, it comes off as pretentious more than descriptive.
On the other hand, I like how this paragraph starts out:
> Sam is afraid of some of his machines in the way that the lion tamer is afraid of his cats. You are confident. You know your skills. You have been doing this a long time. But you know that wild animals are always wild animals, and a false gesture, perhaps an unexpected noise, could set in motion events that could not be stopped.
This metaphor is effective to me and is descriptive in the way the author intends. Maybe gets unnecessary towards the end. But right afterwards:
> Sam is harnessing powers that few of us ever encounter in our lives. He’s directing them in order to reach down inside of this deck of tarot cards and transform the very atomic nature of its being. He’s doing what sorcerers do: magic.
What? This isn't even referring to a particular skill or act. Just the use of shop machines. I don't doubt that Sam is exceptionally skilled, but using "magic" to "transform the very atomic nature" of the metal – especially when we're not talking about a particular act which sets him apart – is a strain for my imagination.
In my opinion, in a journalistic writing, this kind of fluff distracts from the subject and makes it difficult to read and/or take seriously. That's just my opinion – but I was replying to an opinion that it's "fine writing." If there's room for one, there's room for the other.
Yes, there is. Most of what he's describing is ordinary metalworking. He gets rather worked up about a belt sander. Which is strange, because the author has written several good books about survival and air crashes and has spoken at Los Alamos.[1] He can't be that naive about basic industrial technology.
Or maybe he can be. It's possible, in America today, to grow up without ever using a tool more complex than a screwdriver. This is a problem.
In both cases, the person is doing it because they can, not because they should. I'm not bothered at all; if this was supposed to be a news story it may be a different case.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4755470 ("The Best (dcurt.is)", 298 comments)
For silverware we don’t even try - random sets from IKEA and restaurant stores combined. For plates we use Macy’s colorful plates - which they seemed to sell forever, and they changed the design slightly few years ago, so now they don’t match anymore!
The first stage is right after you spend an insane amount of money to buy the property. At that point, you want to validate the investment, so you spend more on making it look nice, but you're probably oblivious to many realities of homeownership. So yeah, this is when people splurge on matched kitchenware, beautiful cutting boards, "smart" kitchen appliances, sleek-looking but impractical veneer / plastic / glass furniture, etc.
The second stage is when you get kids or pets, and you start losing the battle. You eventually throw in the towel, accepting that there are going to be dings on the walls and on stainless steel appliances, holes in window screens, and veneer peeling off after the fifth juice spill accident.
The third stage is when the kids move out and you can actually make the space look nice. Except now, you know that there's some wisdom to old-fashioned solid wood furniture, that cutting boards are for cutting, and so on. So your home acquires more of an "old people" vibe.
1. Relatively nice stuff I bought for myself when I moved into my apartment
2. Cheap stuff I bought after a friend used a yellow-green scrub sponge and scratched up all my nice stuff
3. Nice stuff I bought for myself after the divorce (Except that it's poorly designed, which makes me wish I'd bought something a little more standard. They all have round handles, which means the utensils try to spin in your hands.)
But then it runs into (un)surprising problem: most brands don’t maintain their designs, so if you find something you like, it’s not going to be available when it’s time to replace entire set couple years later.
In the end I standardized on Blacksocks, which seem to have same design forever, although they are more expensive than I would like.
I got mine second hand
But then you’re paying a minimum £120 for a set of cutlery rather than £12.
However the way I look at it is that good cutlery lasts a lifetime.
I mean, modern ones are just solid chunks of Type 304 stainless steel; unless you are a family of Ridley Scott xenomorphs I can't imagine why they wouldn't.
The knife did survive, but I spent a good amount of time bending the tip back to be mostly straight. I’m sure you could destroy a knife by repeating such a practice.
Cheap cutlery can often be thin or made from cheaper steal that is more prone to rust.
Though granted you can also buy good quality cheaper cutlery too (just last week I picked up a set of 16 pieces for £16. Bargain)
I’m also a little confused how lose so much cutlery. I have a family too and I’ve never lost any. But Maybe it’s a bigger problem with teenagers and thus my kids are still a couple of years too young?
Airstream is an amazing example of this in a premium product: their trailers get new features but built around existing designs. Parts from different decades just fit together. I wish cars worked like this.
Furniture is tougher as both styles change and there isn’t a lot of manufacturers that make the same thing over and over.
My personal favorite: socks. I standardized on exactly one style of socks that work for me for everything from fitness to everyday wear. I have two dozen of them, replace the oldest with a new six pack every year. I spend no time matching socks. Yes I have one pair of dress socks for when I wear a tux + two pairs of thick wool socks for when I am doing winter things. Outside of that it’s the same Under Armor Resistors every day.
Let's say your family has 5 full time members and is timely at doing dishes. 15 sets of flatware would probably be plenty, but sometimes you have extra guests, so start with 20-25.
If you lose or break items and get down to 15, and the set is no longer available, get rid of what you have and get a new set of 20-25.
Don't care also works fine.
But now I have a choice. I can choose the hob myself! But it's such a pressure! I'll probably not buy a new one for 5+ (hopefully 10) years, so it should be good! And not have annoying little quirks I'll notice much more when it was me making the decision. And what's the best bang for buck? Which features do I need? So many choices, and I'd probably be happy with whatever. But I've spent the last two evenings becoming an expert in induction hobs..
We tried to avoid the garbage tide by thinking "you get what you pay for" and paid a lot expecting a better outcome. Ha! The Miele dishwasher we got didn't last 5 years. Turns out the fancy German engineering does not help with reliability but with creating overcomplicated designs with more moving parts.
The d/w that the Miele replaced was a damaged floor model we got for $100 from the orange store. It was so bare the bottom had no cover (by design) and all the parts were exposed, buttressed by some styrofoam and glued to a unibody plastic tub. It literally looked like something out of an injection molding machine with a bunch of parts randomly stuck to it. And yet it lasted longer than the replacement. We're going back to absolute cheapest and expecting to just replace every few years and still come out ahead.
It was hot shit here for a little while, but why couldn't it really break out like medium and substack did?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satisficing#In_personality_and...
Northern Australia has a culture of running old cars and boats into the ground, kicking them over and making them go again, walking home if all fails.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31402797 ("The Worst (moxie.org)", 65 comments)