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Comment by ackfoobar | Hacker News Reader

I don't think anyone who cares about the cutting experience would put a knife into a dishwasher.

I regularly put mine in the dishwasher. I cook a lot. I have kids. I also own sharpening stones.

For me, this works better than increasing the amount of hand dishes I have to do.

What are you doing with your knives that washing them is a chore? Prep the food, run water on it, and back on the magnet bar it goes.

Cutting garlic or meat will both require more cleaning than just a rinse.

You're supposed to keep a glass of water with a bit of chlorine bleach (to obtain roughly 300 ppm) handy for wiping your tools and surfaces down as you work. Not that anyone teaches Home Economics at school any longer.

This is what I learned in cooking school but also never actually saw in practice in restaurants I worked in (which were fine-ish dining in the Bay Area).

Taking a piece of metal or a plate that has any oily or other non-water-soluble food on it, rinsing it, and chlorinating it results in a mess that might indeed be non-infectious but is otherwise disgusting. Also, leaving a piece of stainless steel covered in chloride (which that bleach will turn into) is one of the worst things you could credibly do to it in a kitchen context. (And, while the relevant regulators don’t seem to care about disinfection byproducts in a kitchen, all those residual organics that didn’t get removed plus hypochlorous acid seem like they would thoroughly fail most drinking water standards.)

Also, I don’t know what all the food safety and dishwasher vendors are telling their customers, but that nice residual chlorine has a tasty and odor that is not appetizing at all. But you can also legally disinfect your dishes and such with sufficiently hot water, and you can buy a commercial dishwasher that does that instead of using chlorine.

In a home context, what’s wrong with dish soap and a sponge or brush? In a commercial kitchen that really wants to be compliant could use dish soap followed by a (very) hot rinse. The average household instant hot water tap is plenty hot for this, too, although demonstrably hitting those HACCP targets might be tricky.

I'm not disputing that, and it's kind of my point. Most home cooks (I would bet millions) are not worrying about "the cutting experience" when they are making dinner. They are using a knife to cut up vegetables or slice meat or whatever. Then they are putting that knife in the dishwasher. Not all of them, but most.

I think my other points matter more. I think people who are invested in the experience as you suggest care about more than just the edge and finish, they care about the weight and balance and feel as well. I think this knife is probably worse on those qualities.

I don't mean to say this knife sucks or that this guy is dumb. It's a cool knife, and he's clearly not dumb. I just think this is more a passion project curiosity kind of thing than a useful product addressing a large market need. Maybe a future mass market version (cheaper steel, stamped, more contoured handle) would change my mind.

> Most home cooks (I would bet millions) are not worrying about "the cutting experience"

Indeed, and they won't buy the knife at this price anyway. My point is that not being dishwasher-safe does not matter for ~everyone. If they care, they won't do it; if they don't, they won't buy it.

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