No knives, only cook knives | Hacker News Reader

No knives, only cook knives

kellykozakandjoshdonald.substack.com

124 pointsfirloop85 comments

For a practical guide to which knives to buy, American's Test Kitchen gives pretty good advice:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6LggwoL_4

* https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/8204-three-esse...

* Under USD 75: https://archive.is/https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equip...

For most daily needs: chef's knife, pairing knife, serated/bread knife. Possibly useful 'extras': kitchen shears, petty/utility, boning, slicing/carving. They do not recommend sets.

Kitchen shears and a boning knife were “why did I wait this long” tools for me.

Kitchen shears but with a 4 ft chain to keep them near the sink to wash them, preventing so family stops taking them into other rooms and using to open shipping packing, cutting clothing tags, etc.

Two kitchen shears. I r for kitchen, one for rest

A pair of scissors for every room is what I subscribe to

Equip your entire family with pocketknives.

Especially when I have to prep green beans

I consider good shears to be a daily requirement (they double as random available scissors as well). Specialty knives are really only worth it if you use it for its intended purpose at least once a week. We do have two chef knives as it allows simultaneous work to be done with my spouse, though.

More important is learning proper knife skills, including maintenance and sharpening. Even the best knives need to be taken care of.

The nice thing about these affordable but still good quality knives is that I can simply use them or be rough with them and it's all good. They sharpen up nicely and I don't have to baby them (right in the dishwasher they go, that's right, the dishwasher).

I enjoy seeing glimpse into other people's niche hobbies.

I really enjoy markets like they describe and I've experienced them in Asia, but I have no idea where I'd find one in WA State.

This niche hobby became https://bernalcutlery.com/ which is a fairly successful Bay Area knife store

They also have an excellent book, covering both the subject matter (knives and sharpening) and how the company came to be.

Somewhat similar to the book of the Blue Bottle founder on coffee and his company path. Both are basically, as the GP remarked, are glimpses into other people's passion and deep fascination with a certain subject. Fantastic reads IMO.

* In fact, let me add two more books - Ivan Ramen and Tartine Bread. Similar introductions into lives of people and their obsessions with a specific subject.

https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Definitive-Introduction-Sharpen...

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Craft-Coffee-Roasting/dp/...

https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Ramen-Obsession-Recipes-Unlikely...

https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118...

If anyone knows other books of the same nature, I'm all ears.

I've eaten at the Ivan Ramen in New York and it was outstanding.

I have Tartine bread and this book is incredible

Good people too. a friend of mine used to babysit for them

The swipe against IKEA at the end seems out of place. In my experience IKEA knives have decent materials, design, and build quality despite the low price point. Maybe this is an artifact of the author's focus on resale value? IKEA knives have a low initial acquisition cost which contributes to extremely low resale prices, but they seem to function well and much better than Forgecraft knives.

Agreed! I have had an IKEA Slitbar Santoku since 2014, it's been abused (even tossed in the dishwasher a couple of time because I didn't value it at the time) and it has outlasted most of my other knives. Not to mention, it's my preferred knife when I pull out my drawer.

So much so, that I went out of my way to get the longer chef knife/gyuto version of it off eBay last year! It's freaking fantastic! They're both well maintained now, honed often and my two go-to knives over a wusthof and bunch of Misen knives

No kidding. Most of our knifes are the same IKEA ones we bought fifteen years ago. Honing steel, whetstone and the occasional coat of oil for the wood part of the handle and they just last. I can understand the brand might dilute the resale value because IKEA tends to have a broad range of quality/cost in the line-up.

Ikea is very heavily a “value for money” company in my eyes. Their cheapest furniture in each category is basically pressed sawmill garbage but it will withstand everything but moving. If you move up in price the stuff actually gets better, not just fancier.

My shop is next to the flea market described in the article, I’m really surprised that so many people that live in sf don’t know about it. It’s a really interesting way to spend an hour, and you see a really broad swath of San Francisco residents. plenty of vinyl, other collectibles, hand tools, antiques, ‘antiques’, ephemera from the 70s, strange old electronics, etc. alemeny near bayshore at the farmers market. Every Sunday, pretty much over by noon

I assume he also meant the Alameda Antiques Fair as well.

The article says you need to show there at 5 am though.

just to get the best pickings. most of this stuff comes from storage units.

Which flea market is that?

Alemany.

I haven't been there in (way) too long, but there used to be a great pierogi vendor -- so even on cold rainy mornings (too common) you'd at least get some warm delicious breakfast.

French knives are far behind Japanese ones, be it in metallurgy or design.

Agree. There is a whole industry in Japan around knives that is much bigger than the French one.

There are now inexpensive Japanese-style knives from China. I have a couple of surprisingly well-made Xinzuo-branded knives, each under $50.

I got one few months ago. Still haven't even had to sharpen it, I'm honestly pretty impressed

what steel is it? Best edge retention I've seen is Aogami Super.

From what I know Chinese copies focus more on the VG10-like steels.

the name of knife was HEZHEN Master 8,3" (B30)

Seems like some VG10-equivalent from various pages advertising it

VG10 edge retention isn't that amazing in my experience, and it's harder to sharpen than carbon steel. Burr feels gummy rather than crisp, and carbon steel goes as high as 65 HRC vs 62 for VG10.

It's sad that the market is flooded with high-performance stainless steels which are inherently worse and more expensive, just because the average person is afraid of rust and knife maintenance.

Pfft. The knives in my kitchen are all original Damascus steel I use them to make food from recipes that were lost to time as well.

I love that all my food now tastes of rust and light oil.

Just you wait for the next set of FDA recommendations! We are ahead of the curve I tells ya.

I suppose I need to get my heavy metal intake so I too can have a beautifully powerful singing voice, Just like RFK Jnr

Yeah, My kitchen knives were once auto leaf springs. Soak 'em in the olive oil after use to keep the rust down (the knives, not the leaf springs). Arrr.

Free iron supplements, that's stuff is good for you.

If you haven't got a few Mithril knives then you are no connoisseur at all.

Guys guys please. Adamantium knives or get the hell out of my kitchen!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Ant

Haha, but in all seriousness Adamantium poisoning is no joke...

my current favorite kitchen scissors / sheers: https://www.amazon.com/CANARY-Cardboard-Scissors-Blue-PS-650...

I tried a bunch of kitchen sheers. They lacked leverage. These cut bones with ease.

I find ebay being overpriced if you are into collecting stuff so flea markets can be an option if you don't want to overpay.

i also find, with the arrival of catawiki (more a european market?), nice products for regular/normal prices seems hard to come by nowadays. Our "local" online market (marktplaats.nl) is therefore losing its value, local (town/neighborhood) (whats)app groups seem to somewhat take over this roll within the digital space.

This is a general trend worldwide.

OP's writing is nice, but he is de facto a scalper looking for the maximum amount of arbitrage. There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy really get a chance to find any.

What they're doing isn't illegal or forbidden, but it has completely destroyed the spirit of flea markets and secondhand stores as quaint places. And in response to becoming as hypercapitalist as the rest of society, a large contingent of people on flea markets has started to offer whole tables stuffed with cheap AliExpress / Temu crap. Or AI art being sold as "handmade".

The enthusiast offering artisanal coffee or lemonade or cinnamon rolls from his stall or food truck has quadrupled his prices, because if everyone else is gouging the visitor, why shouldn't he?

The same goes for secondhand clothing stores. They're wise to the scalpers looking to flip stuff on Vinted or whatever, so they have also doubled or even tripled their prices. It's an open secret that a lot of stores let the girls working there have a first lookover of whatever comes in.

Is this really scalping? He’s getting up early, using hours of his time and knowledge to select good knives, cleaning, repairing, sharpening then providing a selection of good knives for others to buy.

If you just want a decent knife I’d say he offers a good service that is cheaper and less risky than spending a day or more doing it yourself.

It's close enough to scalping.

He produces value by refining a raw resource. I don’t want to go to the flea market on my Sunday morning, maybe I’ll pay his markup.

He reuses (or rather, rehomes) too by finding buyers for cleaned and sharpened knifes of good quality. That's a plus from an environmental viewpoint.

I dislike scalping where no real value is added to the service provided beyond getting there first, but this guy uses his skills to pick out good knifes, does quality assurance and presumably sharpening, and sells them with the ability to inform buyers about the type of knife and its intended use.

Is it really scalping? I have more interest than knowledge of what makes a good cookung knife. I could pay him for his knowledge and get a good and useful knife, or I could guess my way through half a dozen trips to the flea market with weeks of trial and error usage. Yes, one is a solution and the other is a journey, but if I'm committed to this particular journey, surf's up at 5:30 a.m.

In general, if you want to do something you more often than not have to compete nation or even worldwide. It makes markets more efficient in the minds of some economists, but makes creating or finding valuable things fucking exhausting.

You can find those things on eBay now. Yes, they’re expensive, but that’s because the exhausting work of combing flea markets and estate sales has been done for you, so that value has been priced in.

What people are really complaining about is that the hobbies of thrifting and collecting have been overrun by professionals. That’s going to suck for any hobby that involves buying and selling.

My local area used to be great to find old used woodworking tools for cheap. I stocked my shop and would occasionally restore and resell a tool or two when I needed to buy something bigger for my shop.

Then somebody posted about it on fucking Facebook. Now ragged out used tools sell for more than new price, and the buyers are always from cities 5+ hours away here to take advantage of the low prices since us country bumpkins don't know any better.

Used tools were a nice way for young people to get started in the hobby. Now they're too expensive for that to be realistic.

> There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy

Usually the flea markets is open to everyone, it’s just that the ‘regular guy’ is not motivated enough to come early. There is nothing you find you cannot if you show up at the same time.

No normal person is getting up at 05:30 to go to a flea market.

Like I said, they're not doing anything forbidden, but they've completely demolished the vibe of something formerly quaint.

Imagine if I went to a hippie festival, bought trays and trays of cake from the food truck, then walked them two blocks over to the fancy neighborhood and started flipping them for triple the price. Word gets out, and a few years later the food truck has raised its prices significantly and then the rest of the festival follows.

As a seller, I would rather sell to a reseller than not at all.The reseller does provide me a kind of service in return by finding me a buyer.

If I'm selling at below market prices I'm effectively giving money to the buyer and perhaps I'm upset that this money goes a professional rather than someone "in need"? Even so I'm not sure the reseller isn't also in need. Presumably this is their livelihood. They probably aren't super wealthy if they are scanning flea markets at 5:30am.

I don't know about your festival example. Sounds like the festival realised that they could charge more and did that. I think this happens all the time without any need for cake reselling.

> No normal person is getting up at 05:30 to go to a flea market.

Of course there are, just go at that time and check. I know because I am one of them. 05:30 is not particularly early, and if you have a specific niche or quality standard and not just only a bystander, you know that is the only way.

I am also not sure why you believe this trend is new. The diamonds as far as I know have always been found very early.

> 05:30 is not particularly early,

5:30 is particularly early, especially when it involves normal people's hobbies.

> and if you have a specific niche or quality standard and not just only a bystander,

This is what the OP was saying, that this space has been been invaded by scalpers, people who do tend to have higher "quality standards" because it's in the nature of their "job", they've become aware that the higher quality stuff sells for more so that they're actively chasing it.

You're either delusional or just being a contrarian if you think being out the door at 05:30 is "not particularly early". McDonalds is still serving the dinner menu at that point.

And you used to be able to find diamonds in the rough on flea markets, secondhand stores and even on online places like eBay, until 2013ish. That's when the professional reseller became more and more pervasive.

Since you seem to think that flipping and scalping is a valuable addition to society, we have nothing to discuss.

> You're either delusional or just being a contrarian

As kgwgk points out [*1], the proposition wasn't "5:30AM isn't particularly early", but rather "5:30AM isn't particularly early to visit a flea market".

Despite being US-centric, this is also an international forum, values may differ. I initially assumed the market was French/European when they mentioned looking for vintage culinary knifes.

> Since you seem to think that flipping and scalping is a valuable addition to society, we have nothing to discuss.

Not interested in good-faith discussions of differing viewpoints?

I'm not going to downvote you, but I think this is pretty narrow-minded for a discussion forum like this.

[*1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46667560

"Morning person" is actually a thing. My MIL gets up at about 4:30.

> You're either delusional or just being a contrarian if you think being out the door at 05:30 is "not particularly early"

Have you never fished at the dawn, hiked for a sunrise, spent the night watching the stars? I think you may try to expand your horizon about other people hobbies.

Apparently not. If I want to take nice (or naughty) pictures in a beautiful location (nature, urbex, or whatever) without anyone else around, getting up early is key. Going out at 4:30 to catch the first bus and hike an hour, or ride a bicycle somewhere just to get there by sunrise: no problem coffee won't fix. It's worth it too.

Folks here often have almost no experience outside of a city, so that list reads to them like "things a peasant would do in the dark ages "

"05:30 is not particularly early [to go to a flea market]"

They've effectively outsourced the work - they are paying this guy to get up at 5:30AM on their behalf. You go shopping for yourself, he goes on behalf of his customers.

> they've completely demolished the vibe of something formerly quaint.

I think you mean overlooked. Well, it's in the spotlight now, and gotten popular. More busy, less calm, less 'quaint'. The market exists for (as a result of) the sellers, of they are happy, consider that the target demographic has just shifted, and you are no longer it.

> Imagine if I went to a hippie festival..

What is a 'hippy-festival', does it imply some kind of values shared by the seller, or is that just a description of the usual buyer?

Feels a bit like the glass-makers fallacy.

Why can't the food truck do the same? Why do they need to go to the 'fancy neighbourhood' if the food truck can raise their prices in their current location (festival)? Do you think the food truck sellers believe this is a bad thing? Should the food sellers be prevented from earning more so that you can pay less - and surely the food truck sellers could continue charging less if they wished? Unless the festival organisers started charging them higher fees.

Flea markets were always this way. Even in the 1970s, probaply before but I'm not old enough to know people who did it.

> The enthusiast offering ... because if everyone else is gouging the visitor, why shouldn't he?

Or because the fee they pay (food truck licence, parking/market fee, tax, etc) is already priced as such so they have little choice. In my country, rent is very high, that's why coffee is so expensive (and coffee places struggle to stay afloat) - the stores compete heavily, but the landlord extracts most of the value.

> The same goes for second-hand clothing stores.

Isn't giving "the girls" first look / priority morally the same? The 2nd-hand stores wise to this could just as easily advertise on vinted, no?

Describing all of this as 'hypercapitalist' seems hyperbolic to me.

The booth fee at the sf flea market is $50. However you have to have a business license with the city (used to be around $35/yr) and register with the market in advance

I had a hell of a time buying a new whetstone for my kitchen knives recently. I didn't want to buy online and I also didn't want to get ripped off. Walmart and Target had nothing but those shitty little widgets you pull a knife through to fuck it up. Home Despot and Lowes only had those and also bizarre sharpening contraptions that included wetstones but also other nonsense to justify bumping the price to north of $50. I finally found what I was looking for, just a regular whetstone with no bells and whistles, for about $3 at harbor freight.

My conclusion is that very few normies care about edge quality and most of those that do are making some sort of hobby out of it and want to buy something excessively fancy. See also Japanese knives; I'm sure they're very nice but two minutes with a whetstone will get any shitty piece of metal sharp enough to cut some chicken. There's no reason to overthink this stuff.

You need to look at professional chefs supply for stuff like this, not Walmart or Amazon.

If there's a local community college or trade school with a culinary program, they might sell stuff like this or at least be able to direct you to suppliers.

All I wanted was a flat rock though, not some expensive specialty thing. I've concluded there is no longer any market for simple practical things like that; the market got bifurcated between people who want some expensive bit of hobby kit and people who don't care about sharp knives at all.

My no-frills set of two large whetstones (4 grades) cost me north of $70 in a pro restaurant store like 20 years ago. They are still in a good shape, and can make my knives razor-sharp with little effort. Even the knife I bought for $5 in a local supermarket.

Curious what your techniques are to keep the angle consistent. I've been sharpening manually by always using the same thumb position under the blade but there is always a little wiggle that bugs me.

You can buy an angle guide like the one below to keep the angle consistent while sharpening.

https://www.amazon.com/Accurate-Whetstone-Sharpener-Effortle...

I've tried simple whetstones, and haven't yet got the knack of not dulling knives on it. The bizarre sharpening contraptions take the knack out of it, same as the pull-through knife mutilators. It may not be the best, but it is better than it was. Unlike a whetstone where you may very well end up with a knife duller than when you started, if you don't have the knack for keeping an angle or removing the burr or any number of other ways to mess up.

I sharpen my kitchen knives the same way I sharpen my lawnmower blades: out front on the curb (mine is concrete). Grind until it's sharp. Once I was out-of-pocket but luckily my host had a rock garden.

Normies DO care about edge quality but they DON'T care about fiddling with fancy "whetstones" and "diamond sharpeners" and such. Sharpen it, clean with soap and water, dry and burn it (to remove the rabies and typhus) and wipe it down with olive oil, mmmmm!

> ...and burn it (to remove the rabies and typhus)...

Elaborate? You heat your knives after every sharpening?

Sure! Who knows what's on that concrete curb! I'm clean if nothing else with my kitchenware. Just pass it over my natural gas stove's burner. Treat it the same as you do your pocket knife before/after you remove a bullet or shot from a wound. Sterile is best!

no need to overthink is the truth I make a wide assortment of edge tools and sharpen them,including damascus, and regularly sharpen whatever is dull, drill bits, lathe tools, planer blades, etc etc, by hand or with power equipment. And in moments of need, like not having a long enough wood bit, I have hand ground a long bolt, into a wood bit, no thinking, just doing.

> bizarre sharpening contraptions

https://www.tsprof.eu wants a word

You didn’t want to buy online but then were happy with the poorest quality stone harbor freight had to offer? That’s an odd choice.

There are many quality whetstones to choose from and a lot of debate on the absolute best. But TLDR, KING is generally highly rated:

https://www.hocho-knife.com/king/

Harbor Freight has random decent stuff. Maybe the whetstone was one of them.

That's like saying Goodwill has random decent stuff.

Technically true, but rarely true.

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