Recent content by jpaulg

Half the time I just use my 10" Sabatier rather than grab my paring knife. With practice you can use the larger chef's knives with delicacy. Where I find the 10" very useful is processing things like chicken breasts, that extra room to rock forward and back makes life a lot easier. I work...

Oh noes Rob and I butt heads agains. Firstly the bolster. The bolster provides longitudinal stability to the blade. So the choice is between a blade that snaps easily and a blade that you can't sharpen the last 1/4 inch. Like forging, the benefit of having a bolster have only really been...

H. Boker?

ditto

Some thoughts. a) There are several very good reasons why expensive steel is better than cheap steel. Without getting into lecture mode the better the steel the better the edge the knife will hold and the more robust it will be. b) There comes a point of diminishing returns where you pay a lot...

Not necessarily so. The "D" shaped handle is purely for user comfort, and is not related to whether the blade is single bevel or double bevel. In fact I can't recall seeing the "D" handle on a single bevel knife as all of mine have octagonal handles. Other chefs in my kitchen have Gyutos which...

Small population, big country = poor market for specialist gear of any description.

Remember where I heard about Masahiro. I've been toying with the idea of replacing my Yanagiba with a Takohiki and Masahiro are one of the brands I've looked at. eBay Australia Store: Search results for Japanese chef's knife hocho shop.

The Icel is sold as a Mundial equivalent brand her in Oz. It's Brazilian made using German steel if I remember correctly. Masahiro rings a bell but can't place them.

The cosmetics can be important. Blue and black steels get nice grey patina but white and yellow steels will take an ugly red/brown patina. Either way they don't look as clean as stainless and I've had fights with some know nothings who though my knives were unhygienic because of the patina...

For me its the ease of sharpening that has moved me from the hard 'supersteels' to CS. Two or three strokes on a slick steel and you're back to shaving sharpness. When you put them on the stones you only need to use the lightest pressure to get a full edge back on them. Having said that CS is a...

Some people would say that gyutos use very expensive "super steel" that is trying to get the same performance as Carbon Steel but ultimately is inferior in performance to a Carbon Steel Chef's knife. :angel:

That's a nice cleaver, a little on the small side but it will do in a pinch.

Nakiris are just the best vegetable knife on the planet. I prefer my Usaba but that's me being a carbon steel snob and a good Nakiri is a better knife than a Usaba. I highly recommend a Kama-Nakiri or Kama-Usaba which have a sheeps hoof rounded tip which make them easier to use...