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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...

I'll talk chopping boards and let other talk J-knives. - End grain is what you want. End grain is less likely to split and warp. - Bigger is better, and 20"x15"x1.5" is a good size. - Avoid bamboo, bamboo itself has some fine qualities but some makers use glues and solvents that are very scary...

You can get good vintage steels on ebay relatively cheaply, ie between $50 and $100. Just look for one with a good steel and an ok handle. The collectors want the good handles so you don't want to be bidding against some idiot who just wants to hang the thing on his wall. F Dicks (pre-war with...

One thing I would suggest in addition to what everybody else has said is to get some cheap waterstones and practice sharpening by hand before setting up shop with a machine. Doing sharpening by hand is at a much slower speed than on a machine and you will see how the edge develops much more...

No one buys decent steels/hones let alone know how to use them in kitchens. Out here in Oz it's the meatworkers who are buying up all the antique pre-war F Dicks and the Williams-Smithfield pipe steels. Give those guys a cheap CS knife and a good steel and its party time. Over here meatworkers...

Nah, we know we're knife nerds and that we're doing things that 99% of people who work with knives for a living don't bother with. There is a point of diminishing returns and we've passed it.

Superstone I'm pretty sure, but I don't keep the boxes or anything like that. By the time I get to the 10K I'm being all soft and gentle with the knives and giving them my final polish so I'm not sure if it makes too much of a difference anyway. Since I'm mainly working on CS blades I don't...

I have a Henckels 220/400 waterstone, which is hard hard hard and I mainly use for flattening my J-stones or repairing chips. The stones I actually use are: 1K King (I thinks its 1K, it might be 800 or 1200 but I no longer have the box) 3K King 6K Shun (well Shun branded, not sure who makes it...

Tojiro is a brand of Japanese knife, they have a very good reputation for providing value for money products. A yanagiba is a Japanese fish knife. Commonly called a sashimi knife. As for getting one, that does depend on where you live. What blade length you want is dependant on how large a...

I don't think we disagree too much, its more a case of having different perspectives on things. As you say modern techniques are re-writing a lot of things about knife steel. Funny thing about the difference in sharpening is that I had just sharpened my Carbon steel knives and a Japanese knife...

Time for me to muddy the waters ;) J-knives are not necessarily thinner than Western knives. If you go for traditional single bevel knives like Usabas (vegetable) or Yanagibas (Fish) knives then they are actually significantly thicker than their Western counterparts. I think the easiest way is...