It's so easy to hook 'em

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Jay

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A friend I work with was lamenting how dull his old Henckels are. He's one of those guys who absolutely lives for food, and is very disappointed with the performace of his cutlery. Like most Henkels owners, he paid decent coin for his knives and assumed he was getting the best there is. He really had no idea about this thing of ours, so I showed him some Korin catalogs and pointed him towards some familiar websites to show him what was out there.

I brought a couple of buckets of stones to work and a few representative knives-- a gyuto, usuba, and yanagi-- and got to see one of the true delights of this hobby: the look on a guy's face when he has that "holy crap" moment.

It's so easy to get folks interested in this field. All you have to do is show them. :thumbsup:
 
That is soooo true Jay and some of those folks even go on to become bigger knifenuts than yourself.
 
Maybe it's the culture i'm in (military), but I find it hard to convince people to buy Henkels, let alone $300 knives. Most of the people I know have a hard time making a bowl of cereal. I look forward to the day when I can rub my hands together as I bring someone to the light bwahahaha.
 
There's a twist for the home cook. Sometimes i carry my knives to prep food for friends and they refuse to use them cause of the scary edges.
¡No es pa tuitos la bota'e potro!
 
I have found that talking to people about knives is something like talking about politics--either they are already looking to change, or there's nothing you can explain to them that will convince them.

So I just work next to them with good knives, so they see the difference, and then one day, I sharpen a knife for them, and ruin them to bad edges forever. My dad has a set of 12 or so knives, and I only had time to properly sharpen one of them. I bet when I go back, the others will be dusty!
 
I still struggle to convince some, even professional cooks. Some have the ingrained and illogical desire to buy a set. You use a chef's knife 90%, spend 90% of your budget on one! Plus if you have $100 or $150 or whatever to spend now, get one GOOD knife, then later add what you are lacking! Yeesh!
 
I still struggle to convince some, even professional cooks. Some have the ingrained and illogical desire to buy a set. You use a chef's knife 90%, spend 90% of your budget on one! Plus if you have $100 or $150 or whatever to spend now, get one GOOD knife, then later add what you are lacking! Yeesh!

For me it's not so much as they wanting a set as they not wanting to spend so much on a knife.. A lot of guys I met would get a cheap knife, abuse it like hell, throw it out after a year and get another... It's hard to get some of them to show proper care and respect to their tools...
 
A friend I work with was lamenting how dull his old Henckels are. He's one of those guys who absolutely lives for food, and is very disappointed with the performace of his cutlery. Like most Henkels owners, he paid decent coin for his knives and assumed he was getting the best there is. He really had no idea about this thing of ours, so I showed him some Korin catalogs and pointed him towards some familiar websites to show him what was out there.

I brought a couple of buckets of stones to work and a few representative knives-- a gyuto, usuba, and yanagi-- and got to see one of the true delights of this hobby: the look on a guy's face when he has that "holy crap" moment.

It's so easy to get folks interested in this field. All you have to do is show them. :thumbsup:


This is how I got started- The person who introduced me to Japanese knives did it via Global and Shun, and they were profoundly more sharp than anything I had used. Now I am making the transition from the mass produced blades to some of the more craft items. Problem is that there is no real direction and from the point of deviation, everything tends to become rather subjective.

I was harassing a materials engineer friend of mine to help me understand steels, most of the stuff he told me didnt really make sense in context with knives. Piping yes...knives..not so much. So the indispensible nature of forums like this, were experience reigns true over marketing gimic is a blessing.

Show more people nice knives, get more fanatical members :D
 
Some people are just cheap, too. One of my chefs at work is constantly asking me to sharpen his Forschners and crap Henckles. I was OK with it but he keep buying himself these new crappy $30-$50 knives over and over again. I actually told him no I'm not going to sharpen his poo knives anymore. With all the money he has spent over the past 2 years on garbage knives, he could of bought a Fujiwara or something and be done with it. He has something against the idea of spending around $100 on a knife.

Some people will never learn and others just need a tease. I let one of the cooks use one of my knives and within two weeks he had a Shun chef's and a Kikuichi carbon sujihiki. To each his own.
 
I still struggle to convince some, even professional cooks. Some have the ingrained and illogical desire to buy a set. You use a chef's knife 90%, spend 90% of your budget on one! Plus if you have $100 or $150 or whatever to spend now, get one GOOD knife, then later add what you are lacking! Yeesh!

So true. You may have to take it to the next level- let them try a good (or even decent) knife for just a few minutes. If that doesn't work, they don't deserve it.
 
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