A falling knife has no handle...

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Dardeau

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Or what dumb thing did Andre do today.

I knocked my Masamoto yanagiba off of the cutting board with a roll of plastic wrap. Then I tried to catch it.
It now looks like this:
ImageUploadedByKitchen Knife Forum1395449429.685146.jpg
ImageUploadedByKitchen Knife Forum1395449450.507969.jpg

The tip of my left middle finger looks about the same.

Everybody loses.

I've never chipped a single bevel anywhere near this badly, little nicks on my deba, but this is the size of the flat on the ura. Is there anything I should or should not do while fixing this? Or things I should look out for where I could eff up the geometry? I don't plan on trying to get it all in one go, maybe three to four sessions. Any and all advice is welcome!
 
That was my first thought, but I use the damn thing every day. Maybe an excuse.....
 
First, I hope your finger recovers quickly. Fingers are way more important than knives.

Which lead me to...

Second, no excuse. Just a great reason to get a "spare" knife while your damaged one is being repaired. :doublethumbsup:
 
More than once the thought has crossed through my head if my love for my knives would supersede the jump back reflex I've developed after 15 years of being in kitchens with falling knives. I hope I never have to find out(knocking on the wooden bar top as I type this...)
 
If a knife is going down I get out of the way now. Reflex can be a terrible thing I remember years ago a newbie dropped his tongs into the fryer and another cook caught him reaching for them. That could have been ugly.
 
Reflex can be a terrible thing. A newbie dropped his tongs into the fryer once and another cook caught him reaching for them. That could have been ugly.

Yikes.

That's no joke, skin probably would have been falling off like he dipped it in acid.
 
Leidenfrost makes it not as bad as you might think, as long as it's a brief immersion.

IDK, have you seen something like this first hand?

I've seen some really nasty grease burns including one years ago at an old job where the sous chef spilled a saute pan with a decent amount of just used scorching hot oil on the head chef/boss hand and it was pretty gross. He had to go to the hospital after trying to gut it out with a gauze wrap and some gel and what not while using only one hand on the line and it bubbled up nasty like and what not.

I know that's not the same, but he got it off pretty fast and reaching your whole hand into 350 to 375 degree oil almost has to be worse even considering the other where spilling it on from a pan let's it set in open air for a few seconds.

I've been lucky with oil over the years when I was in pro kitchens, although a number of times, I think 4, I've done the space out where you grab a pan handle fresh out of the hot oven with no protection.

The worst time was actually at home during the holidays, had a fat cowboy ribeye finishing in the oven as a side main course, doing like 20 things at once with some drinks in me and the music going, grabbed it with no towel or glove and instead of instantly dropping it I locked on even harder and brought it to the stovetop cause I somehow immediately thought of food preservation for the fam lol. Hand is scarred to this day.
 
i dropped bread knife last week and tried to catch it, missed by an inch instead the flat part at the heel dug directly into my thumb. i think i would have caught it on target had i not been so exhausted at the time which is how knocking it off the board even happened in the first place.

that's gonna take a lot of metal off to fix that, unless you just reprofile it?
 
Don't worry about the chip so much. It will come out eventually over time. Since it really won't affect performance it's not worth removing that much metal at one time in my opinion. Just get some of it out and move on. I would however worry about that extremely uneven ura. I know mine isn't perfect but wow! Looks like you are applying pressure on the return stroke and lots of it. Only push lightly on the way out and use no pressure at all on the way back. Maybe to even things out try doing uraoshi with your other hand for a while?
 
I've been lucky with oil over the years when I was in pro kitchens, although a number of times, I think 4, I've done the space out where you grab a pan handle fresh out of the hot oven with no protection.

I'm a home cook and have done this more times than I care to admit, with cast iron no less.


Andre, I'm very sorry about your finger and your knife. I hope you didn't need stitches :(
 
No stitches needed, thankfully. I wouldn't have tried to catch it if it was totally off the board, but it was still sliding when I grabbed it. I bought this guy used and have been trying to even out that spot in the ura. If you look at it, it chipped right where it is most uneven. If my mental image of this is correct, that low spot would cause a more fragile edge?

And sticking your fingers in a fryer for VERY short periods of time causes surprisingly little damage. Any longer and you get cooked, but water vapor does some weird things sometimes.
 
This thread, and especially a prior one a few years ago about nasty knife cuts (with far too many graphic illustrative photos of the injuries, which still make me wince thinking about them), made me wonder: I don't recall anyone ever mentioning that they wear protection -- no, not that kind -- like Kevlar gloves. Is that because they're pretty ineffective, and one would have to wear something like a cumbersome steel mesh glove for real protection? Or is it a macho kind of thing? Or maybe akin to a sense of invincibility -- "I'm careful, and it will never happen to me"?

In somewhat the same vein (so to speak), I never seem to notice -- maybe I'm not looking sharply enough -- professional chefs using dedicated pot holders, although I do sometimes see mitts. Handy towels seem to be most commonly enlisted for hot handle service. Is that correct? Doesn't seem like much protection -- especially if a towel is at all wet.
 
You are right wet towel forget it.Many cooks keep a dry towel handy for hot pans & handles.Burns are a fact of life for cooks.In tight quarters it might be your co-worker that burns you.We used to keep Aloe plant in the kitchen.
 
Before I starting cooking for a living I worked in a ski shop. One day the wall of skis started to topple over and I tried grabbing a few pairs to stop the tumble. Brand new, factory edges (on skis) left a 7 stitch gash on a finger. Learned the lesson that stuff, no matter how shiny and pretty, is less important than me. I've luckily only dropped a knife a handful of times in my career but I'd rather fix a chip than try to buy a finger.
 
This is the first time I've needed super glue in about two years. Once you cut yourself a few times you break yourself of the bad habits, until you do something monumentally stupid like a. Knock your knife on the ground, and b. try to catch it. As for Kevlar, smell an oyster shuckers glove, and then notice how nice and cool it is there and how little you are sweating.
 
This thread, and especially a prior one a few years ago about nasty knife cuts (with far too many graphic illustrative photos of the injuries, which still make me wince thinking about them), made me wonder: I don't recall anyone ever mentioning that they wear protection -- no, not that kind -- like Kevlar gloves. Is that because they're pretty ineffective, and one would have to wear something like a cumbersome steel mesh glove for real protection? Or is it a macho kind of thing? Or maybe akin to a sense of invincibility -- "I'm careful, and it will never happen to me"?

In somewhat the same vein (so to speak), I never seem to notice -- maybe I'm not looking sharply enough -- professional chefs using dedicated pot holders, although I do sometimes see mitts. Handy towels seem to be most commonly enlisted for hot handle service. Is that correct? Doesn't seem like much protection -- especially if a towel is at all wet.
If someone tried to wear one of those protective mesh gloves in our kitchen, we would slap them with it.
You can't control the item you're cutting very well with a bulky glove.
You're going to cut yourself eventually, it's inevitable. Just don't be so scared. It makes the interns shaky.
 
I'm probably just weird but while honing my knife skills the more I cut myself the less scared I got of doing it again which like knerd said is inevitable. I haven't cut myself during actual cutting in years but I know for sure it will happen again at any moment.
 
I cut myself on a damn mandolin more than a knife. With proper technique, the only cuts I get now are very minor nicks that heal quickly, especially cause I try to keep the knife sharp.

Towels are the most convenient thing for most cooks to use to grab hot stuff. Just make sure you don't get the crappy towels that are invariably in the mix, and the towel cannot be wet. Wet towels are like ex girlfriends; they feel good at first then burn you.
 
Worst cut I ever got was from a dull peeler, took the tip of my finger more then halfway off. No hospital. A lot of washing and disinfecting, paper towel and electrical tape bandaid, stitched it myself the next day with help from my boss lol.
 
Put the tip of my thumb and a good chunk of thumbnail through the fine julienne comb on a benriner, back before I had any knife skills to speak of. I haven't used one of those death combs since.
 
Peelers and graters I find myself being more cautious around. A knife cut I can handle, grated or peeled fingers seems to hurt much worse. I use a guard with the mandolin since I took off a chunk of my index finger with it.
 
Sounds like Mandolins take a toll.Never liked those things but had to use them have been cut.Something about moving your hand rapidly toward a sharp blade.
 
Sounds like Mandolins take a toll.Never liked those things but had to use them have been cut.Something about moving your hand rapidly toward a sharp blade.

I feel as it's the same with knife skills. When I first started using 'em I absolutely hated it - had some bad cuts to show for it too. But it's all about being steady, not scared, and using the right amount of pressure/grip on whatever you're cutting. I've seen a lot of dull Mandolins being used too, which usually ends up with someone putting too much pressure, the food getting caught, and a finger getting thrown in the blade.
 
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