Best cheap knife set ever??

So I was at my local costco and they had half an aisle of stuff from Tramontina's professional line.The stainless steel mixing bowls were awesome for example. Anyway, for $14 they had a set of 8 and 10 inch chefs knives that looked awfully like Forschner knives in their profile. I said what the heck and bough a set home. Put a 15/20 microbevel like I have on my Forschner knives I keep around for old time sake and for visitors who I wouldn't let touch things like my Devin or my Shig.

And they pretty much seem like forschner clones at about 1/5 the price. Steel seems about the same, grind as well...

So while these are not knives for the likes of us, if you were going to recommend a forschner to a friend then you might want to give these a whirl. And the other Tramontina stuff they had at my costco is also a pretty good buy,

Note not every costco seems to have tramontina stuff though...

For $14, that's a good score. At worst they can be beater knives you take camping and to friends houses or BBQing.

Tramontina knives are among top recommendations for cheaper knives on Russian knives forums. Some series to have a decent HT and can perform really well if you care to put some work into knife.

Here in Bulgaria too the pro series is high regarded. But their handles are terrible.

I don't know about their knives but their stainless tri-ply cookware is a pretty darn good bang for your buck.

is it the proline series? forschners are over priced now.

panda said:

is it the proline series? forschners are over priced now.

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On our local market they are sold under Tramontina Pro Master line. White plastic handles that can be easily shaped with sandpaper. Made from Krupp 1.4110 steel with 56 HRC (and cryo HT). Flat ground to 0.3mm


Or for carbon lovers like you there's also a Carbon series with wooden handles:

it appears it's only available in international markets, too bad as that 9" carbon one would be one hell of a bargain.

I tried to talk Tram. into importing a few of those inexpensive carbon models they sell all over Latin America several years ago and found Tramontina-USA very unfriendly. The impression was if you weren't Walmart ordering freighter loads of their higher end knives, they had no time for you.

They are really nice knives but can´t hold an edge for long. At least in pro enviroment...

They are brazilian and are kind of ment for using in churrasquerias and butchering. They don´t respond that well when having constant contact with the board.

I´ve found it is not the best idea to put steep angles on them. They benefit from a little thinnin but best to put wider angles or sort of micro bevel. That´s my experience.

I recently bought a knife, and it has become loose already, the blade is rigid when locked

in an open position, when folded the blade doesn't fall into the handle perfectly straight

and is starting to scrape the blades finish everytime it slides in and out. The worst part

is when is it open but not locked, the play wiggles to the left and right quite a bit.

Much more than it should.

How would be the best, safest, and cheapest way to fix this without damaging the knife.

There is a much better Tramontina series called Century, although some may not regard them as cheap. It's full tang with a much better (polycarbonate) handle than all the other series. Stainless steel much softer at 53 Rockwell than the japanese steel. It reminds me the Wusthofs and Sabatier K style. I'm using one century santoku to learn sharpening with stones (thanks to you guys!) and comparing it with the Misono UX10 santoku, it's definitely thicker behing the edge and much heavier, leaning towards the heavy duty tasks. Their cleaver seems to be great, heavy duty. My only complaint is the (integral) bolster, which is a hindrance to sharpening with stones.

I've sharpened a few. Typically old fashioned soft stainless. Use very coarse grits only. At that price level I would prefer the Victorinox, same steel, a bit harder I guess, no fingerguard and much thinner.