Interesting find on Lee Valley

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MikeHL

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I know we all scoff at gimmicks but I recently saw these on lee valley.

Interesting concept and design

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http://www.leevalley.com/en/garden/page.aspx?cat=2,40733,40738&p=72296

That got me thinking, other then cleaver users (of which I'm) who /why would anyone want a knife with a center of balance so close to the tip.
 
Lots of cooks have told me that they prefer the weight balanced forward of the pinch grip. The idea being that the weight isn't neutral balanced because when it is the blade sort of disappears to you. A handle heavy kitchen knife is IMO undesirable.
 
MikeHL said:
That got me thinking, other then cleaver users (of which I'm) who /why would anyone want a knife with a center of balance so close to the tip.
Click to expand...

for the same reason that fighter jets are inherently aerodynamically unstable: quick, focused movement and maneuverability. handle heavy knives suck for rapid chopping. The heaviness of the blade relative to the handle both moves the tip in the direction you want more easily, as well as recoils more upon percussion on the board, allowing rhythm to be quickly developed and sustained. For very fine motions, you want a light blade with a heavy handle, because the heavy handle damps motion of the blade. This is why paring and carving knives have small blades and are heavy handled. They are opposites.
 
To put it another way: for speed and power, the bias should be in the desired direction of motion for the active mechanism. For precision, the bias should be on the counterweight.
 
Thirdly, the moving weight makes center of percussion unpredictable, which is a bad thing, in my opinion.
 
EdipisReks said:
for the same reason that fighter jets are inherently aerodynamically unstable: quick, focused movement and maneuverability. handle heavy knives suck for rapid chopping. The heaviness of the blade relative to the handle both moves the tip in the direction you want more easily, as well as recoils more upon percussion on the board, allowing rhythm to be quickly developed and sustained. For very fine motions, you want a light blade with a heavy handle, because the heavy handle damps motion of the blade. This is why paring and carving knives have small blades and are heavy handled. They are opposites.
Click to expand...

That's pretty awesome explanation. So are lasers balanced differently then workhorses? With workhouses being slightly more nose heavy?
 
Sure, and that balance difference is going to explain part of why beefier Wa knives often times seem to "cut with their own weight," because they are.
 
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