That's what I was thinking too, seems hard to believe.
Carrot wedge test
- Thread starter CiderBear
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Nikabrik
Well-Known Member
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Assuming a 240mm length and 40mm average height, that would require removing about 0.5mm from each side at the edge, if it's decreasing to 0 removal at the spine.
Possible, but... Yikes. That'd be a chunky knife to start!
Possible, but... Yikes. That'd be a chunky knife to start!
CiderBear
Senior Member
Lolllz got here in a timely fashion... Alpha and Omega, from OP to last reply. Rudimentary knife skills vs. awesome steel, amazing knife skills vs. 25 y.o. cutco peeler.
Seeing you CiderBear I was thinking... why not buy a Victo Fibrox and improve the basic skills... but then again, you wouldn't have nice knives for a wedging contest. When a Fibrox crackles over a carrot you may feel like the handle is coming off...More power to you.
Please keep those videos coming whoever you are, no matter how good you are. Watch those fingers. You don't want to chip those nice steels over a bone.
Solid advice. Brb let me sell all my knives and just stick to Victorinox and Mercer
and a slap chop, but wait! there's more!! and for low price of $5.99 you get not one but two!!
Pls not a Mercer.....
SALAD!!
Friends don't let friends use Mercer.
Don't listen to these guys, some are jerks and some, like me, think they are funny when they really are not.
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What are you even talking about? She’s just cutting a carrot, giving a demonstration on how all her knives move through a carrot to varying degrees of resistance.Lolllz got here in a timely fashion... Alpha and Omega, from OP to last reply. Rudimentary knife skills vs. awesome steel, amazing knife skills vs. 25 y.o. cutco peeler.
Seeing you CiderBear I was thinking... why not buy a Victo Fibrox and improve the basic skills... but then again, you wouldn't have nice knives for a wedging contest. When a Fibrox crackles over a carrot you may feel like the handle is coming off...
Please keep those videos coming whoever you are, no matter how good you are. Watch those fingers. You don't want to chip those nice steels over a bone.
“You have no frame of reference here, Donny. You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie …”
it was a weird flex indeed
One thing that I learned very early in my culinary career is that no matter how much experience and knowledge and skills you have in the kitchen, you will never meet anyone who is incapable of teaching you something you didn't know.
The corollary is that you will never meet anyone who knows so much that you can't teach them anything.
So keep making videos and keep watching them. You never know when something you demonstrate might really help someone else. Even if it's just in making a decision about which knife to buy. And more importantly, successfully demonstrating a skill to someone else is the surest sign that you have mastered it.
The corollary is that you will never meet anyone who knows so much that you can't teach them anything.
So keep making videos and keep watching them. You never know when something you demonstrate might really help someone else. Even if it's just in making a decision about which knife to buy. And more importantly, successfully demonstrating a skill to someone else is the surest sign that you have mastered it.
Actually loved the vids and didn't care about technique, although it was alpha to omega between first and last. I remarked reading the whole thread that a lot of people were onto those details instead of the knives slicing carrots. Just used sarcasm here, I am quite sorry to have offended. I'm exactly the type to think something is funny when it's not. My bad and sore mistake.
TBH, using a Fibrox on hard veggies does feel like its gonna break... Seeing Cider's knives, I feel that the Earth would crack before they do. And if ever she needs vengeance I'll post a video of me sharpening knives...
With my early videos, I had to do all the mandatory apologies for bad technique and randomness in cuts, but I still somehow was able to show some of the knives' character.
This one was originally trying a friend's prototype cleaver (first) next to a relatively familiar [to me] carrot laser. It didn't rule the knife out as a bad performer; it just set a practical limit to its range and showed where it would shine more (later cuts in the video).
This one was originally trying a friend's prototype cleaver (first) next to a relatively familiar [to me] carrot laser. It didn't rule the knife out as a bad performer; it just set a practical limit to its range and showed where it would shine more (later cuts in the video).
Carl Kotte
Senior Member
If good knife skills were required to post knife videos on KKF many (not all) of us amateurs/home users would be blocked. But hey, that’s one of the great things with KKF: we are all allowed to post here. Obviously we share a passion and most members are generous enough to give each other credit! As Stringer said, we learn from each other. I hope it stays that way!
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Nice... Your friend's prototype needed a bit thinning, or was it something else? Seems to cut alright in the smaller slices, nowhere near as good as your trusted one though. However it becomes subjective a bit when you see it wedge in that carrot, I had a prejudice looking at it slice again afterwards. Just a question but interested in the answer.
The hard wedge was far up the blade at the top of the hollow where most ingredients wouldn't reach. The edge was quite thin and the main bevel was an angle that produced a good separation. When I made videos, I was very reluctant to make confident judgments, because makers (in my limited experience) will decide on their own to either rationalize performance limitations or feel compelled to change them. There are many cutting scenarios where the heavy beast would shine and the thin knife would be more of a hassle in use, but it's not my place to tell makers they need to make knives specifically for my habits and preferences. They can balance their sympathy for my needs with those of others as well as their own notion of the products' "character".
Nevertheless, that maker has gone through several generations of cleavers since then and so my videos don't reflect any modern products.
We have slightly opposite approaches. I have never once thought about a knife makers intentions with regards to performance. I have certain things I expect a knife in a certain class to be able to do. If a knife won't do what I want I modify it until it does. Rinse and repeat.
I asked because yours just glided through the same carrot - same thickness. The question because of what stringer said exactly, not to misquote him, but I'd expect a cleaver to be able to take on a big carrot exactly like yours did in the video. That said you probably did yours to your liking (called it carrot laser, eh), whereas just tested your friend's without modifying. And from your point of view, or rather the maker's point of view which you focused on, I'd rather get that specific sort of knife a bit too thick than thin. At least I could see about it depending on my use.
Did you use your trusted one also as a butcher cleaver, or only with bigger veggies? And your friend's? Would appreciate the input, looking into cleavers but I'd like one that's best of both worlds. Such a thing would imply compromises, perhaps ones that can't exactly be made I expect, hence the question.
I'm not a serious cook, so my demands don't reflect much beyond my own limited repertoire. If he were making it custom for me, the video shows where I might benefit from adjustment, but beyond that, it was an apples-oranges comparison. I might have a personal hierarchy of favorites, but given the number of times I've been helpfully reminded by makers or their proponents that I'm not a competent or professional culinarian, I'd rather just let the video convey to the maker (the original intended audience) what might happen in my hands.
My thinned cleavers are somewhat fragile and I have chipped them in some ingredients (no meats or bones in my cooking, so that's not something I test for). I don't use them universally but rather for things that benefit from coarse breakdown like large segments of carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, or short thin slices like capsicum chops and draw cuts.
I did intentionally chip one of my modded cleavers along with the prototype (with permission) in a bamboo skewer, since they are rather different steels but not very different near-edge thickness and I wanted to see how they would fare at the point of failure. The simpler steel with better refinement unsurprisingly had much less damage and was much easier to work out.
The prototype was just a loan and was returned after a short while. My playing with it was just a brief and minor contribution.
Sorry this will seem obvious to you and most people here, but "simpler steel with better refinement" being yours? What were the steels?
I missed the part about prototype/loan. That makes sense.
My standard test for checking whether a gyuto is dialed in correct is to make some kind of stir fry. If I can machine gun double rock chop garlic and then cut transparent ginger chop sticks and slice pepper skins effortlessly twice a week for five or six months without too much chipping then
I know the edge is ok. If it can't do that then it's not a gyuto or a veggie cleaver in my book. Because that's the bare minimum of abuse that I expect that class of knife to tolerate.
My standard test for checking whether a gyuto is dialed in correct is to make some kind of stir fry. If I can machine gun double rock chop garlic and then cut transparent ginger chop sticks and slice pepper skins effortlessly twice a week for five or six months without too much chipping then
I know the edge is ok. If it can't do that then it's not a gyuto or a veggie cleaver in my book. Because that's the bare minimum of abuse that I expect that class of knife to tolerate.
Barclid
Banned
277g starting weight with handle. Handle weighs 76g, blade was 201g at the beginning with basically zero distal taper. The blade is now 159g prior to polishing. The knife has been thinned from the edge up to the spine. You can see the same knife with a different, heavier handle here listed at 303g: https://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/...-245mm-white-2-honyaki-gyuto-the-james.38667/
I think you're grossly underestimating the weight of a knife blank.
Edit: as to HOW you do it? I have an 80 grit horizontal wheel that I removed the bulk of metal on. Took about 30 minutes of gross metal removal to get all of that off and much more afterwards to clean it up.
@stringer Comforting to see you chop. A more evolved, more practiced, more tricks in the bag, version of my actual standing, also much more adept with the claw grip follow-up and all. I still have to practice on the double rock chop too, it didn't come so easy to me when I tried it first but the knife was a crappy Cuisinart. Nowadays used as a cleaver. Didn't dare practice it with the Diplome I now own, but I just received a cheap Victo Rosewood 10" to use for such purposes and massive chopping sessions. Loved that video... I can't wait to jump onto food prep tonight, didn't cook since Sunday and I miss prep sooooo much.
Keep in mind cutting hard veggies is not everything. The ones that wedge are usually way better at cutting soft foods than the ones that don't wedge..
Barclid
Banned
Depends what you like and what you expect from your knives. Thicker knives will undeniably be worse at thin cuts like sengiri even on soft foods, so it's going to depend on the type of cuts you need to make on a day-to-day basis.
dafox
Senior Member
Can you share the rest of that recipe with us? That's my kind of cooking!
My wife calls it crack slaw. I've seen variations with ground beef or shrimp. Both work great. This time I used shrimp and store bought cole slaw mix you can see in the edge of the video.
Shrimp crack slaw
2 pounds shrimp or 1.5 pounds ground beef
5 cloves Garlic, fine chop
1 finger Ginger, fine chop
10 Thai chilies, thinly sliced
1 stick Lemongrass, thinly sliced
2 bags Cole slaw mix
or
1/2 head shredded cabbage and a cup of julienne carrots
1 T. Coconut Aminos
1 T. Soy sauce
1 t. fishsauce
1 t. Shrimp Paste
1 T. Peanut oil
2 t. rice wine vinegar
Saute shrimp in peanut oil on very high heat until 75% cooked in wok or big skillet
Remove shrimp from pan
Saute garlic, ginger, chilies, and lemongrass until soft.
Add cabbbage/carrots, cook until just soft.
Add aminos, soy sauce, fish sauce, shrimp Paste and rice wine vinegar, let reduce for 1 minute
Put shrimp back in pan, cook through 2 minutes
Cilantro, scallions, peanuts, sesame oil and sesame seeds for garnish
dafox
Senior Member
Wow, thanks!
It really depends on the knife and your own personal preference. My usual weapon of choice is 5mm at the heel, which I prefer over any laser I've tried.
