Cheapo Carbon Paring Knife? (UK)

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Migraine

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I bought one of the cheap Robert Herder carbon paring knives a couple of years ago and it was absolutely brilliant. It only cost like 8 quid and we used it all the time for various little tasks. Unfortunately my wonderful fiancée took it to a friends and it has since disappeared.

They are now £9.something on K&S but because of BREXIT (presumably) shipping has shot up and is now nearly 10 quid, making this sadly unviable. I can't find anywhere UK based to get one.

Anyone know of a similar cheapo carbon parer available for a reasonable price in the UK?
 
Just had a look at knivesandtools.co.uk. Same story. Shipping costs from the continent to UK have more than tripled.
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Just to save you the trouble. Nothing in that price category - or anything near it - will cut like the Herders. If you want to save yourself on the shipping just buy a bunch of them at the same time I guess.

The Opinel paring knives are nowhere close to the Herders, sorry. They might look similar but they're far thicker behind the edge and cut nothing like the Herders.
 
Jovidah said:
Just to save you the trouble. Nothing in that price category - or anything near it - will cut like the Herders. If you want to save yourself on the shipping just buy a bunch of them at the same time I guess.

The Opinel paring knives are nowhere close to the Herders, sorry. They might look similar but they're far thicker behind the edge and cut nothing like the Herders.
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Ah, good to know. Won't order those opinel then
 
Admittedly, it's not that the Opinels are bad... just not in the same league as Herder. If you compared the Opinels to a Wüsthof they come off quite okay; similar quality of grind, just flimsier handles. It's just that the Herders cut circles around anything I've tried in the sub 100 euro category... even Wüsthofs that cost 4x as much.
 
Jovidah said:
Admittedly, it's not that the Opinels are bad... just not in the same league as Herder. If you compared the Opinels to a Wüsthof they come off quite okay; similar quality of grind, just flimsier handles. It's just that the Herders cut circles around anything I've tried in the sub 100 euro category... even Wüsthofs that cost 4x as much.
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Have both the Robert Herders — a lot of them, in fact — and the carbon Opinel ones. Couldn't agree more.
 
Even at 20 pounds the Herder is a bargain. I do prefer the slightly more elongated profile of this one. By the way have you tried amazon.de?
 

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I just wished the Opinels had the same grinds as their folding knives. Those are much thinner behind the edge than the paring knives and cut really well. But the profile and folding mechanism of those are not what I'm looking for in a paring knife.
I don't think the Pallares Solsona knives are anywhere near as thin as the Herders either right? Not that they'd be any cheaper.
 
Jovidah said:
I just wished the Opinels had the same grinds as their folding knives. Those are much thinner behind the edge than the paring knives and cut really well. But the profile and folding mechanism of those are not what I'm looking for in a paring knife.
I don't think the Pallares Solsona knives are anywhere near as thin as the Herders either right? Not that they'd be any cheaper.
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Pallares certainly not that thin behind the edge ime.

FWIW - I like the Opinel ones a lot, and they're a doddle to thin slightly if you need in basically no time. It kind've happens naturally the first time you sharpen. But I'd certainly be with you - they are not as good as the pocket knives... If it's simply for paring work tbh I'd just get one of the smaller folding Opinels; 4, 5, or 6 work well.
 
Jovidah said:
I just wished the Opinels had the same grinds as their folding knives. Those are much thinner behind the edge than the paring knives and cut really well. But the profile and folding mechanism of those are not what I'm looking for in a paring knife.
I don't think the Pallares Solsona knives are anywhere near as thin as the Herders either right? Not that they'd be any cheaper.
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True about the Opinel folders.
The Pallarès Solsona carbons I have are strongly convexed on both sides and rather fat behind the edge. With their thinnest one I measured 0.5mm @2mm from the board. Very far from 'Solinger Dünnschliff'.
 
Jovidah said:
Just to save you the trouble. Nothing in that price category - or anything near it - will cut like the Herders. If you want to save yourself on the shipping just buy a bunch of them at the same time I guess.

The Opinel paring knives are nowhere close to the Herders, sorry. They might look similar but they're far thicker behind the edge and cut nothing like the Herders.
Click to expand...
Nope, R.Herder are a bit overpriced. There are some other brands of Solingen that make them at near half the cost, not only R.Herder.
 
Migraine said:
I bought one of the cheap Robert Herder carbon paring knives a couple of years ago and it was absolutely brilliant. It only cost like 8 quid and we used it all the time for various little tasks. Unfortunately my wonderful fiancée took it to a friends and it has since disappeared.

They are now £9.something on K&S but because of BREXIT (presumably) shipping has shot up and is now nearly 10 quid, making this sadly unviable. I can't find anywhere UK based to get one.

Anyone know of a similar cheapo carbon parer available for a reasonable price in the UK?
Click to expand...
10103-1.jpg

-RÖR Oma´s Küchenmesser 10103 Is my recommended and the best for the price. I have several I bought in the shop that the factory has in Solingen for a bit cheaper than the price of the web.

(I dont know exactly where you can buy the following brands, but you can check:)
-F.Herder (instead of the very usual in this forum R.Herder)
-Marsvogel
-R.Herder makes good knives but nowadays you are paying the brand more than the knife value itself :)

All above brands makes small paring knives made of carbon steel in the old style.
 
But are they as thin behind the edge? And actually.... available... to someone in the UK? Or any other country? Here in the Netherlands there's plenty of 'immitation' Herder knives but almost all a very different story in regard to how thick they are behind the edge or their quality. Friedrich Herder specifically is hard to find at any retailer here (at most you find the butcher knives) and cost is at most something like a 2 euro difference.

Sure, they're not the cheapest knife on the planet, but they're still cheaper than plenty of alternatives from 'big brands' that tend to win all the 'best paring knife' tests like Wüsthof and Zwilling. Even at their 'overpriced' level they are now (I've bought some of mine at almost half the price) they're about a third of the price of something like a Wüsthof classic, and cut significantly better. Within the same price range I still stand by my statement that they will cut better than practically anything you can actually find for a similar price; much better for example than the Opinels that are suggested in a million places on the internet.

The biggest issue issue in the context of this post is finding something that is available for cheap in the UK. If you can find them at all, all the import problems applying to Robert Herder are likely to apply to all the other German brands. All of these smaller niche brands are already hard enough to find within Germany, but usually practically impossible to find anywhere outside of it.
 
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For what it's worth I think when it comes to calling Robert Herder overpriced or not, in my opinion this somewhat varies per product line. I think the cheaper lines are still great value, but when you start looking at the K-series and some of the other higher priced offerings it becomes a very different story. Their construction is often very similar to the cheaper models, except the price goes up substantially, without things like fit & finish necessarily increasing at the same rate. And at that price point they also start to compete with very different knives.
 
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