Hobbyists who aren't chefs

Japanese Knives - by Tokushu Knife
Find deals on amazon
Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Michi said:
I'm a software engineer by profession. I write high-performance C++ networking code. It's a rather cerebral and mathematical activity. There is an element of artistry involved, but that is discernible only to other highly-specialised engineers. (What I do is so niche that most software engineers have no idea what I'm talking about when I try to explain to them what I do.) Most of my work entails minute attention to detail, obsessive-compulsive checking and re-checking, and sitting alone in front of a terminal with pin-point laser-like focus for hours at a stretch.
Click to expand...

I've been working in IT infrastructure for almost 25 years, coding at work now and then (I still do it sometimes). Nowadays, I manage a web-scale authentication service and the team behind it. When we make stupid mistakes, literally tens of millions of people suffer and almost immediately. I'm a super old-school UNIX fart and spent the biggest part of this day teaching my senior java dev how to trap SIGTERMs. NOTE: Gonna buy him a T-Shirt now that says "BAD TRAP" :) I also spend a whole lot of time teaching them the difference between SysVinit and Systemd, also how to read 'man' pages. Sorry for letting you go on about MySQL etc in PMs and pretending like I knew nothing about it - just wasn't interested in tech discussion at the time.

I buy knives like yanagibas then I teach my wife how to use them. She's the real artist in our family. I'm just the guy who keeps the electrical grid running, so to speak. Some of her facebook friends, when she showed them a photo of our new Shun Kaji knife about a year ago, told her that they have a competitor blade that cost 3 times as much and they can't cook with anything lesser like the **** she has. Again, since I like to teach then I just tought her how to laugh. Snobs gonna snob.
 
When I worked in a kitchen, I used pretty crappy knives, though as a cook, I couldn't afford anything but crappy knives. When I moved on from that experience, I could afford better things, so when my knives broke, I started jumping in the pool to the high end stuff. I cook most of the meals now, though I've changed jobs again, and money is tight. I tend to do everything from scratch, as it saves money, and I'm afforded the time to actually enjoy myself in the kitchen. Granted, I've got more kitchen knives than even most enthusiasts I know. It's nice to be told I inspire the fanatics, and my buddies can justify dipping their toes in the water based off of me in the deep end.

In the end though, nice tools inspire me to cook. I rarely use recipes anymore, and to be able to hold a tool in my hand that someone actually had a passion to make chokes me up sometimes. Experiences, materials, trial and error, and collaboration ring through, and keeping that tradition moving forward rather than just thinking about the bottom line, are what inspires me in this arena.
 
For me it was the pleasure of using a fantastic piece, the difference in sharpness, the beauty of handmade knives. It made me cook more and better.
 
Home cook here, restaurant experience is working fast food in high school.

1. I appreciate craftsmanship and it makes me happy to use a well made tool that was made by an actual human (or small group of humans).

2. I enjoy cooking, so I can justify the costs to some extent to my other half more than watches, electronics, etc and it means I get to actually use these cool tools.

3. Using well made tools makes me want to cook more, which reaps two benefits: healthier family, and the relaxation that cooking provides.

I don’t have nearly as much invested as others, but for me it’s money well spent.
 
Jeffrey Kramb said:
...Those of you who aren'r chefs, what made you decide to start spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on knives?
Click to expand...

Good question, and ignore anyone feeling slighted by your categorizing is into chef and ... non chefs. More like those who work in the food industry and those of us that do not.

I just like the best tools I can afford, biased on how much I use it. Even Though my knives will never break the $200 mark, they are still a magnitude more costly than I ever thought a knife could be worth. Every knife is tuned as well as I can make it for performance- which is the bottom line for me.

There is joy in using a good knife, and a struggle using a poorly tuned knife. To a degree we get what we pay for.
 
labor of love said:
If things ever go bad financially for me I can always just liquidate a few gyutos. I try to convince myself that it’s more like a savings account...that doesn’t accrue interest.
Click to expand...
It's basically like investing in gold, and that's supposed to be smart right? - Me enabling myself every time I like a knife
 
labor of love said:
If things ever go bad financially for me I can always just liquidate a few gyutos. I try to convince myself that it’s more like a savings account...that doesn’t accrue interest.
Click to expand...
Right -- just like a real savings account! (really, 0.25% interest, and then getting taxed a total of 40% for it, is essentially nothing)
 
Complete cooking noob that works in software .. I woke up one day and thought to myself "why am I still using my 10-year-old, never sharpened, though relatively good quality, utility knife for absolutely everything".
I thought "it's just a knife, how complicated can it get".
Fell into a hole ...
And here we are. I get quite obsessive about stuff, if I don't keep in check things get out of hand.
My collection is quite modest compared to many people here, but certainly more then anyone really "needs".

Now .. why I don't sell all of them, probably what you're looking for:
- It's because I now appreciate the 1% cutting performance and aesthetics (didn't get into the pedigree of smiths yet).
- Having a modest collection, the total cost isn't really a significant portion of my general expenses ether, so selling it all or not, makes no real difference. (ex/ daycare in a major city is vastly higher, I imagine rent in places like SF will probably be more per month than my entire set)
- Tools that I use for, potentially, decades are certainly a better deal than other hobbies I went through, especially if you think in terms of amortizing over use time.
- I also thought better knives would make me cook more and maybe eat healthier, that was a mild success.

I feel like this hobby / addiction is in a pretty good spot right now, enough to enjoy but not so much that it hurts.
 
For more I want to try knives I'm curious in - just because. I cycle through collecting different stuff every 1.5~2 years or so. I expect that - 2 years down the road - the knives that I ultimately keep will just become normal tools that I use for cooking. I will have hit my knife plateau and not want to get new knives anymore (and trust me, I know this for a fact).

Until then... welp :)
 
Functional art that I can use daily. I like a challenge and finding those hard-to-get knives brings me a lot of satisfaction. The hunt is half the fun. Plus being a chemist I love the nerdy aspects of metallurgy and what makes a great cutting tool. Fact that I can sell for little to no loss just makes those high value purchasing decisions easier to justify.
 
Last edited:
Same way ppl spend thousands on hoop shoes and never let them touch a court. Everyone collects something.
 
Barashka said:
I also thought better knives would make me cook more and maybe eat healthier, that was a mild success.
Click to expand...

For me, the good knives make me cut things smaller on average (‘cause once you chop it’s hard to stop) and make me find artificial ways to add things that I can cut into a dish (sometimes to the dish’s detriment). ;)

CiderBear said:
I will have hit my knife plateau and not want to get new knives anymore (and trust me, I know this for a fact).
Click to expand...

Woah, say it ain’t so! We’ll miss you.
 
CiderBear said:
I expect that - 2 years down the road - the knives that I ultimately keep will just become normal tools that I use for cooking. I will have hit my knife plateau and not want to get new knives
Click to expand...

I feel the same way. I’m almost looking forward to the day it’s over. [emoji5]
 
CiderBear said:
I will have hit my knife plateau
Click to expand...

Thats what I thought too, but here I am at the 24 month mark, can't physically hold any more knives (unless I ads even more racks), looking BST everytime I go on a bathroom break knowing I cannot buy anymore .... But there are always Jnats :) they take less room, more expensive, more obscure, and way less functional then any knife ....
 
ian said:
My strategy was to spend $80 on the cheapest J-nat possible and then convince myself that they’re all of similar quality. In my experience, Jnats are all worse than synthetics. #selfdeceptionworks
Click to expand...

That was pretty smart. Will see if I manage to deceive myself now that I’m aware of the over all plan.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ian
Xenif said:
Thats what I thought too, but here I am at the 24 month mark, can't physically hold any more knives (unless I ads even more racks), looking BST everytime I go on a bathroom break knowing I cannot buy anymore .... But there are always Jnats :) they take less room, more expensive, more obscure, and way less functional then any knife ....
Click to expand...

Also, Xenif, here’s the real secret: if you sell some, you can buy more!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top