How would you choose a grail general purpose knife for your personal home cooking?

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josemartinlopez said:
When do you feel like using which?
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I tend to use my most recently bought knives most—then backtrack if I've not bought any for a while. Takada, TF and Raquin are the ones seeing most board time, all gotten this year. My 225 Tsourkan WH is a great performer, but so last year—not being flippant, but sadly new knives get me excited and hold my interest.
 
josemartinlopez said:
That's one way of doing it. How do they feel different?
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Every knife feels different, that's a big part of why I along with many others enjoy trying out different knives! All knives have strengths and weaknesses—the feel of a laser going through on onion is magic, but sometimes unpleasant as it struggles on a dense root veg. Best to try different types of knives, find your preferences—knives I love are just 'meh' to my friends, and vis versa.
 
I was hoping to articulate differences beyond laser versus chopper :)
 
What if we rephrase the question to, what would your grail knife roll look like? Not asking for one knife that does everything, but how would you consciously assemble a set of knives that you like to use, that are well made, and that largely take care of your various cutting preferences?
 
My grail knife is probably a honyaki ashi gyuto.

I use my knives both at work and at home. I value functionality over asthetics but still value looks.
The bare minimun I would want is a 240mm beater gyuto, thin behind the edge 240mm gyuto, and 150mm stainless petty. Smaller pairing, chinese cleaver, honesuki, deba, slicer I like having. Gyuto, slicer, petty and single bevels can be more delicate but Id want everything else to be more robust. I generally like thinner knives. Dont have enough experience with single bevels to pick a grail.

I have tojiro 240 gyuto, gengetsu 240 semi gyuto, gesshin ginga 150mm stainless petty, mac pairing, rinkaku lefty honesuki, gesshin uraku lefty deba, cck chinese cleaver.

I'm perfectly fine with the knives I already have and almost all my bases are covered. Even with unlimited money I dont see a need to replace any knife I already have. I would still add a yanagiba, usuba, more gyutos and upgrade everything else for the hell of it.
 
josemartinlopez said:
What if we rephrase the question to, what would your grail knife roll look like? Not asking for one knife that does everything, but how would you consciously assemble a set of knives that you like to use, that are well made, and that largely take care of your various cutting preferences?
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You would think this would make it simpler, but I don't know that it really does. Maybe ask the question, what is the next knife you want?
 
josemartinlopez said:
What if we rephrase the question to, what would your grail knife roll look like? Not asking for one knife that does everything, but how would you consciously assemble a set of knives that you like to use, that are well made, and that largely take care of your various cutting preferences?
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My grail knife roll looks like the knives I’ve tried and loved for whatever reason and have decided I must keep. Though something might catch my fancy tomorrow or next year, which will lead me to either selling something or coming up with some kind of elaborate mental justification of why I’m once again expanding my collection.
 
ian said:
😯

Or just buy something for $400-$600 and come back when you’re bored.
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to clarify: be honest with yourself that you'll eventually spend $3k, set it aside, and don't go over budget. Start with cost layouts that don't cause you to make a mess in your trousers, go from there. Have fun.

for the record, I'm embarrassingly well past this point.
 
I understand where you're coming from but am a bit confused. Which $3,000 knife do you recommend? There aren't a lot of those right?
 
He means buy a few till you reach $3k. But don’t even do that. Just buy a couple of < $500 knives, play with them for a bit, then sell if you need more cash and play with some others. Too much talk, not enough action. You won’t appreciate more expensive knives until you’ve played with less expensive ones for a while. Or like me you’ll just realize that spending more than $600 on a knife is actually really stupid, and you’ll be content with knives that are valued at less than that for the rest of your life.
 
Oops, I got it now. I'm asking more questions because I am not in CONUS and selling knives to try something else is more complicated for me.
 
AFKitchenknivesguy said:
No, he meant buy a $3k knife. I have one if your interested.
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Thats not how I read it. Set a $3K budget and buy as many knives that fit the preferred specs, profile etc. Then sell the outliers and repeat until you hone your preferences. Pretty much describes how I've progressed.
 
josemartinlopez said:
Oops, I got it now. I'm asking more questions because I am not in CONUS and selling knives to try something else is more complicated for me.
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This is a no joke issue, especially because international shipping adds to your budget considerably. You can also watch video contributors. There's and old school and a new school, both with their own biases.

If you're cash poor and time rich, you can also try to participate in some pass-around threads, but you'll have better luck being accepted once you're better known and have posted some of your own content.
 
captaincaed said:
You can also watch video contributors. There's and old school and a new school, both with their own biases.
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Yes, I saw that the people on this forum strongly recommend that new members watch Burrfection videos and memorize all the recommendations there as gospel truths, especially reviews of Dalstrong knives.
 
I’d start a which knife should I buy thread. Set a budget and pick some qualities you want in your knife. And use it... daily, for a while. Hang out here ask more questions. Figure out what you like and don’t like about your knife. Save more money and narrow down what you might want your next knife to be... repeat. One day when things are back to normal international shipping won’t be such a big deal. It’s just scary right now.

Don’t start spending tons of money until you figure out what your preferences are. Don’t base your purchases solely off what other people want because we all like different stuff. Don’t set out to have the best sh*t ASAP because it’s a pretty cool journey, don’t rush it.
 
That's what I'm doing, but is there a "benchmark" knife you would recommend for this? There are a lot of which knife should I buy threads but most are constrained by a budget and I'm interested in understanding the spectrum before setting a budget (or not).
 
Or you could do what I did today: buy a $120 AUS8 monosteel knife, thin it aggressively, ease spine and choil, refinish to a mirror polish (performance would likely be better with a semi- or quasi- mirror but I was on a roll) then sharpen on 1K then 3K. Then marvel at how it (slightly) out performs a similarly profiled $370 high end R2 knife (admittedly with a factory edge).

It really demonstrated how important the grind is to good knife performance.

I'm pretty sure the edge retention won't be as good, though.
 
A chef friend did suggest the same and said if you have good steel, you can be your own sharpener and customize the factory edge all you want.
 
Nemo said:
Or you could do what I did today: buy a $120 AUS8 monosteel knife, thin it aggressively, ease spine and choil, refinish to a mirror polish (performance would likely be better with a semi- or quasi- mirror but I was on a roll) then sharpen on 1K then 3K. Then marvel at how it (slightly) out performs a similarly profiled $370 high end R2 knife (admittedly with a factory edge).

It really demonstrated how important the grind is to good knife performance.

I'm pretty sure the edge retention won't be as good, though.
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Which one did you grind? I just worked a Shun over like it owed me money, and was surprised how well it works now. Ugly as my backside, but still.
 
captaincaed said:
Which one did you grind? I just worked a Shun over like it owed me money, and was surprised how well it works now. Ugly as my backside, but still.
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Sakai Takayuki Aus8.

No way was it worth my time to spend 6 hours on it... but... It's a great way to teach yourself a lot about grinds, so was definitely worth it from that point of view.

Second time I've made a basic AUS8 into a highly performing knife (first was a Fuji Kanefusa FKM). Well worth doing for any knife nut, just for the experience.
 
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