i still love my German knives.

Shop Knives and stones on ebay
Find deals on amazon
Japanese Knives - by Tokushu Knife
Kitchen Knife Forums

Help Support Kitchen Knife Forums:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
B

boomchakabowwow

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 1, 2013
Messages
3,646
Reaction score
5,581
there i said it.

just made a big pot of Butternut Squash soup and my big 10" Wustof classic is my go-to kitchen hatchet. along the way, i kinda figured out how to sharpen a knife. i can get it damn near just as sharp as my Gyoto. i dont think i'll ever get rid of it.

its not all nimble and hot-roddy like a thin japanese chef knife, but it still gets it done in fine style. that 10" has put down so many lobsters. :)

i just touched it up and stropped it, and whoa!! just whoa. it has that singing sharp edge. you know when you touch the edge and it sings that metallic zinging sound?
i sharpened my wife's Wustof 6" GranPrix and i better leave a danger note on it. :)
 
Totally agree. They aren't the best tool for everything but neither are the Japanese knives. Which are all copied off French styles rather than being something part of traditional Japanese culture. My wife prefers the Vics and F. Dicks in my block over all the fancy Japanese blades.
 
We have a 13cm long slim german knife called kreuzblumen dunnschliff. Bought it from a knife salesman who had overstock knives in all kinds of odd shapes but nothing in the usual suspects like chefs etc. Paid 3,50 euro's for it. Edge was real sharp and almost but not quite Japanese like thin. Has been nothing but a pleasure to work with for more than six years now. Beautifull wooden handle too. Bought a GE Earn butchers from the same guy. Like the stel but the wood handle is falling apart from just a little water exposure. Never seen kreuzblumen knives again though. Not even on the forum.
 
Kreuzblume are common on german ebay, described as 70s vintage. Pronouced KrrroidddsBlueMay.

The Problem with the largest german makers (Zwilling/Henckels and Wusthof) is that they are trying to cover too broad a quality spectrum, causing everyone confusion re: "which of these are the cheap crap part, and which of these do they mean seriously". Might be intentional, "buy as expensive as you can to have the biggest chance of getting the serious ones". No idea about Güde's politics; Herder have always been just Herder without such games. Ceterum Censeo: The one thing I really like about Global is that they are not dicking around in the super-low and super-high price segments just to be there.
 
merlijny2k said:
We have a 13cm long slim german knife called kreuzblumen dunnschliff. Bought it from a knife salesman who had overstock knives in all kinds of odd shapes but nothing in the usual suspects like chefs etc. Paid 3,50 euro's for it. Edge was real sharp and almost but not quite Japanese like thin. Has been nothing but a pleasure to work with for more than six years now. Beautifull wooden handle too. Bought a GE Earn butchers from the same guy. Like the stel but the wood handle is falling apart from just a little water exposure. Never seen kreuzblumen knives again though. Not even on the forum.
Click to expand...

Kreuzblume, without an "n" at the end...One can find them on German ebay, there is one vendor who sells them there. I owned one of those once and I know that some other German knife geeks also bought them for inexpensive projects or as a test-bed for how much thinning a run of the mill German stainless knife can take.
 
I still have all of my Scanpan set which I got when my wife and I bought our current place 4 years ago. I do keep meaning to go through it and cull it down, but will likely keep a few as I like having some around for those tasks I just think are just that bit too risky to use my nice blades.
 
I love my cheapo stamped henckels for squash and hard shellfish. I don't use them for anything else though.
 
I like my 20 cm Wustie for pumpkins skins etc.

Wife likes using her Mundial set. She doesn't really like looking after them though. So I find myself steeling them every time after she has used them.
 
I'm sure if you speak German you can find lots of nice knife stuff from germany. My point with the Kreuzblume is also that not all of the nice local stuff makes it to the international market. I swear that thing came with a better edge than an ootb Wusthoff and i can know because i just had a new W here two weeks ago. I have looked them up online at some point out of curiosity but only found some plastic handled ones on ebay. Not the polished wood i have at home. Also perusing German ebay isnt as much fun if you don't speak the language at all. Most Dutch speak some German but i didnt grow up here.
 
merlijny2k said:
I'm sure if you speak German you can find lots of nice knife stuff from germany. My point with the Kreuzblume is also that not all of the nice local stuff makes it to the international market. I swear that thing came with a better edge than an ootb Wusthoff and i can know because i just had a new W here two weeks ago. I have looked them up online at some point out of curiosity but only found some plastic handled ones on ebay. Not the polished wood i have at home. Also perusing German ebay isnt as much fun if you don't speak the language at all. Most Dutch speak some German but i didnt grow up here.
Click to expand...

You can find some very well made knives, of course! Some of the Herders are decent knives, the Gude bread sword, but especially custom makers.

Most of you heard of Tilman Leder, who makes stock removal, mostly in Niolox.

The one to watch out for - if you ask the German guys around - is Jannis Scholz (Xerxes Knives), who makes full customs but also just launched a semi custom series and a ready made series of three knives for the German vendor "Messerkontor" (google it, not sure I am allowed to link to it).

It's San Mai, with a SC125 core. Will Catchside talked about his impressions of the steel earlier this year

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/26979-New-Steels/page2

I recently ordered the 230 Gyuto (longest blade offered), and with the VAT taking out it came to something like $380, which is not bad for a hand forged San Mai with Bog Oak and Brass handle. Someone in the German forum mentioned they look A LITTLE like Andy Billipps work...

I also have a laser from Jannis' semi custom series, which easily outperforms my Ashi Ginga and is on par with my Dalman (albeit with worse food release).
 
@merlijny2k not really. Of course there are boutique/custom makers as are everywhere, but small-scale-industrial brands (what you would call a Manufaktur) that make anything worth international interest in the kitchen segment have become scarce. Herder, yes. Burgvogel, probably. Maybe one can consider Jürgen Schanz as being in that segment too.

Germans, especially the younger ones, tend to view german things with a kind of subdued realism, "it is german so expect it to be solid and boring, not spectacular nor disastrous, well executed but expensive and outmoded. Unless it is a german brand on a cheap import again, then it will be a mix of spectacular and lousy". Part of that cynicism comes from the way german brands have been stamped on things not of german manufacture or quality expectations, and how the brands that didn't sell out stayed behind instead, in the last few decades.
 
Oh, and a brand that has been positively received but seems to be going in and out of business constantly: Wasserkraft :)
 
my wife is currently in Taipei. i pulled out a sheet of receipt paper and ribbened it with her favorite...all on FACETIME. it got funny because she made me do it for her family, and they CHEERED. hahah..

i miss that family, and they love a sharp blade. i'm hoping she brings me back a badass cleaver
 
That messerkontor shop got some fun stuff indeed $100 24cm Rosselli Kurouchi santoku. Would be fun to try out a beast like that. The Kamo's go for double the rebranded ones we have here though :). Also like the burgvogel redwood line. Handle doesn't look overly heavy. Never seen that line before but its a real looker.
 
Schanz doesn't really tick it for me. Looks a lot like the Blok's from UK. Just not my style i guess.
 
alterwisser said:
You can find some very well made knives, of course! Some of the Herders are decent knives, the Gude bread sword, but especially custom makers.

Most of you heard of Tilman Leder, who makes stock removal, mostly in Niolox.

The one to watch out for - if you ask the German guys around - is Jannis Scholz (Xerxes Knives), who makes full customs but also just launched a semi custom series and a ready made series of three knives for the German vendor "Messerkontor" (google it, not sure I am allowed to link to it).

It's San Mai, with a SC125 core. Will Catchside talked about his impressions of the steel earlier this year

http://www.kitchenknifeforums.com/showthread.php/26979-New-Steels/page2

I recently ordered the 230 Gyuto (longest blade offered), and with the VAT taking out it came to something like $380, which is not bad for a hand forged San Mai with Bog Oak and Brass handle. Someone in the German forum mentioned they look A LITTLE like Andy Billipps work...

I also have a laser from Jannis' semi custom series, which easily outperforms my Ashi Ginga and is on par with my Dalman (albeit with worse food release).
Click to expand...

Alter, I saw a cutting video of it linked by the vendor. Tell me that's not just a chef making it look easy and it's actually an amazing cutter?
 
Roselli is Finnish not German. And his geometry seems to be dividing people on european forums (some think it also divides the food some don't :), while his UHC steel (which seems to be his own, bulat-like, custom melt and specified at 66HRC!) is generally found interesting :)
 
I have a few Roselli knives as well as some Wusthof and Henkel. While the Roselli knives live in the kitchen, the Germans have become my camping knives. I still enjoy using them. BTW, the Rosellis take an absolute beating and keep going. There is nothing about them that could be construed as thin behind the edge but they can be made very sharp and are tough as nails. I hack through bones and frozen food with reckless abandon.
 
Badgertooth said:
Alter, I saw a cutting video of it linked by the vendor. Tell me that's not just a chef making it look easy and it's actually an amazing cutter?
Click to expand...

Should be able to tell you soon. Hope it's here this weekend....

The laser I have is a pretty darn good cutter, so I assume this one will be too....
 
boomchakabowwow said:
there i said it.

just made a big pot of Butternut Squash soup and my big 10" Wustof classic is my go-to kitchen hatchet. along the way, i kinda figured out how to sharpen a knife. i can get it damn near just as sharp as my Gyoto. i dont think i'll ever get rid of it.

its not all nimble and hot-roddy like a thin japanese chef knife, but it still gets it done in fine style. that 10" has put down so many lobsters. :)

i just touched it up and stropped it, and whoa!! just whoa. it has that singing sharp edge. you know when you touch the edge and it sings that metallic zinging sound?
i sharpened my wife's Wustof 6" GranPrix and i better leave a danger note on it. :)
Click to expand...

I have been using my German knives for 50 years and I still cannot see a reason to change. I have my mom's Henckels 4-star knives that I grew up with.

Looking at this forum I thought I was the only 1 until I found this thread.
 
This is also from 2016, he might’ve changed his mind:LOL:

many types of knives obviously work. Some people love Chinese cleavers for example and they work very well even though most are made of pretty low quality steels and are soft compared to Japanese style knives. German style knives work great for 95% of the western world, totally made up statistic, but that doesn’t mean Japanese style knives have nothing to offer. For example, they usually cut much better and longer than german counterparts. On the other hand they usually require more care and better technique.
 
Same here, A Wusthof classic ikon Chef 180? was my first knife, I left it for dead for years using full Japanese knives. I ended up with a lot of time to kill because of covid 19, did a little restoration, thinned it A LOT, sharpened and polished a bit. It's now a real pleasure to use (super sharp). It's still not going to follow me to work but I'm very happy with the result.
 
I got my first German knives in the early 1990s. I still have almost all of them and some still get used regularly to this day. And, I've recently been buying some vintage (1910-1970) German knives from ebay. I got a few reactive steel blades that are just dreamy after I put in the work to rehabilitate them.
 
boomchakabowwow said:
no you are not. welcome..

i just used my big cheffie to slice a fresh sourdough..my bread knife was juuuuusst out of reach, and i was feeling super lazy.
Click to expand...

You know your measure when you need to chop up your dough on the counter and your bench scraper is in a drawer 2 ft to your right, but your honyaki is right there in front of you...

Knives are tools. Am I right?
 
coxhaus said:
I have been using my German knives for 50 years and I still cannot see a reason to change. I have my mom's Henckels 4-star knives that I grew up with.

Looking at this forum I thought I was the only 1 until I found this thread.
Click to expand...
How do you know when you haven't tried anything else?
Big fat German knives have their uses; I have a big Wusty myself for kitchen axe duty... it's nice to have at least 1 blade that you can just abuse for rough jobs and not give a damn... but that doesn't mean it's good for everything. Ability to take abuse comes at a cost.
Of course it's still 'more than servicable for average kitchen use', but by that standard you don't need a Wüsty or a Zwilling either; you can just go to Ikea.
At standard price stuff the big fat Germans aren't even that cheap and are basically in the same price range as plenty of other blades that cut far better.

If you want to mix it up get something from Robert Herder. You can stay true to your German affection, but you'll get something that can actually cut a carrot...
If you're okay with full bolsters (or even actually want that sort of thing), just get a Robert Herder 1922 chef knife and be done with it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top