Passaround: Kippington Chevron Hook Grind

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At least this didn't happen.View attachment 82298
That's a potato stuck to the side. Really stuck. Having to twist it off...
Yep! That's exactly the kind of thing that made me come up with this grind, while I was still working in a pro kitchen... that and things like sliced tomatoes. People said to just use the tip of the knife because the edge is closer to the spine there. Instead, I brought the 'spine' down close to the edge, all the way down the length of the knife! :p
 
Oh! One last thing. Sharpening! Quite, uneventful? I took it to stones. Started rubbing it across it. Some swarf showing up but felt almost like nothing was happening. Felt the edge and SURPRISE! Burr formed. Same on other side. Burr removal was quite easy. Edge retention was quite good. Touched the edge up once on my strop.
 
I think a lot of the home users start by testing food release to its limits by cutting thin slices or dices of stuff which are not that much of a problem for a pro users to deal with. Not saying it's the wrong thing to do, but in terms of workflow, large heavy things sticking to the side of a knife (changing the balance) are the kind of thing that slows our rhythm down, affecting speed and consistency.

Makes sense. I hardly care about how well a knife cubes a potato, since I do it rarely, and when I do, I cube like 3 of them and it takes 20 seconds.

On the other hand, a home user can spend some actual *minutes* julienning or mincing something so it’s more of a priority that the knife work well.

Plus, we want to look cool, since we have an inferiority complex when talking to professionals, and chopping things into tiny bits is what all the celebrity chefs do on TV.

Edit: speaking for a friend here...
 
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Just received the knife. For those worried about aesthetics, to me it looks far better in person than in the photos. I’ll post my thoughts after a few days with it.
 
I used the knife just prior and I really like it, but not because of the chevron hook grind. The grind works very well to improve food release, it is brilliant for potatoes, even soaked cold potatoes are no match for this grind. So as a dedicated potato knife it is great. It works fine for other stuff too, but not as well as Kippington workpony grind as an example. It was OK on carrots but not great. Other stuff it worked well on, but again with some compromises. Basically it excels in somewhat soft, wet stuff and is less ideal in denser, dryer stuff. For smaller, shorter vegetables such as cucumbers and onions it did as well as a normal convex grind. It seems that to get the best benefit of the hook chevron grind you need to cut something reasonably tall and sticky. Sounds obvious, but I'll mention it anyway. Now, the knife itself worked great for me. Perfect profile and balance for me, just really, really good. I'd love to get one of these but with one of Kipps regular grinds that would keep the balance the same. In conclusion, great knife overall. The grind works for the purpose it was designed for, but with it come some compromises and the difficulty of manufacture doesn't seem to be worth it to me. If you are looking for a knife that is best on potatoes and like veggies and also good at everything else this grind is something to consider, but I would rather go with one of the regular convex grinds that Kipp does so well. For pros that sharpen a lot this grind might also have less life since as you sharpen you basically destroy it and at some point the effect of the grind will be lessened. Thank you @Kippington for this pass around, I really enjoyed the knife.
 
Don't know if I'm late to the party here, but if it is still OK to sign up:

Viggetorr, Stockholm, Sweden
 
Anyone know where @mc2442 is? I sent him a PM about passing the knife along earlier this week but havent heard back
 
We should probably start another thread on this to not derail this one even more, but just imagine the horror if those people took over, we the right ones would be forced to use left handed spoons, forks, cups...
And the horror of the logo being on the back of the cups😳
 
Ok, a few rounds of chopping. First I depended on my memory to share a few thoughts here. I did a smaller follow-up round just to confirm said memory. Third, did another follow-up while jotting down a few notes. After all that I don't have anything earth shattering to share that has not been said, unfortunately, but it was a good excuse to cut crap up.

I did a comparison on 3 from Kip: the pass-around (260x55 251g), a work pony (WP) (241x53 226g), and a work horse (WH) (255x59 289g). Unfortunately I don't have a laser from him yet...somewhere down the road.

As stated by someone before, I am a home cook so I started with onions. In dicing, not much difference in the horizontal cuts, other than my WP was a little better than the WH and the chevron was probably the best but all were close. Vertical cuts were all very easy, all 3 are from Kip so it makes sense. My WP and WH had onions sticking to the blade on the final cuts, the chevrons actually had them staying on the board. For making larger chunks, making thick slices thru half onions and then chopping that all 3 performed similarly.

Potatoes: the chevron was better than my WH which was reasonably better than my WP in release. I was not using soaked potatoes so maybe the differences would be amplified, but I don't think I would have the dedicated potato knife that was mentioned earlier.

For sweet potatoes they all were reasonably close, though due to the force of going thru them vs. the exaggerated motions on some of the potato cuts all 3 had good release. On a few of the cuts I did get wedging on the chevron that I did not get on the other two. I don't know if it was just an off few cuts, but they happened.

On the potatoes and especially on the sweet potatoes, pausing at the bottom and much more when I did not hold down the left side, the flat left side definitely sticks to the produce. I assume in production it would not be flat ground.

Since cucumbers were included by others, the only thing I would say is that the release was best on the chevron, then WH, then WP.....as it should have been.

End result, it was fun to play around with but I don't think I would be adding it to the collection. I don't think it is worth the extra effort from Kip and the extra expense that should reflect that effort. The true hook grind that someone compared to seemed to have a bigger difference but I am obviously happy with the 2 I have from Kip in that I will be adding a 3rd.

I PM'ed @Ivang earlier today and I will either hand this off or mail it out once arrangements can be made or an address obtained.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I lightly touched all 3 up on a Gesshin 2k to make sure they were all on the same level. Easy on the stones, all 3.
 
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Gotta say that as a relative noob, these pass-around threads are invaluable in terms of reading everyone's opinions of the SAME knife and learning about a wide variety of things (yes, deliberately vague description there :)
 
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