Scrappy solutions for scraping-satisfied spouses

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I should say this isn’t really a recommend me thread, just looking to see if anyone has moved family from “danger to the collection” to the promised land where knives are treated properly. 🙃

Dealing with folks who can put microchips in a kiwi on a regular basis. Which I don’t mind fixing for them, but I had no idea the steel in a kiwi was physically hard enough to chip. I feel like they’re performing some form of alchemical exchange and hardening the steel in use. It’s impressive really.

Food separation is apparently achieved by wiggling the blade at the end of the cut, when it’s nicely embedded in the board. This of course gets some exceptional food separation, and also creates a lovely bread knife at the same time.

I would however like to eventually move these fine folks to slightly better knives. At this point though I’ve tried 25 (per side) degree microbevels on kiwis and soft walmart specials, tried the “unbreakable” rahven knives, and am frankly out of inspiration as the end result is always an edge that is chipped and microchipped to hell and back.

Part of me is fine with just buying them a new rahven every year since shipping back across the pond is ludicrously expensive for sharpening, but the knife nut in me knows there must be some solution I haven’t tried yet and thus there’s work to be done.
 
Hmmm depends on what they're cutting , but there are western deba that are thicker. There are ones shorter and longer, so it depends what size or purpose

My dad chips knives, my mom is fine with moderately thin knives. My siblings are fine with moderately thin knives. The super thin stuff I only use myself.

https://knifejapan.com/moriya-munem...mi-3-stainless-steel/#PhotoSwipe1653701336536
Something like that but longer
 
I only hide knives when the in laws are over. My family will ignore them, and my wife and son are trained. When she doesn’t want bothered; she grabs a Mercer. When she doesn’t want things fecked up; she grabs the ittetsu.
 
Maybe some of the Shibazi 3Cr13 or 4cr13 cleavers would do, they can withstand huge amount of punishment and when blunt they just force their way through food by weight.
 
Seems like the idea is go bigger, with Deba or cleaver so I may see if I can wean them onto a stainless cleaver. Maybe pick up a deba for myself as a reward for a good deed ☺️

So far tried the aforementioned kiwis/rahvens, Chicago cutlery, vic fabrox, kanefusa fkm, massdrop apogee vital. The only knife that’s survived is a 50-60 year old unmarked stainless life, the edge looks like a piece of bacon and it’s dull as sin but geometry actually lets it keep working surprisingly well. Many, many victims left on the chopping block. Don’t even get me started on what they’ve done to the wood cutting boards I tried to get my dad to use 🥲🤣


I only hide knives when the in laws are over. My family will ignore them, and my wife and son are trained. When she doesn’t want bothered; she grabs a Mercer. When she doesn’t want things fecked up; she grabs the ittetsu.


I will say I’m lucky that they respect my knives enough to not touch them, which is a blessing in its own way. I just want to be able to share the gospel of a sharp, well performing knife with them because it just makes food prep funner.
 
I gave my wife a ZDP189 santoku. It's literally just a 165mm gyuto. It's held up pretty well to her abuse, but the criminality being described here is cutco territory.
 
Maybe just sharpen up a metal doughscraper and let them use that?
 
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