steevjp
Member
If I think the globals are expensive and i coul dsell all 6 or 7 to get a decent Gyuto (never heard of that) then I guess they are eye wateringly expensive
All perfectly true. But even a well-maintained, thinned Global may cause serious problems due to its steel. Large carbides, clusters of them, in a soft matrix. Hard to raise a burr, often hard to get rid of it. Burrs popping up after half an hour. Chipping — never seen with such a soft steel. Spontaneous chipping, you can't relate to any event. There is a reason this steel has been chosen. It's highly stain resistant and offers a kind of bite normal people will perceive as sharpness.It's interesting people's different experiences sharpening them. I think a lot of the trouble I have is that the ones I've sharpened are not mine (my in-laws have, I kid ye not, about 30 of the things), they tend to come to me very blunt, sometimes chipped, and having been run through dishwashers their entire life.
My suspicion is that they're naturally quite fat behind the edge, and have quite a convex grind, so when they're in this state it you have to remove quite a lot of steel in order to be able to start sharpening proper. Which is why I pretty much always start on very coarse stones. Just a hunch, I've never looked too closely at it.
So perhaps my issue is as much with the people who often own globals, as it is the knives themselves
EDIT - And obviously I'm not putting anyone here into that category of person!
Carbides are cristalline structures within steel. In the case of stainless steel chromium carbides catch our interest. They are much harder than their environment. During Heat Treatment the maker can influence their formation, especially their size and distribution. Big carbides will make the blade more abrasion resistant but harder to sharpen. If they're both large and unevenly distributed the steel won't hold a fine edge. To a certain degree it's a choice made by the maker which quality he wants to prevail.Can someone explain carbides please?
Whilst one of my knives has some damage at the tip (no idea how that happened) the rest have not been mistreated and are not chipped and have never been in a dishwasher. I guess unless you are knowledgeable in the beginning when looking for knives global are an attractive option, they look(ed) good, felt good and were marketed well so you think you are buying into quality (as I had until I made this post lol)
"slightly"?You've landed on a very strange island, where people have a slightly different way of looking at knives.
You've landed on a very strange island, where people have a slightly different way of looking at knives. Globals are decent knives and better than 95% of mankind will ever handle. To me, ease of sharpening and taking and holding a crazy fine edge are very important. Even most professional cooks hardly know what we are speaking about.
i think i didn't grind enough out of the new edge on the one that microchipped before starting to us it.
you basically need to grind off metal on new knives since most are sharpened on powertools.
and that means either the very edge was overheated (re-tempered) to decrease the hardness, and then the steel has no strength.
or it was overheated more and then it was simply rehardened (since its air-hardening) at the edge with no temper afterwards (ultra brittle).
or somewhere inbetween.
but its a known phenomenon. it all goes away after a few sharpenings usually.
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