Why isn’t bamboo or plastic cutting boards ideal for hard knives?

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Desert Rat said:
Very odd. I have been useing a 24 x 24 x 6 end grain maple Boos butcher block for better than a decade with no issues at all. It was old and abused when I found it but it will easily out live me.
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why odd, the block was not falling apart, the knives were. Porblem might be a combination of knive hardness and thickness vs how the block behaves/was made.
 
LostHighway said:
I've used most of the usual suspects over the years (plastic, edge grain maple, Epicurean, Hinoki, Hi-Soft, end grain cherry, and I recently acquired a brown PE Hasagawa). I skipped over bamboo because it is notorious for dulling tools whether you're cutting culms in the field or working with it in a woodshop. My take is that they all have their pros and cons but that for edge longevity Hi-Soft and Hasegawa are hard to beat. That may be true of the Asahi and Sani-Tuff boards as well but I haven't used those. I used to be able to find some plastic boards that were on the softer side, you could get them to yield to a fingernail edge with moderate pressure, but I haven't found any that soft for years. I still keep a couple plastic boards around but only for abusive uses like serrated knives. For good Japanese knives I think you pick your trade offs among Hasegawa, Hi-Soft and equivalents, Hinoki or Aomari Hibari, and not too hard end grain (I prefer cherry). Plastic and Epicurean/San Jamar Tuff-Cut are, IMO, well below any of these but tolerable for limited uses. Bamboo, acrylic, glass, metal, and stone boards I would avoid like the plague.
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What do you think pros & cons between hasegawa & hi-soft?

I haved experience with asahi & hi-soft, i heard hasegawa really good, been thinking to getting one..
 
jacko9 said:
I have been experimenting with several boards; I made a 10" x 14" maple end grain board which is fine but a little too small for me, a 18" x 26" large edge grain maple board which is pretty heavy, a bamboo board which is pretty hard on edgers, a plastic board which I'm about to throw away, a 14" x 17" Hasegawa Wood Core Soft Rubber board which slows knife marks when cutting veggies (I'll use this for fish and raw protein in the future) and I finally just ordered in in stock 12" x 23" Hasegawa Wood Core PE Rubber board which should be a little harder. Bottom line I most likely will get down to the large board and both Hasegawa boards.
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Where did you get the hasegawa cutting board?
 
adam92 said:
What do you think pros & cons between hasegawa & hi-soft?

I haved experience with asahi & hi-soft, i heard hasegawa really good, been thinking to getting one..
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I am also very interested -- I have an end grain block and Hi Soft and basically do all my chopping on the Hi Soft. How does the Hasegawa compare?
 
Funny how these things go.

I have a Boos edge grain, some cheap Teak end grain, couple of bamboos, couple of poly, one synth rubber. Poly and bamboo will definitively put fine carbons to dull pretty fast if a lot of slicing against the board occurs. If mostly raw and not so forceful impacts, as in push cutting/push slicing with just the force required to lead the edge through, I don't have much problems with bamboo vs. edge stability, and none with bamboo vs. micro-chipping.

When I must slice proteins on my lesser surfaces, I revert back to my Diplome Gyuto. Aeb-l survives "forever" to the harshest of conditions. Also have some Victos always at the ready for the crappiest jobs.

And that story about Boos vs Boardsmith seems almost incredible to me, unless "maple" of both cases is not of the very same subspecies and had the maximal difference in hardness found between maple samples. Puzzling to say the least.

Boos edge grain is a very forgiving board even for slicing, in my experience.
 
MarcelNL said:
why odd, the block was not falling apart, the knives were. Porblem might be a combination of knive hardness and thickness vs how the block behaves/was made.
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Or a foreign object is in the Boos some place. Could of been imbedded in the tree or became embedded in the block after the fact.
 
ModRQC said:
Funny how these things go.

I have a Boos edge grain, some cheap Teak end grain, couple of bamboos, couple of poly, one synth rubber. Poly and bamboo will definitively put fine carbons to dull pretty fast if a lot of slicing against the board occurs. If mostly raw and not so forceful impacts, as in push cutting/push slicing with just the force required to lead the edge through, I don't have much problems with bamboo vs. edge stability, and none with bamboo vs. micro-chipping.

When I must slice proteins on my lesser surfaces, I revert back to my Diplome Gyuto. Aeb-l survives "forever" to the harshest of conditions. Also have some Victos always at the ready for the crappiest jobs.

And that story about Boos vs Boardsmith seems almost incredible to me, unless "maple" of both cases is not of the very same subspecies and had the maximal difference in hardness found between maple samples. Puzzling to say the least.

Boos edge grain is a very forgiving board even for slicing, in my experience.
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The end brain feels softer than the edge grain to me. I'm just a home cook though so don't have the experience as others here.
 
MarcelNL said:
I'm thinking to make an end grain board but am torn between that and the Hasegawa, does the benefit apply cutting everything one uses in the home kitchen or is that mainy when cutting soft tissue (fish and meat)?
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I cut almost everything on Hasegawa now but I occasionally use Asahi as well. Both good boards while Asahi is easier to clean and Hasegawa is softer and has less drag. For the same size, they are both cheaper than end grain boards. To me the benefit of using soft rubber boards exists mainly in chopping vegetables and scraping as those are supposed to degrade the edge most. Every one tells you to use the spine instead of edge to scrape, but with Hasegawa you can scrape using edge with no problem. If you just slice and cut with less force, I think end grain boards are soft enough to not chip the edge.
 
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adam92 said:
What do you think pros & cons between hasegawa & hi-soft?
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I have had the Hi-Soft much longer than the PE Brown Hasegawa so I'm still a bit of a novice on the Hasegawa front. The Hi-Soft is significantly softer than the PE Hasegawa, and seems, so far, more prone to cut marks and staining (it is a lighter color board). The Hi-Soft is also heavier for a given surface area than the Hasegawa. I have heard reports of Hi-Softs warping but mine has not, it is the 40cm x 30cm size, but if I buy another it will be 60cm x 30cm. There is more material thickness to work with on the Hi-Soft since it is effectively cutting surface all the way through, it should tolerate more more cycles of sanding the surface than the Hasegawa. I don't feel that I've had the Hasegawa long enough to form an opinion on knife edge wear. I have not seen chipping on my Hi-Soft, end grain cherry (Prunis serotina, a native North American species. Janka hardness 4,230 Newtons - significantly softer than Hard/Sugar Maple), or the PE Hasegawa.
How does the Asahi compare to the Hi-Soft?
 
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LostHighway said:
I have had the Hi-Soft much longer than the PE Brown Hasegawa so I'm still a bit of a novice on the Hasegawa front. The Hi-Soft is significantly softer than the PE Hasegawa, and seems, so far, more prone to cut marks and staining (it is a lighter color board). The Hi-Soft is also heavier for a given surface area than the Hasegawa. I have heard reports of of Hi-Softs warping but mine has not, it is the 40cm x 30cm size, but if I buy another it will be 60cm x 30cm. There is more material thickness to work with with on the Hi-Soft since it is effectively cutting surface all the way through, it should tolerate more more cycles of sanding the surface than the Hasegawa. I don't feel that I've had the Hasegawa long enough to form an opinion on knife edge wear. I have not seen chipping on my Hi-Soft, end grain cherry (Prunis serotina, a native North American species. Janka hardness 4,230 Newtons - significantly softer than Hard/Sugar Maple), or the PE Hasegawa.
How does the Asahi compare to the Hi-Soft?
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Hi soft more prone to leave cut mark, softer than asahi, hi soft good for pulling method, so i said hi soft better when i cutting sashimi, asahi good for both pushing & cutting method, but is slightly harder than hi soft, edge retention is good on hi soft, better than asahi.
 
LostHighway said:
So the Asahi is wood core as well? I wasn't aware of that.
Does anyone know who soft the regular, not brown PE, Hasegawa is relative to the Tenryo Hi-Soft?
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hasegawa have two kind, one is PE, one is wood core, i heard hasegawa softer than asahi.
I don't think relative to tenryo, they're different company.
 
I heard hasegawa cutting board have new version, 4 layer instead of 3 layer, but biggest size is 46x26x2mm.

3 layer offer much longer and wider sizes, anyone experience?
 
Ha I get it now thanks. Anyone wanna sell me a beater stainless while I search for my next cutting board?
 
So i got email reply from hasegawa, FSR(3 layer) is better for professional kitchen. I gonna get one soon! Finally pull the trigger😂😂😂
 

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Great info on here! I have a 40x30inch poly cuttinboard that I absolutely loooove. It is so large, it almost like having a poly table. The only thing that sucks is how difficult it is to clean. I have a split sink so I cannot even fit it in...
My other smaller boards are bamboo. After reading this, they are gunna get cut up and turned into something else! Most of my knives are vintage carbon!
 
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