The idea of abuse.

A camper/hiker should carry several types of knives depending on the task. The one best suited for what's quoted would be a military style survival knife. It's built thick and meant for chopping, slashing and hacking brush and branch. And for use as a pry bar. When hiking, I carry a tiny Swiss Army on my keychain, a jack knife in my pocket and another one in a pouch; and, finally, a survival knife inside my pack.

Sorry for going off into a tangent. Knives are gooooooooooood!

>A camper/hiker should carry several types of knives depending on the task.<

I have to disagree with this. There is no reason for a camper/hiker to ever carry more than one knife. Although it does get down to a matter of taste, the best choice is a folding knife one can wear on one's hip. There is no normal camping task that can't be done with one of them.

>It's built thick and meant for chopping, slashing and hacking brush and branch. <

Are we talking recreational camping here? Or jungle survival?

Even in the latter case, the so-called "survival" knife was designed specifically because it's the only edged tool being carried. So it had to be a multi-tasker. A downed pilot, for example, doesn't land his chute loaded down with a half-dozen special-purpose blades.

If you're recreationally camping, then the best tool in addition to a knife is a small belt axe. And then only if you'll be needing real firewood. If you're hiking, then odds are you won't be building any open fires at all.

On the other hand, if you're hacking through the jungle the best tool is a machete.

It all goes back to Tourist's point: You use the best tool for the job.

KYH why don't we cut to the quick and just simply carry a chain saw and get it done lightening fast. Okay?

Tourist, I addressed KYH in my previous post.

As to the polished edges, here's my procedure. Once sharpening has been accomplished using my stones, I then place silicone carbide (aka wet-or-dry) sandpaper onto a mousepad. Then I stroke the blade backwards while very lightly (ever so lightly) pressing the edge into the paper. Start with 300-500 grit and work up to 2000 grit or even into crocus cloth (superfine stuff for refinishing cue sticks). And finally for that brushed appearance, use 3 products (coarse ranging to fine) called Sandflex Hand Blocks offered by Klingspor Abrasives of N.C.. They're grit impregnated giant "erasures".

The hand blocks are aka for Wonderbars sold by Garrett Wade here. Should you sharpen blades for others, they'll really appreciate the finely brushed appearance that those bars give.

I dunno...

I see knives as tools, same way a mechanic sees screwdrivers or socket sets. They break--you fix them, they get lost, you replace them. Any heartache or hand wringing is lost time down the drain.

One of my favorite knives is a Henckels 4 star 12" Chefs. Hang on, force shields up--I bought it over 25 years ago--at that time there weren't any Jap. knives on the market. I still have it--it's shrunk by about 2" in length and about 1/2" in width. Yes, I've dropped it and boken off the tip a few times, and from 25 years worth of sharpenings it's shrunk. When it gets too small I'll either grind it down to a boning knife or stick it in a closet and forget about it. I got my money's worth out of it, I treated it with respect and got good service. It's time to move on, get a new knife.

So an expensive Jap knife chips. Well, there's always a trade off with hard steels and brittleness. Then again, there's a trade off with softer steels and edge retention. No one said you can't get it re-ground.

If you ever have the money to buy an expensive sports car, everything's great untill you get the first scratch, the first brake replacement, etc. Nothing lasts forever.....

The "right tool for the job" definitely does depend on the skills of the user and the circumstances of use. It's really pretty simple to prevent an entry level J-knife (eg Shun, Global, Tojiro) from chipping, in my experience. The first thing is to use a cutting board! You might say "Duh!" but many people don't seem to realize that cutting on counter tops or glass plates is abuse, no matter the make of knife. To expect a knife to perform well and maintain an edge cutting right on a stainless counter is akin to riding the clutch and expecting it last forever, or chirping the tires at every stoplight and expecting your tires to last indefinitely. Not realistic.

Your car analogy is a good one, Chico. A Honda Civic and a Ferrari will both get you from Point-A to Point-B, albeit with greatly different levels of speed and style. If you have the means to purchase it and the skill to master such a machine, the Ferrari will allow you to do things the Civic simply won't. Expect the cost of operation to be much higher (tires, service, gas, etc) but that comes with the territory.

If you daily kitchen grind consists of cutting one head of lettuce, quartering a tomato and opening a package of hamburger, you probably won't want to mess with maintaining the Ferrari (aka J-knife). If you routinely make sashimi for a dozen guests, you will probably have to bite the bullet and use the appropriate tool and accept that you'll have to perform the required maintenance.

J-knifes can chip, but I feel the instances of this are overstated. Using good technique will certainly go a long ways towards preventing this.

I don't think it's quite as simple as you make it, Chico. Right tool for the job, yes, but the problem is that the "job" in the average Western kitchen (home or pro) is very different from its counterpart in the relatively old-fashioned Japanese pro kitchen, for which these knives were generally designed.

The first really big difference is meat and bone. There simply is no knife in the traditional Japanese arsenal that is appropriate for butchering a whole lamb saddle, something the old guard French chefs had to do. Now you may say, "there are certainly butchering knives," and there are, but the pro doesn't want to switch knives constantly: he wants to use the same very few knives for everything, if at all possible.

In the old-fashioned Japanese kitchen, the big three knives (usuba, deba, yanagiba) do everything except a few unusual, special things. If the classical French chef tried to make do with the same trio, he'd either chip them badly or go on a killing spree, because those knives simply won't do what he needs them to do.

For the modern cook in the West, the situation is quite different, for several reasons:

1. Prep and finishing are commonly separated, allowing one to use a different set of knives if desired.

2. The home cook generally uses the supermarket as a prep chef for heavy cutting, such as butchering saddles and stuff like that, so that section of the arsenal is no longer necessary almost ever.

3. Expectations in high-end dining have changed, partly under the influence of Japanese cooking, such that precision cutting matters in a way it didn't in let's say 1950.

4. The advent of high-end Japanese knives has opened a new range of options, so that now it's worth thinking seriously about which practices derived from the knives and which practices prompted a choice of knives, if you see what I mean: it's not just chicken-and-egg.

For example, "right tool for the job" doesn't apply well to butchering whole fish. The standard filleting knife in the West is a very different animal from the Japanese deba. Both do the job, but they require radically different techniques. Which is better? The deba, probably, but even now it is very unusual for a Western culinary student to learn how to use one. If you don't know how, the knife is just an expensive white elephant. What's more, there are types of fish-cutting one sees a good deal in classical French cuisine that are ill-suited to the deba's many strengths: boning sole or skate wing are good examples. Not that a deba cannot do these things, but in many respects the flexible filleting knife does it better. On the other hand, nothing but nothing beats a deba when turning a medium-sized roundfish into fillets.

So which knife is the right tool for the job? You can say that one should pick the deba for the roundfish and the flexible filleting knife for the sole, but that means learning two quite different techniques admirably well. Technique will generally trump equipment. And that means it's probably a better idea to pick one knife and use it for all fish, so that you really master it.

As to the general chipping issue, yes, hard steels chip. Soft steels roll and crush. So what? As you say, how much hemp rope you can cut is meaningless unless the knife is intended for such uses.

How do you avoid chipping? Cutting boards have been mentioned. Beyond that, learn some technique and practice assiduously. A hard knife demands more skill and attention. My favorite extreme example is the usuba: if you don't use it the way it wants to be used, it will chip and roll, which is impressively irritating. But some of the vegetable cutting I saw in Kyoto, done by experts with the usuba, were genuinely awe-inspiring. On the board, it's as good as a gyuto, and then you lift it up and do all kinds of crazy cuts that you'd be hard-pressed to duplicate with the whole classical French arsenal. And then when you finish all that cutting, the thing is still so sharp you can literally shave with it. But to learn how to use that knife effectively takes months of hard labor for a solid foundation, and years for mastery. Compare to a gyuto or chef's knife: how long does it take before you can brunoise a carrot passably? A week, maybe?

"Right tool for the job," yes, but that has to be graded and aligned to the more important factor, "right technique for the knife." I'd rather see a master with an usuba dice a carrot with a blunt combat knife than watch an unskilled moron do it with a razor-sharp high-grade usuba.