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Completly new when it comes to knives - help wanted.

post #1 of 3
1/11/10 at 9:08am
Thread Starter 
First of all, since this is my very first post at this forum, I would like to start by saying Hi :)


I'm a homecook in search of the knife that will last me 10-20 years. After browsing this forum for hours, I've skipped my old idea of getting a Wüsthof Ikon Chef's knife and aim for a Japanese knife instead. I want a knife that is sharp, good looking (I like the Ikon look) and easy to care for. I have never sharpened a knife before, but I intend to learn how to.

oh, and I prefer knives 16-20 centimetres (pref. around 18.)

My budget is around 150 dollars. (180 dollars if I can find the knife within Sweden, since there will be a 25% tax add if I order outside the country, most likely).

Any ideas? :)
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post #2 of 3
1/11/10 at 2:46pm
Hi !

Even thought I have very little experience with knives ( not to say none ), I'd like to tell you about the global knife I have. It's a G5 vegetable knife.
I received it new maybe a year ago, and I'm very pleased with it.

It's stainless steel, very easy to take care of: I normally rince it and give it a quick sponge pass after use, dry it rapidly and I'm done. The fact that it's only one piece of steel gives it a real feel of 'cleanness' , and it makes its maintenance look even easier.

Coming to edge retention, it's been very sharp until now, even though I realised it didn't pass the test of newspaper cutting . -now please sharpening champs, remember I'm a knife noob, so don't blame me for thinking a knife is sharp when you can't cut paper cleanly :smoking: - But when it came to cutting food, I could hardly feel the difference, and would not say it was dull

But today I received my newly ordered #1500 whetstone from JCK, and couldn't resist to give it a try on the G5. You can easily imagine that if I'm a knife noob, I'm also a sharpening dum. But well, after googling a lot on how to sharpen, and a first session ( 10min ? ) on the stone, I got my knife sliding again through paper ( but not shaving my arm though :( ) . So even if the result was far from perfect, the improvement was quite easy to achieve. Now, is it because of the knife ? For I've read on this forum, some knives are easier to sharpen than others. I guess this is the case of this knife, because I really have very little experience in this technic.

Now, according to the price you can put in your knife, global might seem a bit of the low end of what you could get. Anyway, if you ever considered them, this was a first hand testimony.
Hoping this helped a bit...

regards,
GK
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post #3 of 3
1/12/10 at 3:50pm
That's plenty of money for a very good Japanese knife within the range of lengths you say you like -- very short. So you should have quite a range of choices.

At 18cm you're probably looking more for a santoku than a chef's (or gyuto, which is about the same thing) as their width makes them a little more useful as your "go-to" knife. I don't know enough about them to make a specific recommendation.

If you can be more specific about what you're looking at, I might be able to help you with alloys, handles and general reputation.

Good luck,
BDL
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