I'm not prepared to spend almost $500. for a French Knife. Great looking cutlery, but can anyone tell me if they are really worth the price?
I'm not sure though, IceMan, if your point is that this sub-forum just shouldn't exist? "Why talk about what options there are for knives to use and purchase knives?"Any knife that anyone buys, for whatever price they pay, and likes it, is absolutely worth the money .......... IF THEY CAN USE IT PROPERLY, PRODUCING HIGH-QUALITY DISHES. My goodness. Never once in my entire career as a chef has anyone complimented me on the food I've served asking what knives I've used. If you can't cook, it doesn't matter if you use a $6,000 knife. Conversely, if your cooking gets you 3 Michelin stars, nobody will care if your knives are the plastic jobs swiped from a Wendy's. Learn to cook first, then worry about $500 knives.
I have nothing but praise for the 2 I own either. I splurged and bought a Hattori based on reading knife forums like this one. It's a cool knife in my opinion (6" petty) but there isn't anything about it that makes me feel like it's better than the Shun's I own. Actually the fit and finish is significantly worse and that alone makes me feel it's a lesser quality, lesser value knife. Compared to the many Wusthof's & Henckels that I've owned, borrowed, used... I think the Shun's are a huge step up. But there is also something nice about a big heavy Wusthof though... you feel like you could cut through anything with one of those and not damage the blade. BDL hates the san-mai, suminagashi, D handle and profile... I like all those things. It's personal preference in my opinion.I have pieced together a "set" of Shun knives over the past 5 or so years. I have the 8 inch chef's, 4 inch paring, utility knife, fillet knife and boning knife. I also have an older Kai cleaver which is a lighter duty piece. I have nothing but praise for these knives, but I only use them for precision work. By that I mean I use some heavier knives when I am fabricating any meat. The Shun knives are great for prep, and hold a nice edge, but I also have a Henckel's "twin" chef's knife to break down chickens and anything else that calls for a knife with some more heft to it.
Hey, did you steal that Bose analogy from me?! This came up between us probably a year ago. I still think a comparison between Shun and not just Bose but also Polk and Klipsch is fair. Walking into a Williams-Sonoma and buying a Shun is similar to walking into a Best Buy and buying Polk/Klipsch. In both cases you get salespeople who know the product at an elementary level at best, who know just enough to be dangerous (and often wrong) with what they say. The companies are very good marketers. The product is sold from a brick and mortar store so there is the cost of employee salaries and overhead that gets factored into the price. This is very similar to the "big box store" vs. "internet direct" speaker arguments. There are some economic benefits to being the small guy.The main strength of Kershaw Shun isn't knife making, it's marketing. They're a slightly better cutlery version of Bose.
Honestly, I don't know which way you are even looking at it. Do you think that Polk & Klipsch are good products with OK value or do you think they are cheap crap?OK. I could just be too old for this, but the Polk and Klipsch I'm familiar with don't belong in any comparison discussion with Shun knives. Have things changed that much over the years?
Yeah, and I'm one of the Wisconsin gang from AVS. I've hung out with nuance, warpdrv and a few of the other guys multiple times.Maybe! /img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gifIf I did it wasn't conscious or deliberate. I've got $14,000 sunk into my audio rig and am a moderator at two high profile audio websites, so the Bose/Blose analogy is always close at hand./img/vbsmilies/smilies/wink.gif Just as Bose is a step above most (but not all) boom-box/all-in-one rigs, Shun is a step above the German and German-knock-off knives. I really hate Bose because they devote more energy to lawsuits than designing decent products; Shun I hate not at all. I will probably never own another Shun but they're a rite of passage into the world of J-knives.