New knife set: need advise

Here are some thoughts FWIW:

For a boning knife, I like the Forschner flexible fibrox knives.  I like the straight knife, but they make curved ones also, as well as semi-flexible and non-flex models.

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/victorinox-forschner-fibrox/flexible-straight-boning-knife-p12873

For bread knives, I really like the Tojiro, but if that is too pricey for you, the Forschner is very good for the price.  Get at least a 10 inch knife.

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/tojiro/itk-bread-knife-p124765 

or

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/victorinox-forschner-fibrox/bread-knife-p1759

IMHO, you also need a petty/utility, which you could buy instead of the boning knife, unless you were really planning on doing a lot of meat work.  I think a petty is generally more useful than a boning knife in ordinary circumstances and can certainly be used for boning as well.   Tojiro and Forschner both make them as well as others.  I have Tojiro, Mac (Chef line)  and Sabatier (Nogent line) pettys, and they all work just fine.

For sharpening, are you asking about a steel for honing, or stones or handheld sharpeners for real sharpening?  What kind of sharpening experience do you have?

Yup, that's the bread knife.  You can get a decent petty for a lot less than $100.  And no, a decent petty that is sharp works pretty well as a boning knife. What does your program want you to have?  They may require that you have a boning knife even though a petty will do in most circumstances.  The Forschner boning knife works very well and is cheap.  My recollection, FWIW, is that at one point it was the top performing boning knife recommended by Cooks Illustrated.  For the price, you could certainly pick up one the pettys below as well as a Forschner boning knife for less than you were thinking of spending on a petty alone.

Decent inexpensive pettys would include the Tojiro:

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/tojiro-dp/utility-knife-p115444

The Mac:

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/mac-professional/utility-knife-p18055

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/mac-chef-series/utility-knife-p18090

I expect that Fujiwara also makes a decent affordable petty, but I've not used one.

You can learn to sharpen without having someone teach you (although that would be ideal).  There are plenty of videos on the web, including youtube and CKtG.  I'd start on cheaper knives than you are looking at buying, however.  Do you have any old knives lying about that you could practice on till you get the hang of it?  Pick up a couple old knives at a charity shop or flea market just to practice with if you need to.

I'd also suggest a ceramic "steel" for your J knives.  I like the Idahone (although Cutlery and More doesn't carry it (CKtG does)).  The MAC ceramic "steels" are decent (I have one of the cheap white ones) as well as the new Henckles Bob Kramer ceramic steel they have listed.  FWIW. the black MAC ceramic steel  has a metal rod in the center and is less likely to break.  I'm no expert on sharpening, but there are lots of posts about that on this site as well as BDL's blog.  I'd suggest a combination stone to get started.  As you are starting out with new, fairly sharp knives, and since you wanted to purchase from Cutlery & More, something like the following should be decent, although I have not used this particular stone.  Perhaps others with more sharpening experience can jump in here.  Cue BDL.

http://www.cutleryandmore.com/norton-water-stones/1000-4000-grit-combination-whetstone-p14155

What knife are you replacing with the Tojiro DP Gyuto?

It is hard to beat the value of the Tojrio though, and when it comes to a good quality entry level Japanese knife they are hard to beat dollar to performance etc.

If you have not read it already search some of the older posts for my thread on your exact knife (if you want I think the part number is in the title if that helps) and if it would be a good entry level buy etc. This should answer most of anyone's questions about entry level J knives, and even gets into stones and sharpening too.

I also have to agree with the idea of a small or petty knife etc as I am not sure I could do without one, and have had great results with the Tojiro DP 120mm Petty I have. It comes sharp OOTB, stays sharp a good while, and when your ready it gets seriously sharp when sharpened right.

I have to caution using a steel on the DP series, and from various recommendation I used a ceramic rod as this will help to realign the edge when needed without chipping or otherwise damaging the edge.

One last idea is to check out the Fujiwara FKM series. When I first got into J knives I used a mix of Tojiro and Fujiwara and have been impressed with both brands, but more importantly it allowed an opportunity to compare two very different steels and ways of doing things in two very value driven knives.

Also I have to ask what is your budget and if you would rather spend more on your main knife and then less on the others (get a good chefs, and less expensive  bread, petty or boning etc)

????
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by HitchedGibson 

He better get the hang of sharpening if he's getting a 9-12 degree blade. He will be sharpening quite a bit.
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk

Care to elucidate what the angle has to do with the frequency of sharpening?
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeteMcCracken 

????
 

Care to elucidate what the angle has to do with the frequency of sharpening?
 

 

As mentioned, thinner steel is weaker, but there's more to understanding it than that. A knife blade is a balance between a number of desirable traits. The better a knife is one aspect, the poorer it usually is another. Most of these traits are related to either Hardness or Toughness. A hard blade can generally take a higher and finer degree of sharpness. But the harder a blade is, the more brittle it is--opposite of toughness. So it's more prone to chips, fatigue, and so on. A tough blade usually can't be taken to as fine an edge but it tends to have a greater resistance to abuse, chips and so on.

When you sharpen at lower and lower angles, which tends to be better supported by harder blades, besides the weakness, you also get closer to natural carbide size of that steel in the thin edge. Carbides are very hard, but have a tendency to pop out of the steel matrix in these situations leading to chipping and other unpleasantness.

Most of the steels that have high hardness tend to have larger carbides than some other steels. People often talk about how fine grained a steel is for example and this is related to carbide size. Fine grained steels can have very high polish in the edges which is a desirable sharpness feature.  As an example, there are two essentially identical steels developed for jet turbine blades that also make fine knives. ATS-34 is what its called when sourced from a Japanese foundry or 154-CM from Crucible in the US. For my skills and techniques I find 154-CM to have a finer grain, probably from their powder metallurgy compared to ATS-34. Identical in composition is CPM-154 that is produced with all the tweaks Crucible has discovered in powder metallurgy and it outperforms both other steels.

Sandvik steels tend to have a finer grain in my experience.

Carbon steels tend to have a finer grain than stainless as well as Chromium leads to larger carbide formation as I recall.