Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave, our only host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from New Stan Studios of Rockefeller Center. Joined as usual with Joe Hazen, the engineer in the booth. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing great.
How are you? We got Jackie Molecules out there in California. Jack, you're doing it. Hey, I'm doing great. Yeah, good.
Yeah, I'm here. Yeah. I just made it before the rain. I was biking like a demon. So it feels like it's rained on me because I'm sweating so hard.
And for those of you that pay for the Patreon video, like you'll be able to see that I'm dressed like a picnic table, right, Joe? I'm dressed like a picnic table. Yeah. So uh Nastasia forgot all of, you know, during the pandemic, what it's like to try to drive into New York City, like at any time of day. It's a crab shoot.
So she's gonna be here in a couple of minutes because uh she got caught in the never-ending nightmare of traffic that is I-95, the worst corridor in the east. Am I wrong about this? Anyone? Anyone gonna defend I-95? You're cursed.
No way. No, no defense for I-95. Even down in South Florida. The whole thing's trash. Like it's like Eisenhower's rolling over in his grave.
This is what we this is what we ended up with, you know. Like, God forbid we do have some sort of like domestic emergency that requires moving a bo a boatload of stuff up and down the coast. And what we have is I-95. You know what I'm saying? Anyway, uh not only it's not just that it's a bad road.
I'm sorry, it's the last thing I say about it, because we have a lot to get to today. It's not just that it's a crappy road, but like literally, like you feel punked by it. They'll like strip a lane off for no reason so that the traffic gets clogged, and then at it again, like literally a hundred yards down the road. You know what I'm saying? It's just garbage.
It's filth. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. Uh, and by the way, if you are listening live, if you're a Patreon member listening in live, call in your questions to 917-410-1507. That's 917 410 1507. Oh, before this, we are now, by the way, on the iTunes.
What are the other things, Jack, that people get their podcasts from? Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, basically anywhere you can find podcasts. Right. So if you're hearing me, you need to resubscribe to us on the new RSS. Don't ask why.
Don't ask why. Who cares why? Right? Someone got on my on the Twitter and was like, hey Dave, can you go on the old feed and just make like a 20 second podcast and say to join the new feed so that the old people can get it? And I was like, dude, I wish.
I wish I could do that. I can't, and I don't want to talk about it. Just join the new feed. Joe, it's like pushing one button, right? Yeah, if you want to do that.
And for everybody that is has already subscribed, um, you know, rate put a rating on there. Rate, review, subscribe, as they say. Yeah, because our old our old ratings. Our old ratings, they don't propagate. I can't, we can't get the 11 years of work and we can't propagate the reviews.
Am I wrong about this, Jack? We cannot transfer the reviews, but we can get new reviews. We can get new reviews. So if you like us, leave a review. And if not, maybe you can forget.
You know what I'm saying? If you like us, leave a good review. If not, maybe you could forget. Okay, so today we have live from Pittsburgh, special guest, first time on the show. Uh the reason is Dr.
Laron Thomas. How you doing? Good. How are you guys? Doing well.
So, first of all, Pittsburgh. Uh, do you have any what what's uh I've only been to Pittsburgh once uh and also to uh outside to the steel area when we're talking about steel Braddock once. Love the Joe Majorac sculpture. Do you like that sculpture? Uh yeah.
Big steel bending. Do you know you're familiar obviously you're familiar with the Joe Majorak legend, right? No. Really? No, okay.
So tell me. So uh I I don't ask again, don't ask why, but like, you know, years ago I went through kind of an American folklore rabbit hole, and there's all of these uh in the after the industrialization of America, uh there was a series of legends, like John Henry being the most famous of kind of humans versus machines, right? So like kind of the like the the human spirit as it goes through industrialization. But uh Joe Majorak, which is typically built around, you know, an Eastern European, uh most accurately probably Hungarian, kind of a uh uh a model of a of a kind of like hardworking uh immigrant in the steel mills, is kind of the opposite of John Henry. Like they're gonna, I think the legend goes, they're gonna shut down the steel plant, and they're doing one last uh melt.
And Joe Majorak, who's like the strongest steel man, you know, anywhere, jumps into the melt and becomes part of the steel. And that is the greatest melt that had ever been produced up to that time, made the best steel. And so, like that was the steel that made like that, like I guess that plant or that whatever great. And so Joe Majorak is like the human that's literally part of the steel. So it's basically saying, you know, steel workers are literally part of this like incredibly strong material that built the country.
So it's kind of the it's turning the human versus machine kind of it's on on its head. It's like human as part of the machine. So it's kind of cool. And that's why that giant, there's that giant dude bending that girder in the uh out there in Braddock. So yeah.
Yeah. I don't know if that's a happy story or not. Uh uh humans are are uh carbon-based, and we need carbon for steel. Yeah, I guess that was his contribution. Well, you know, it's also like we all gotta go, right?
We all gotta go. Like, you know, when I'm done, I'm done. Joe Majrak, you know, he's part of whatever, whatever the you know, coolest steel thing at the time was anyway. Uh so what caught my eye, uh, the reason you're on the show, and I've mentioned this is uh I was writing my own book, not on knives on cooking, and I thought, okay, well, you know, uh everyone who writes a cookbook has to say something about knives, right? And so I you know, I I hadn't researched the topic in years, years, you know, maybe a decade or better.
And I was like, well, let me see what the current state of knowledge of knives is, thinking that it would be a little more than I had uh looked up like, you know, 10, 12 years ago. And it turns out that much like coffee or baking bread or any one of these other kind of uh, you know, things that seems relatively simple, you know, if you're not inside the thing, a lot has happened, a lot of knowledge has been gained, and a lot of people have been studying it quite furiously. And so uh, long story short, it turns out I didn't know uh a damn thing about it. And then uh I came across your blog and your book, Knife Engineering, which by the way, I know you sell primarily on Amazon, but you should think about putting it in this one store called Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York that cooks uh go to. Now, your book is not for cooks, it's for literally knife engineers or anyone who cares about how a knife works.
So, like, have you had a lot of cooks coming to you and and asking you questions or not? Uh well, my dad, uh Devin Thomas, he makes custom kitchen knives. So, I mean, at the very least, I talk to him almost every day. Uh I also go to uh a forum called Kitchen Knife Forums, which has a bunch of uh super geeked out uh kitchen knife guys that love buying expensive knives and and cooking things with them, sharpening them, you know. So I I'm familiar with with those groups.
Uh when I first started getting into knives as a teenager through my dad, those were some of the first places I went where um there's an old dead forum called Knife or in the kitchen on knifeforums.com, which completely doesn't exist. And then some of those people uh went to Kitchen Knife Forums. So uh I've I've been in that that group for a while, and sometimes I pay more attention than other times. I mean, there's so many new brands and and things. But yeah, I've heard from a lot of those guys, kitchen knife makers and and the guys that buy too many expensive kitchen knives.
Well, that's an interesting question. So um, so for those that don't know, yeah, you say your your dad is a well-regarded maker of uh of uh pattern welded Damascus uh knives, right? And so and you're also uh like uh a PhD metallurgist by trade. So you're not just like another internet joker. Yeah, well, I am, but I also have a PhD in metallurgy.
Right, right, right, right. So so uh right, but you're you're an automotive metallurgist, right? Yeah, I work for U.S. Steel Research, uh, and I I developed new sheet steels for cars. And so there's a lot of uh competition there, like aluminum is loom looming as an alternative and those kind of things.
And there's uh constant uh desires for higher gas mileage, better safety and things. And so the the automotive companies are really big on stronger materials, more ductile materials, more formable materials, and they want it to still be weldable in the same way, which is difficult or impossible to achieve. So it's an exciting area for development. Well, i uh aluminum, huh? What's old is new again.
Uh you know, for those of you that you know, all of the old like hand a lot of the old handcrafted like old rolls and stuff were all aluminum back in the in the 30s and 20s, right? But in this context, I think we can all agree that aluminum is a terrible material for a knife. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But wait with the wait just to go back to your automotive stuff, because I can't because I'm curious. Sorry about this.
But like is it coming back just because of computerized tig welding that it like that they don't need to worry about not being able to weld it well anymore or or or because there's is welding so much easier for them now that they can bring aluminum back. I believe that in the Ford F one fifty, so its outer body is aluminum, not the not the like the inner structure of the car that handles crash loads and things, but I believe that is epoxy. So they basically just glue it all together. Huh. Uh but the the current automotive infrastructure is all designed for spot welding.
So uh that that is a big advantage for the current steel industry. But the the desire to use aluminum is because of its density advantage. Um and we can use thinner steel for lighter weight, and we do that by making the steel stronger. So the the challenge is making the steel stronger, but still be able to form it into complex shapes while being very strong, uh, because those two things contradict each other. Uh so I think we can stay ahead of aluminum.
Plus, aluminum requires a lot of energy to produce and a recycle. And so with the full life cycle of a vehicle, steel is is comparable or in some cases a little bit better. So I think steel's here to stay, or at least that's what uh that's what my CEO tells me. Right. That's what US Steel says.
That's such a surprise. Yeah. Hey, look, everyone in terms of knives, though, I guess yeah, we can all agree. Well, that's actually not the not everyone doesn't agree. Someone asked, uh someone asked, in fact, uh Capri Sun, one of our longtime listeners said, uh, what makes one knife steel easier to sharpen?
We'll get to that later. But are ceramic knives a better choice for a non-enthusiast home cook. Well, the the advantage of ceramic is that it's extremely wear resistant. And so when it comes to wearing a knife edge, it will last a really long time. Uh on the flip side, it's very brittle.
And so it's prone to chipping. Uh, it's very difficult to sharpen effectively. You need at least diamond abrasives, and even with those, it's difficult to get a sharp edge on it. It does not like to be sharpened. Uh, and that's not just removing material, but just getting it to take a fine edge because it's so brittle.
So uh my take on ceramic is don't buy them generally. Uh steel is is much more durable, and uh you can have knives that that last a long time in between sharpenings with steel. Uh and I I think wear uh of the edge is not even the dominant mechanism all the time of of dulling your edge. So I think going just for more wear resistance is not the direction I would go. I think a more balanced set of properties is more desirable.
So I would prefer steel. Right. I know a lot of people who go for really the like this new generation of really cheap ceramics, and then just when they're when they're done, pitch them, which is not necessarily a sustainable way to live. But um I don't know. Yeah.
So uh and when you but when you obviously I think we all know, or maybe we don't, that the harder something is, typically it's it's more brittle, but the the it's ceramics aren't on the same curve as steel, right? So are they even more brittle for their specific hardness than steel is or no? Uh ceramics are almost always very high in hardness, usually a bit beyond where we typically take steel to. Um, I mean, we could go harder on steel than what we do now, but we don't, uh, you know, for several reasons, among them it being too brittle. Uh, but ceramics is very hard, very wear resistant, and very brittle.
So I I mean I think some enterprising ceramic companies have have made some ceramic knives that have done well, but I still think steel is the preferred material. All right, now let's let's talk about steel uh for a minute. Uh maybe go through like the because we don't want to get too into the weeds because our average listener, while they like a lot of technical information, isn't specifically a steel person. So you want to just go through, you know, uh kind of the the different phases of steel and you know how they relate to the knife, like the the one minute pitch of how you know knife steel is is is done, like what a carbide is, et cetera. Yeah, I don't know exactly how in depth we should go.
Uh you were talking to me about austenite before the show. Austenite is uh a phase of steel that's non-magnetic, so austenitic stainless steel is more common in in like cookware, pots and pans and sinks and things. Right. So that's your 304, your 316, like all the stuff that we're accustomed to have all of our pans be made out of, right? Yeah, so knives are are almost always uh a phase called martensites, which is the hardest phase of steel generally.
So when they when they heat it up hot, it actually transforms to austenite first at high temperature. And then they quench it in oil. If you've seen that show forest and fire, you've seen them quench knives in oil. And that that is to lock in carbon. And when you lock in the carbon into the steel it becomes very hard and it's a phase called martensite.
Right, right. Uh then carbides are you've heard carbide before probably like with tooling and things, which is just a hard particle formed between carbon and another element in steel a lot of times is carbon or you can form vanadium carbides if you add vanadium to the steel for example. And so those are hard particles in the steel and they they give you higher wear resistance but also decrease your toughness. So in a lot of steels we try to uh with knives anyway, you want it the right proportion of carbide and the right type of carbide to get the right balance of of toughness uh which is resistance to to chipping and wear resistance the resistance to wear. So I mean we can be much more specific on the hardness and the level of wear resistance and things than we could with a ceramic for example.
Right, right. So you go through this, you go through the whole process. I think pretty simply, you know, it explained it pretty well in the book. So I mean, see whether this is right for for the listener, because I think it's helpful to think about how how the knife works, right? So the important thing in gent for for most like you know, lower you know, normal steels, right?
Car carbon, right, is not soluble in this, you know, to a high extent in the steel normally, right? So you heat it up, it all becomes what's the how do you pronounce it again? Austin Austenite. Austenite? Austin, I say it again.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it becomes austenite. Because as you heat it, right, the crystal structure of the of the iron itself changes such that the iron the the carbon can go into solution, right? So now you have this thing, right? Now in a 304, they add crap to it, or 316, like the kitchen stainless steel non-magnetic, they add stuff to it so that even after it cools down, it stays in that Austin Austin.
Say it again. I can't can't get it right. My mind won't be. I think I think Steve Austin, the six million dollar man, and I can't think of anything else. Austinite.
Yeah, we we can say uh Austin or Austin, Texas, and then you just add ice. All right, there's the end. There you go. So like it they add a bunch of stuff so that when it cools, it stays in that form, and that's why it's non-magnetic, but that stuff also is not hard, right? Right.
So that's correct. That's right. So like that's why if it's not magnetic, it's not gonna make a good knife, right? For steel. If it's not magnetic, it c like it b just because it's it is magnetic doesn't mean it's gonna be good, but you know that if it's not magnetic, it's not gonna be a good knife steel, right?
Yeah, I mean, maybe we could make some funky steel that would be non-magnetic and still be good in a knife. I'm not aware of any. Right. So most knives are not non-magnetic anyway. I mean the the non-magnetic steels like the 304 and 316, they have to add a bunch of nickel to them, some of them have an elybodenum.
So it's more expensive. It's cheaper for them not to use those steels anyway. Right. All right. So you have this hot steel the in Austenite with all of the carbon in it.
Then you quench it real fast and it forms this like weird thing, martensite, which is hard as hell, right? But even harder still, the excess elements and carbon form these things called carbides, right? And then that's the super hard stuff that forms the little almost sand grains inside of these matrix of uh steel grains. Is this pretty much accurate? Yeah, yeah.
You've got a bunch of little like spherical particles in the steel called carbides, and those resist wear. Like you said, there so like if we have soft steel, it uh relatively, then we've got these hard particles, then they help to resist the wear of the edge. Right. And a carbon carbide is what exactly? It's it's it's a a metal complex with carbon.
Yeah, so the most basic is an iron carbide, also called cementite. Um so in a simple carbon steel, you'd have cementite particles in there. And it's just uh the the composition is Fe3C, three iron atoms for every carbon atom. So just you you put iron and carbon together and it makes an iron carbide. And that's the softest of all of the carbides, right?
Yeah, yeah, at least for uh for carbides that you normally find in in steel. Um the hardest would be like a vanadium carbide or a tungsten carbide. So some of the the really high wear resistant steels will have high percentages of vanadium added to them. Okay. So now when you're talking about just carbon steels where it's just uh cementite, which is the iron carbide and martensite, is that that's what?
Is that my like my 1950s like uh four-star sabotier? Is that what that stuff is? Yeah, exactly. And even uh some kitchen knives in in carbon steels today are using something similar. Um or like the Japanese uh kitchen knives made in uh white number one or shirogami number one.
That's just a high carbon, simple steel. All right. Now uh I happen to love those knives. Is that like what do you think? In the kitchen, I I love them because they're so easy to sharpen.
And you know, I touch them up every time I every time I use them, I touch them up. And so, you know, my carbon steel Yanagi makes real fast work of fish. And my, you know, my sabotier is when I'm slicing steak, I always go for my sabatier. Is that am I making a mistake there? Or is that a decent like what what am I giving up there?
Well, you're talking about the broader question of just carbon versus stainless, and a lot of the information out there is not that useful because the category of carbon steel is a really big wide open set of steels, and so is stainless. And so you can have non-stainless steels that behave very similarly to a stainless steel, apart from they will rust pretty easily. And you can have stainless steels that have some of the characteristics of the simple carbon steels. So uh when we talk about the very general differences, if you read an article saying carbon versus stainless steel, it'll talk about carbon steels with low wear resistance that are easy to sharpen. Uh they might say that it's higher in hardness, uh, versus a stainless steel which has a coarser structure, it's more difficult to sharpen to a really fine edge, uh, but it's stain resistant.
Uh but there are our series of stainless steels, uh, sometimes called like a stainless or a stainless razor blade steel or um a sweetish stainless steel that can have very fine microstructure with characteristics that are pretty similar to uh a simple carbon steel uh with a little bit higher wear resistance just because it's chromium carbides instead of iron carbides. Uh but then carbon steel is uh too generic of a term. So I use non-stainless instead. Uh because a carbon steel refers to something specific and we use it generally. Uh so a carbon steel is just iron carbon and some trace like manganese silicon.
Non-stainless encompasses everything that we call a carbon steel. And some of those with high like vanadium contents, chromium contents, and things, they behave like those stainless steels that some people like and some don't. Um so yeah, uh trying not to get uh too in the weeds. But you can have stainless steels that are like carbon steels and carbon seals that are like stainless steels. And so talking about one versus the other doesn't always make sense.
Right. Now with these simple carbon steels, if they're they're perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with them. If you enjoy sharpening them, uh then that's great. But I would also recommend trying some of those uh very fine microstructure stainless steels and get the benefits of stain resistance at the same time.
That are that are just as easy to sharp sharpen. Yeah, yeah, just as easy to sharpen. They take just as good of an edge and they resist rust. So let me uh let me we'll get back into specific steels in a second. So here we have if it if it's just carbon and it it drops out.
But if you have other like alloying elements in there, the carbides precipitate out if that's the correct term, as whatever they are. Like you said, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, all of all of these other things, right? So what I thought was really interesting, and I think our crew might find interesting is in your book there's a whole boatload of micrographs that you paid to get shot of different steels. Uh oh no, not paid to get. I took all of them.
Oh, really? Oh. I polished all of the steel, I etched it all in acid, and I imaged them all under a microscope. Yeah, even fancier. Yeah, nice.
Anyway, but I should have paid someone to do it. It was a lot of work. It looks like a lot of it looks like a lot of work. But something that I think I hadn't considered before, because uh something if you read about steels a lot, you hear about powder steel, powder steel versus uh, you know, you know, older style uh steels. And I didn't realize what a difference it makes in terms of what's happening where the cutting is happening.
What like the size of the carbide and the distribution of the carbide, what a big kind of deal that can be in terms of how strong that when I say strong, I mean how resistant to being effed up that that knife edge is and like how like the bigger carbides can literally just tear out of the of the edge of the of the of the blade or prevent you from sharpening down to a sharp edge in the first place. You want to talk about that? Yeah, well, if you imagine your your knife edge, you know, it's coming down at a tiny triangle at the end. We'll call it the tip of your edge. The radius of that tip is gonna be about a micron uh in diameter.
So if you you think about a little tiny circle at the tip of your triangle, um, if it's dull, that's gonna be very rounded, and if it's sharp, that's gonna be very triangular. Uh and and it can get down to a micron or even finer. And so a lot of steels have have carbides that are much larger than a micron. And so that makes it more difficult to sharpen them. And they'll tend to wear down to kind of the average size of the carbide pretty quickly.
And so your maximum sharpness then is limited by the carbide size. Yeah, to some extent, though with the sharpening skill, you can get most any steel sharp. It'll just be more difficult because you kind of have to get those carbides out of the edge to get it really sharp. But so powder metallurgy is made to keep the carbide size small. Now, a carbon steel is pretty easy to keep the carbide small because they will dissolve at relatively low temperature.
So you dissolve them while you're forging and then uh get them to reprecipitate at a lower temperature. You did use that term correctly earlier. Um if we precipitate them at a lower temperature, then they're nice and small, just because the diffusion rate is lower. But as we're getting into higher alloy steels, like adding in vanadium or chromium for a stainless steel or a highly wear-resistant steel, those carbides will form in the liquid and they grow to be quite large. And then you can't really break them up very effectively during foraging.
So uh in a normal steel production, they've got the liquid steel and they pour it into a mold and then it just cools very slowly, you know, a multi-ton ingot of steel. And with it cooling so slowly, those carbides can grow and get really large and undesirably large. So with powder metallurgy, they pass liquid steel through a nozzle that gets sprayed by nitrogen gas. And uh, as it gets sprayed by the gas, it solidifies little droplets of the steel. So it becomes a a powder of steel.
So each of those droplets gets instantly solidified, uh, kind of like each one is a tiny little ingot. And then they put the powder in a in a can, they call it, and they hip it, hot isostatic pressing to get it all to solidify together. Now they don't melt it, it's just a high temperature where they bond to each other. And then it becomes a solid ingot of steel. And so that gives you a combination of the high alloying for uh high wear resistance and other things that we want, but also with the fine microstructure that we want for high toughness resistance to chipping and uh fine edges in knives.
Right, because the the the ability to stay tough at much higher hardnesses, uh looking at your charts, radically better for some of these powder steels, right? Yeah, it's greatly controlled by the carbide structure. If you've got a lot of carbide, large carbides, those are all bad for toughness. Because if you've got a this hard brittle particle, it's easy to initiate a crack in steel. So they they really will want to start uh a chip there because it just the stress required to to crack it is much lower than if we've got this fine distribution of little carbides interspersed in the steel.
Now, are there any of these powder steel, powder steels that are actually read readily available in kitchen knives? I mean, uh w what are people pushing now that is in this kind of range? You know what I mean? Like you hear uh the c what are the common kitchen knife stuff? VG 10, um the uh AUS series 8 and 10, uh the and then in US, what but it's 440 C is common, but these aren't powder, right?
Are any of those powder? No, those are all conventionally produced steel. Uh some of the more common powder metallurgy steels are uh SG2, also called Supergold II, also sold as R2. Those are in Japan. Shun uses those, right?
Sorry, who? Shun uses those, don't they? I think some of the Shun's commercially available knives. I haven't used one. Yeah.
Yeah, I'm sure. And a lot of the uh a lot of other higher end Japanese produced kitchen knives. So some that aren't uh inordinately expensive, at least compared to how expensive they can get. Uh a little bit less common in Japan are steel ZDP 189 and Cal REX. In the US, uh we have uh S35 VN.
You love that one, right? That that shows up well in your ratings. Yeah, it does, though it's been beaten out by another steel I designed that is not readily available in kitchen knives yet. Oh, hold up, hold up. Wait, what's this new steel?
Uh the new steel is CPM Magna Cut. So that's a steel that I designed. Uh and the the big thing that it does is with stainless steels, even powder metallurgy ones, they have a coarser structure than non-stainless powder metallurgy steels because the chromium carbides tend to be larger, even with powder metallurgy. And so the best steels in terms of toughness and wear resistance edge retention are non-stainless powder metallurgy steel. Uh but what I did is I took a new approach where we balance the chromium and carbon correctly, where we removed the chromium carbide from the the structure and only have the hard small carbides that we want for the best combination of properties.
So magna cut. After it was powdered, you removed it. No, so we there's still there's still chromium in the steel, but you can dissolve all of the chromium carbide and keep the chromium in solution, it's called, so that it only is contributing to corrosion resistance and not to carbide. Because chromium carbide sucks, right? It's like it's the isn't it like it's it's not a good, it's not a hard carbide, right?
You don't want chromium carbide, correct? Well well, it it's harder than iron carbide, but for for the very best combination of properties, you want a small volume of really hard carbides as opposed to more of softer carbide. Right, right. Uh because if you have more soft carbides, they're still very brittle and make the steel brittle. Where if you have a small amount of very hard carbide, it gives you the wear resistance just from the hardness of the carbide, but they're small and you have a small amount of them.
So the seal still has high toughness and resistance at shipping. So do you think this CPM magna cut is going to be inexpensive enough for a kitchen knife or no? It will show up in kitchen knives, but uh it will show up in in American custom made kitchen knives. It will show up in in higher end um production kitchen knives. So some of these are made in the United States, but they're they're usually more in like the three, four hundred dollar range.
So not the hundred dollar stuff that that you'll find at your kitchen supply store. Well, um it will definitely be in those knives. Right. So what are you getting like from a practical standpoint? Because a lot of people are gonna wonder just from a practical standpoint, like what like what am I getting between, let's say, you know, a a $65.
We'll talk about geometry of blades in in a minute, but like a $65 uh German made, whether it's made in traditional German style with the fat bolster and all that, whatever, but like a German style knife, like, you know, Mercer, Wurstov, Henkel, like from the low to the higher price, to like um, you know, I think a lot of our crew is probably paying like the hundred and change dollar for like decent end Japanese Western knives, right? And then the next jump up maybe like the higher end uh kind of Japanese chef knives and then like custom uh Americans or anyway. I would s cause I would say like our average listener probably is buying like Masono US U UX tens or Max or or thing things like this. So like if that's the kind of quality that they're used to, right? Like what are they gonna get by moving to a super steel from a custom knife obviously they're gonna get the fact that it's custom, the fact that it's awesome, that a human being made it, that it's you know, it's got all that tactile niceness of being made by a human.
Um but what are they gonna get in terms of making like it more fun to slice a tomato. Yeah. Well that y you've covered a lot of ground in your question. We'll try to hit some of those things. So one is that traditionally the the German made kitchen knives have been considered high end or the best.
If if you read an an article in these old magazines or books about how to pick out a knife, they'll talk about the forged bolster and the full tang and other things that don't actually matter at all. Um and then a lot of those German knives have very thick edges on them and they just don't cut well. So the the number one factor for how well a knife cuts is just it being thin. And of course you've got to keep it sharp. Uh so the the old European made knives are are simply too thick to cut things.
And you'll see that some of them are trying to make uh thinner knives, and that's good. I'm glad we're pushing them in that direction. They also will use uh relatively low-end stainless steel that is not very hard. And uh when when steel is soft, it's hard to sharpen because it's kind of mushy and it doesn't hold an edge very well. Uh then we have the wave of Japanese kitchen knives, which have become much more popular over the past 20, 30 years.
And like you said, they can be more in the 100, maybe 200 range, and they're usually thinner uh with harder steel, and they they will typically cut much better and cut longer than those European-made knives. And so that's probably the sweet spot for a lot of people in terms of cost. Um now, why would you go to anything higher end? Uh I mean, that that's always hard to say. There's there's always a you're getting less for your dollar the higher you go up in price.
You know, when you're getting a $2,000 kitchen knife, it's not going to cut $1,800 better than your $200 knife. But will it cut like $100 better for an extra $1,000? That's the question. Yeah, yeah. And it won't, it won't do that.
Now, there are some knives in in between, like even higher-end Japanese-made kitchen knives or uh what are sometimes called mid-tech knives in the US, or just where it's uh kind of a semi-custom product where instead of you know making the handle slabs and then gluing them to the seal, where there's always going to be like some gap, or it's a it's not exactly perfect, you know what I mean? Uh instead they they glue on the handles and then they then they shape it all together so that it's perfectly flush with the tang. Um they round the spine. They they round the choil of the of the knife so that everything is smooth and and nicer and better. And so some of those are are more in the $300 to $500 range.
Uh so in terms of pure performance, no, there's not much reason to go even higher than that. But I am friends and and family with a lot of custom knife makers. So I can't I can't make them too angry. Yeah. Well, well, but I I guess my my thing is also let's look at and by the way, Nastasia is uh has joined us.
Hi. How are you done? Um done. So Jack, so uh and Jack, since I don't like I don't have the on my list of questions that the Patreon people wrote in, I don't have their names. Maybe you should read them so we can get their their their names.
Uh but uh sure. Yeah, why don't you read some of those uh oh I had one we'll go through the Patreon first and then I'll because I could ask questions forever. Sure. So let's go with Monty, who asks any experimentation with cryogenic hardening. They do it with wood plane blades, but I'm not sure if it would be applicable to knives.
Kitchen knives. Yeah, cryogenic processing is definitely done on knives, especially in mid-range, higher end knives. Um it usually advertised if they're doing it, though not always. Uh I don't know if I can give a really short explanation for what happens, but uh we talked about quenching the steel to transform it to the hard martensite. Uh the the conversion to marten site is controlled by temperature.
So if you get below a certain temperature, then it has fully transformed. If it does not fully transform, like we stopped the quenching at some temperature like 300 degrees, then it would be martensite plus the soft austenite that we don't want. Uh when we add other alloying elements to steel, the temperature of that transformation goes down, just like in the austenitic stainless pots and pans, where they they alloy it up so that that transformation is so low that we never get to it at room temperature. The same thing can happen with knife steels. When we add high carbon or high chromium, uh the transformation uh is shifted down where it's not complete at room temperature.
And so if we go into dry ice or liquid nitrogen or some other freeze treatment, then we can more completely transform that to make sure that it's a nice hard structure and doesn't have any of that soft, undesirable austenite in it. Uh now it gets bigger than that because there's a cryogenic industry that wants to tell you that they double, triple, quadruple the wear resistance just by using cryogenic processing. Uh in my experiments that I've done, I've never seen that. It it affects it in conversion to martensite, and that's what it does. So it is useful in certain scenarios.
If they're advertising it, it means that they're doing an extra step, which costs them money, which means they are trying to make a better product, but it's not going to take it from good steel to ultra steel. Yeah, my uh my old bass strings, they used to advertise that they cryoed them. Why would they do that on a on a base guitar string? Yeah, it probably doesn't do anything useful. Yeah.
Sounded good though. When I was like 19, I was like, oh yeah, cryo, yeah. You know what I mean? Which sounds like cryo. Yeah, yeah.
What uh right? You know, like when you're like slapping your base and they're like, it's brighter, it's cryo. You're like, yeah, and the package is blue. You know what I mean? It's like it reminds me of like tube amps that people go nuts over.
You know, it doesn't matter what the tube is what it does. All right, listen, listen, Jack, listen. I it's true. I hate I d I detest any sort of loving something just for the sake of loving it if it's garbage, right? And I used to poo-poo it, right?
Because my, you know, my dad was one of the last uh like generations of double E to like learn totally analog but become a totally digital guy. So like I grew up in kind of like uh a world that under you know where my you know my dad was always about analog and and tubes and like solid state, and he's like solid state amplifiers are fantastic, you know what I mean? And then once I plugged into an like a uh an amazing Aguilar tube amp, and I just hit my base once, not with cryogenic strings, not with cryogenic strings. And it was like bump and it blew my chest in, and I was like, damn, that is the best ever. So it just so happens that my favorite base amp of all time is a tube amp.
Not that it couldn't have been solid state, because I love it as style of state technology. I'm just saying, all right, back to food, back to food. Uh so uh let's let's take a like a little opportunity here on when we're talking about temperature and about marketing stuff. Two things. One interesting point you bring up is a lot of people, if they sharpen with power equipment, even if they don't think they're heating their edge up, the edge is so small that they could actually be heating their edge up and ruining the temper on their blade, true?
That's what one of the things I got out of your book. Yeah, that could definitely happen. I'm not a proponent in general of power sharpening. Now, if you're afraid of learning to sharpen by hand, I mean there are guided systems, uh, things like the Edge Pro or the uh Spider Co. Sharpmaker, and those can help certain people.
Now, what those do best is just to hold the angle for you so that you don't have to worry about that part of it. Um, but some people think if you buy one of those guided systems that hold the angle for you, that then the learning curve is gone. Uh, but you need to embrace the learning curve because the learning curve isn't removed by a guided system, it's just different. You're you're learning different aspects of how to sharpen. Um so I think uh the best thing to do is just embrace it.
Um, you know, use a less expensive knife if you're afraid of scuffing it up and just practice. Uh sometimes local kitchen knife stores will have little classes that you can take where they'll say, Oh no, don't hold it like that. You know, hold it like this. Um or you're you're going off angle at the tip here. Let me show you how to how to do that.
Uh so you know, a little practice makes perfect. Uh if if you're afraid of sharpening, you're never gonna be be good at it. You're always gonna be cutting everything with a dull knife. Um, so just learn how to sharpen. And where do people where do people's sharpening skills typically uh show up the worst?
At the tip. Uh they mostly show up in people not sharpening, I would say. Uh if if you're bothering to try to sharpen at all, it's gonna be a lot sharper than the uh thousands of housewives with dull knives that have never been sharp. So uh I mean don't be afraid of having a tip that's a little bit dull. But yeah, the the tip is is a tricky part.
You know, you've got 90% of a blade that uh is kind of one shape to it, and then the the tip is is a little bit different than the rest. So so yeah, probably. Yeah, I spent the last I don't know, like uh, you know, uh basically forever hand hand doing my knives. And I've used a DM, I've used a 10-inch interrupted DMT diamond stone for about you know 12 years, something and it's stayed flat that whole time. So it makes it very easy for me to touch the knife, touch my knives up, right?
And so consequently, I I do I touch them up all the time. Uh but in preparation for this show, I pulled out, because I have an edge pro, I pulled it out and re-sharpened all of my knives to a um you know a uh more exact, not hand done uh bevel. And it's amazing how much better you can see the bevel when it's exactly one angle all across it. Uh but does that mean it's necessarily better or no? It doesn't feel it doesn't feel like it's holding its sharpness better.
It feels like uh look, like based on the book, I was like, all right, I'm gonna take everything and when you when you specify your sharpness, you specify angle per side because everyone's confusing, right? Some people give you the total included angle of the blade, i.e. both sides, but you you draw a line of symmetry down the middle of the knife and and give the angle on both sides as the angle you're talking about, right? Can we be clear clear on that? Yeah, that that's that's useful when you're talking to sharpening people because when you're sharpening, you're not setting it to 30 degrees total.
You're picking an angle on each side of your knife. You're sharpening one side at an angle of 15 degrees, and then you flip it over and you sharpen the other side at 15 degrees. So that that's usually how you talk about things. Right when you're sharpening. And go ahead.
When you're sharpening at home, you the biggest effect you can have on the performance of the knife is that angle. So if you go shallow, you know, like 10, 12, 15 degrees per side, uh, it will cut very well. But you're gonna reach some point where it's too shallow where it will it will chip or roll easily. Uh now if you go more obtuse, like 20 degrees per side, then it's now very strong and durable, but it it doesn't cut as well and uh it doesn't cut as long. And so for home sharpening, that's really your your biggest difference, not necessarily how high in polish you go.
Right. So you don't you're not a big believer in that micro serration or it doesn't really what what's the what's the finest grit you think is useful for a home kitchen or for even a pre professional kitchen. Yeah, that's a controversial area. I mean, going higher in grit, it's uh it makes it smoother, it makes it better at push-cutting. Uh coarser is better for slicing, it will slice forever if it's coarse.
I mean, it you basically have a saw instead of like a fine edge. And so it depends on how much time you want to spend sharpening, because if you want to keep moving up in your grit progression, you have six different stones. Some people enjoy doing that. They're just into sharpening. They'd love to just sit down for two hours and and sharpen one knife.
And if you're into that, that's totally cool. I won't I won't criticize you. Uh, but if you want to do quick sharpening, then just pick like a coarse or medium stone, like uh, you know, 600 grit, a thousand grit, and just finish it at that grit. Um the the other downside is the coarser it is, the more difficult it is to deburr, which might be too big of an area to get into right now. But when when you sharpen on one side, you're you're slowly creating this burr that hangs over.
And you can feel it sometimes with your fingernail. If you move your finger up up the blade towards the edge and up past it, you'll feel uh a little piece of steel that's hanging off to one side. Where if it's perfectly triangular, you feel nothing. You know, you can move your finger uh away from the edge and you don't feel anything. But a major part of sharpening is just removing that burr so that you have nothing but the triangle of the edge left.
And when you sharpen on a coarse stone, those burrs get very large and they're hard to get off sometimes. I was always taught to sharpen on one side until you could feel that burr all the way down the blade, then flip it, do the same on the other side, and then go finer to knock the burr off. Is that wrong? Is that too much too much of too much abrasion? No, no, that's a good way of doing it.
If you've created the burr, then you know that you've sharpened enough on that side. Um, but when you've got a coarse stone, you've got a big, nasty burr uh that's hard to get off. And there's a lot of of mystery around burr removal and a lot of ritual involved in it. But yeah, usually you just go uh at a little bit higher angle um back on the edge to to remove the burr. Um but yeah, it it it's too much to discuss for for this show, probably.
Yeah, and you are you a believer in taking the last couple of swipes at a higher angle to like put a slight bevel on the on the edge to make it tougher, or do you hate that? Uh I don't hate it. I don't it's not how I personally sharpen, but not because I dislike that method in any way. I I haven't experimented with that specifically. The the goal, like you said, is one thing it just it makes burr removal very easy to finish it at a little bit higher angle, just right at the very end with a few few passes.
Um and the other thing is that it it's supposed to give a combination of durability from the higher angle at the very edge, um, in combination with uh a lower angle on the rest of it. So you're supposed to get a combination of good cutting behavior with a little bit more durability. And I can't I can't really confirm or deny that that is true, but it does make burr removal easier. And burr removal is the biggest pain in sharpening, in my opinion. Right.
Now, you so like I took a bunch of my knives, like I said, over this last week in to the to 15 degrees on a side. So 30 degrees in total angle. And they, you know, they all went through paper like lunatics when I was, you know, I took, you know, I'm a typing paper, go straight through, make sure it doesn't tear. Great, right? But they didn't feel like my blades lasted as long as they did when I was going to a slightly higher angle, but it could just be that the steel couldn't handle the 15 degrees on a side.
Like maybe I should have done 17 or 18. Is that could it be just like that, you know, and I'm it's like a combination of like, you know, mid-range Japanese knives and um uh you know like like hankles and stuff like that. Is it is 15 just too aggressive for that kind of like those kind of knives? Would you would you think like 17's better or no? 18 uh I think 15 is definitely doable especially for certain knives and certain uses.
You know you want to make sure your kids aren't using the knives. Yeah they are don't let them bang. Okay. Well that that explains everything already. Yeah.
Make sure it's not banging around a sink. Uh cut on a wooden cutting board. Don't cut on glass or or metal. And you know if you're trying to go go nice and thin and high cutting performance then as long as you're cutting vegetables and meat and things you're gonna be fine. If you're you're hitting bones or other hard materials then you're gonna be pushing the limits of that edge.
I mean I do eat I do eat animals so I go through things with bones. Yeah I mean but you're supposed to go around the bones. You're not supposed to cut through the bones. So uh but yeah, so 15 degrees, it it can work for a lot of knives. It depends on the person and how you're using it.
And to some extent, yes, the the hardness and toughness of the seal, because it needs to be hard to avoid rolling or deformation. It needs to be tough to avoid chipping. Uh, but so that can be a fun thing to experiment. It's just what what kind of edge angle works for me? How thin can I go before I start to see issues to keep it thin for really high, high cutting, but not so obtuse that it doesn't cut well.
So you are a huge proponent in the book of very thin knives and also kind of come out against double uh single bevel blades, like like classic traditional Japanese stuff, because you say for a given angle, a double bevel blade is like 30% or whatever, forget the percentage, but better at cutting, right? But the my experience is, and I want you to kind of like reconcile this, is that my single my single bevel thick spine Japanese Yanagi slices fish like none of my other knives do. Like I just the fish looks at the knife, gets scared and gets cut into perfect slices. Why like what where's the disconnect there? Uh in the book I don't ever say not to use single bevel.
I know, but you kind of imply that the single bevel is not enough. No, that is not what I was implying. So maybe I can write the book better in in the second edition. But uh it was just it's surprising that in testing of cutting behavior that for the same total edge angle that the single bevel knives uh cut worse with the same angle. But this there's an easy solution to that, and that's just make the single bevel knife uh a couple degrees smaller.
And uh then it'll cut the same. So but the the use of the the single bevel or an asymmetric bevel is for specific cutting behavior, not necessarily to make it cut better. So I mean you've got you have to have left-handed and right-handed knives because they'll they cut very directionally. So you don't pick a single bevel knife for better cutting performance. You you pick it for its cutting behavior.
I also think they're fantastically easier to sharp, but we have a caller. Caller, you're on the air. Hey Dave. How are you doing? This is uh Devin the Post control.
How are you guys doing? Hey, doing all right, doing all right. What's going on? Nothing much. I just heard um I came a little late, but um, I'm wondering if you answered the question, what's better for a patina or corrosion on the blade?
Like if I were to if I were to put a patina on the on the blade versus if I were to just keep it polished, would that be better for the blade? So like on a on a carbon knife, you're saying, like on a carbon knife. Like all right. What what do you think? What do you think, Doc?
Yeah, so a patina is just a natural reaction. Uh it's a different type of rust, sometimes called black rust. Uh, but a patina can also have some regular orange rust mixed in. And it's just a natural thing that's gonna happen. It's difficult or impossible to keep it polished if you're going to be using it.
So it's better just to embrace the patina and let it form. Uh the the patina will also help prevent further corrosion to some extent. So uh some people just like the patina. They'll even uh use different techniques to force the patina on there in the first place so they can get a certain pattern to it that they want. Um yeah, embrace the patina.
Yeah, well, I you know, I have um I have these little square sandpapers, and I have like uh the dust from my uh giramono. So I put a really um a pretty pretty decent polish on it, and then I go over with the Giramono. And so I just have this um um sandpaper that I can just polish up really quickly. And it doesn't take too long as I keep the blade dry. So I was just wondering, or I do a uh uh I take deli meat and I put deli meat on it, and it puts a really quick patina.
And so I was thinking which one was better. Deli meat. That's like that's like shades of crunching a blade in your uh in your enemies. That's crazy. Deli meat.
Right, but deli meat actually works really well, and some people say using uh uh cover your ears if you're sensitive, but using blood or like cutting into meat. But uh I find that putting deli meat puts a really nice patina on it super quick, uh, and it's that nice blue, and then it gets like all rainbowy. It's really it's really something else. You know what I do because I'm lazy? I s I spray my knives with Pam when I'm done with them and then wipe the excess.
I know you're gonna say that. Yeah. That is that's classic tape. Yeah, because you know what I have right next to me? Pam.
You know what I mean? It's like it's like people hate on Pam. My problem with Pam is the lecithin, it gets gummy. You know what I mean? Like pammed knives can get gummy.
But uh, well, Doc, what do you think about using uh Pam as your spray on? Is it just an anathema to you? Should I have be having some sort of mineral oil next to my cutting boards? No, I mean any kind of oil is gonna do it for you. So whatever is most convenient.
Pam does get gummy, but it is right there and it sprays, it's so convenient. I love Pam. Uh I don't use Pam the brand, by the way, but whatever. Stas, do you like Pam? I don't have any.
You know, do you you never use a spray stuff? I use it all the time also because um like when I'm going on the grill, I mean again, people are gonna say, uh blah blah blah, but like you want that fast oil reaction, but you don't want to waste a lot of oil. Bang, bang, bang, and you can get that fast thing. Or like when I was doing Tandoor in between my tandoor dips, bang, bang, bang. You know what I mean?
Anyway, but um I I'm happy to be a low quality individual. Hey, you got five minutes. Hold on. All right, so uh so so Jack, let's get to the other Patreon questions before it's too late. Yeah, let's let's let's sneak this one in.
So uh from Jonathan Oberhaus, what are your thoughts on the prolifer proliferation of white labeled Chinese knives from Yangxiang, Dahlstrong, Kamikoto, Khan, Kang Shen, etc. Yeah, for me it's a complicated area because there's a lot of uh thoughts on just importing knives in general or importing knives from China or from developing countries, lower labor costs being undercut from uh developed countries production. Uh so uh yeah, that there's a lot of strong opinions in that area. Uh there's no reason why Chinese produce knives can't be high end, and they have been getting much nicer in recent years. Um in some cases, there's still some questionable business practices.
I know a decade or two ago, uh Spyderco, they started making some folders in in China, and they were told that the steel was a given grade called 440 C. Then they discovered it was not 440C at all. It was completely different stainless grade. So uh there's still cases of of questionable business practices. Of course, there's labor issues and other things, but the knives can be nice and also inexpensive to go with it.
Yeah. Well we got any more uh Patreon questions, Jack. Um yeah, from Schmidt and Bender. What will Dave change about the way he chooses, buys, uses, maintains cutlery as a result of his learnings here today? I don't know.
I don't know. Gate, well, ask me that right as we're leaving. Ask me that right as we're leaving. We we had one on uh on the there was one more in the there was one more in the chat um earlier from Sargon. Why not plastic H D PE?
For what? For the handles? Yeah, like yeah. HTPE is slippery for handles is one problem with it. Or me or for cutting boards.
For cutting boards. Yeah, it's gotta be for cutting boards. But what do you what do you think about HTPE as a as a cutting board material? Uh I mean, plastic is is better than than metal or or glass, just because it's softer. But I mean, if you prefer the easy to clean, uh, you know, swap out a plastic cutting board, then you know you can do it.
It's fine. And we had a question, I don't know who sent it, but uh, how do you prefer to do your maintenance to your knives between sharpenings? Like uh they found a ceramic rod that they like uh that works well on hard steels. Do you have thoughts on uh honing or or like touch-ups in betwe in between? Yeah, I prefer a ceramic rod to a steel, um, just because the the steel just kind of burnishes everything, it doesn't sharpen anything.
It uh hypothetically it's supposed to be for straightening the edge, but that that really only happens with soft knives anyway. So if you've got a nicer knife in in hard steel, then it'd be better to use a ceramic rod. So you're saying the old school steels are built for old school knives, like my like my post-war sabatier, which is a soft steel that has to be sharpened every time I use it. Yeah, even if I was using a simple carbon steel knife, I would prefer it was harder. So hard steel means that it it can take a thin edge.
Um and hard steel, sometimes people say that it's harder to sharpen, but it really isn't, especially in something with so little wear resistance like a simple carbon steel. So I prefer knives with high hardness steel in it. Now, speaking of sharpening, uh I recommend quite often uh diamond to because uh you know, these diamond components they they stay flat, they don't, you know. So I've never been, you know, one of these like mystical whetstone people where I'm like sourcing then like having to flatten my own stuff and keeping them wet, blah blah. Am I wrong?
Is is this a bad way? Is the DMT diamond stone not a good sharpening implement? Well, the benefits of the diamond plates like DMT are that they stay flat and also diamond is ridiculously hard, of course. So it will sharpen anything, even something with very hard carbides in it. So those are the advantages.
The disadvantages is above a certain grit level, uh, diamond plates are not the best way of making something super polished. So if you like really polished edges, DMT plates are not the way to go. Uh, there are a new generation of diamond and CBN stones where they have a a binder or matrix of softer ceramic that that makes it so they can give a polished edge also. But though those are are rarer and much more expensive. So for a general audience like this, I'd say a DMT stone or or a simple ceramic stone uh works perfectly fine in in most cases.
Uh anything else you'd uh recommend uh to uh a cook, or you want to just go through some some knife steels and you can tell me what you think about them real quick on while we're on our way out. Uh sure, we can do whatever you want. So ask away. All right, VG VG 10. Good steel, not a good steel for the price.
Uh it's good for the price. It it's similar to American steels like 440 C and 154 CM, but the steel is ubiquitous. If it's heat treated well, it works perfectly fine. It's not too difficult to sharpen. It's got good corrosion resistance and average to above average wear resistance.
So it works perfectly fine. There's no reason to not buy a knife just because it has VG10. And our mo well, I think for most of us that's considered like a good ski steal because we're not in the super high-end knife business, right? So like for like the massive knife. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So if if you see BG10, you can usually buy with with confidence, I would say. Now, is uh is the SG2 worth the 30% more the knife costs? Uh it'll have about 30% better wear resistance. Um it might be a little bit more difficult to sharpen because of the wear resistance, but it will also uh hold an edge longer.
So uh I think if you're into knives, some of them are also at higher hardness than the VG10. So it it might be a good upgrade for 30% more if you want to try out something a little bit higher in hardness and and wear resistance and and see what you think. Okay, so so you might pay for the SG2. You want a thinner, you want a thinner knife, you want it hardened. Well, do most of the manufacturers now do a decent job of like straight up hardening or not?
Yeah, that's a good question. So even in Japan where the quality can be pretty high, they can take shortcuts in certain areas, and heat treating is is one of them. So a lot of the heat treatments are pretty decent. I have heard quite a few people say that they don't like the Shun heat treatment, but I can't say I have personal experience seeing it be poor. So I think in general, the heat treatment is probably good enough most of the time in the the Japanese produce knives.
So once you're at that SG2 level and you're paying $150 dollars for your Santoku or whatever, you're saying that for the average person to spend $500 to get an L Max knife from, you know, a local producer, unless you just love the look and feel of it, it's not gonna cut twice as well. No, it won't cut twice as well. There there might be certain elements to it. Maybe the the handles are a little smoother, maybe things are a little more rounded and more comfortable. Uh maybe you like the idea of uh American made products buying American.
Um those are all reasons to to look at one of those. And like it's like if like a lot of us, I think just like the idea of having a high technology steel in the knife, even if it's not actually gonna make the tomato slice better. You know what I mean? It just is L Max a good steal or no. Yeah, L Max is in a similar category to like SG2 um or S35 VN.
Um so any of those powder metallurgy steals, those three are in a similar performance category. Um it'd probably be difficult to differentiate them in a blinded test. All right. Now the average person should touch up their knives every how often. Uh however often you want.
I mean, like the average person doesn't even know their knife is dull. Are you familiar with the I forget what it's called, but the the the because your knife is getting incrementally crappier, right? You don't know that it's garbage until you pick up a good knife or until you sharpen, you're like, oh, I was an idiot. It was garbage, right? So like uh I think the average person probably never sharpens their knives.
And then the second most aver they just hit it maybe on their like little steel every once in a while. The second average person maybe does it like once a year, right? And then like, you know, but like w what do you think? Like once a month, once a week. Well, like I was saying earlier, don't be afraid of being bad at sharpening, or like, oh, I'll never get the tip right or something.
Uh, because those people are are afraid of sharpening, and so they might just send it to someone to be sharpened once a year, or they do it once a year. Uh but so yeah, I mean, once a day is could be unreasonable depending on who you are. Once a year, it's gonna be dull for three quarters of the year. Um, so uh i if you are able to sharpen, then just do it as often as you want. If that's once a month, that's probably okay.
But if you're doing any sharpening, you'll see that once a month when you're touching it up, like, oh, you know, it it's it's way sharper now. This is way better. Why am I not doing this more often? There's some in-between uh options, like where you might use a ceramic rod to keep it touched up, and then every couple of weeks or a month or so, then you you do more of a fresh sharpening. And the wheel sharpeners, do you think they ruin knives?
Are they garbage? Are they trash trash can machines? Uh like a toromec or something, you know. I don't remember the names of them, but the the the wheel ones have always like hollowed out the edge of my knife and turned it into one big burr. That's why I stopped using them like 20 years ago.
Are they better now? Yeah, you well, you need to be careful. Uh the Tormec and other similar ones are water cooled, which helps. But yes, it adds a hollow and they can remove material very rapidly. So, you know, if you don't mean the powder.
I don't mean that. I mean like the old school, it's in my kitchen drawer, it's got literally two little wheels on it or three, and you pull like like the carbide wheel, yeah. Yeah, don't use those. Don't ever use those, right? That's they're trash can machines made for trash can people, right?
Yeah, throw throw them in the garbage. Right. You don't need it. Right, okay. And um the so don't be afraid.
Uh sharpen off. This is why like I recommend see what you think is his correct, is like uh get something that is easy for you to actually do so that you actually do it versus not, right? Yeah, for people that are are afraid to learn to sharpen by hand. Uh I would say try the Spider Co. Sharp maker.
It's just a regular, uh it's just like two ceramic rods that are held in a V. Uh, but it it's well made for what it is. And so you just hold the knife straight up and down and you put it on one side of the V and then the other side. And uh buy a couple of stones at the same time so that when you're less afraid after using that thing a little bit, uh see how simple it is to put the edge on, then you can move to to sharpening by hand just because it it's fast. So the the sharp maker I like because there's less of a learning curve to it.
Um it's also small and and portable, and so it it's kind of easy to show someone how to sharpen that way. Cool. All right. We've been speaking to uh Dr. Laren Thomas.
Thanks so much. The uh the the maker of Nice Steel Nerds, uh uh the uh blog. What do you call it? What do they call it? They still call them blogs now?
Blogs, I don't know. Yeah, I mean nobody reads blogs, but that's essentially what it is. So my website's knifesteal nerds.com. Yeah, it's very in-depth. And the book, which I highly recommend uh, is uh knife engineering, steel, heat treating, and geometry.
Uh you can buy it on Amazon. Hopefully, someday you get it at Kitchen Arts and Letters. I think uh, you know, it'd be a good place to go. Uh Jack, you want to do our Patreon shout outs? Yes.
And Aaron from Oklahoma will get your question next week uh about BTU burners. So shout out to the new Patreon subscribers. James Files, Lucas Dilbreck, Braden Williams, Edward Pilotowitz, James Coughlin, Nate, Neil Herzl, Lucas Lima, John Rodriguez, Chris Wood, Peter Hallmer, Matt Stark Sartwell, James Hegerty, Kevin Cronin, Ryan, Jeff Costi, Nolan Piercer, Brett Rosin, Rosen, Rosen, Rosen, Fred Meyer, Fikus Kirkpatrick, Rob Pond, and Sean Andrews, all new Patreon subscribers since last week's show. So thank you very much to all of you. Yeah, thanks, folks.
And listen, um, we're still working out how the Patreon works and all this other stuff. So if we have missed your question on Patreon, please just let us know. I just don't want any of uh you folks to fall through the cracks. Uh Dr. Thomas, thanks so much for coming on.
Had a good time. Uh, you know, uh maybe you know, maybe someday I'll pepper you with more knife questions. Yeah, someday. You should come on for longer next time. Well, we only do one hour.
Thanks for having me on. That's just great. All right, cool. All right, Doctor uh cooking issues.
Timestamps may be off due to dynamic ad insertion.