Knife

>rust is the only problem
Something tells me you collect cutlery rather than using it

Even with a strong patina, a carbon knife will impart smells and discoloration to some food, especially after exposing some edge from hitting the stones

This isn't a big deal if you pay attention to what you're cutting with what kind of steel, but it's a real issue unless the purpose of your knives is to slice paper on YouTube

>you need to keep HC oiled.
No you don't. Just keep it dry.

Rusting, or the production of iron oxide requires moisture, user.

I don't wipe my cast iron pan with oil. I just rinse it with hot water if needed.

>You might be able to get a longer lasting edge on HC
But that's bullshit. Stainless is just as hard and sharpt these days, and the propensity of carbon sttel to degrade applies equally to the edge. The few microns that make up a sharp knife edge degrades in no time at all. It's not just a cosmetic issue.

>Stainless is just as hard
Carbon Steel is generally softer than stainless you cretin,
research before posting.

>a carbon knife will impart smells and discoloration to some food
I don't use carbon so I wouldn't know. Only thing I use it for it innawoods shit because I live in a desert, all my kitchen knives are stainless because I don't want to deal with HC around food, especially since I eat a lot of red meats which is why rust would be such an issue for me.

Guess what's always in the air you retards? Moisture. Unless you live in the Sahara or something, I can guarantee there's enough moisture just in the air to allow oxidation. It takes months here because we never get above like 30% unless there's been a catalyst like blood but if you live on the coast or something that shit will rust in days if not properly cared for.

That's why I said might and that the differences are negligible.

Low carbon is, high carbon isn't.

>Guess what's always in the air you retards?
Your mothers legs?

Maybe you guys can help me with this:

I got a vintage Mighty Oak culinary knife set (similar to the picture, but with about three more knives) from my dad. It came in a canvas roll, but the years (and probably mice) have eaten away at it to the point where I can't use the roll any more. I was thinking about getting a magnetic strip to keep them apart from all the shit knives my roommates have. Figure that would dull the blades less than another canvas roll or a knife block would. Would this be the optimal storage method or not?

A mag strip would be fine, but you could also just make a new roll.

Stainless is fine, especially if you're not experienced with sharpening your own knives. I generally run mine over a stone before and after use. This also means that it's frequently oiled. But honestly I do enjoy my 8 inch mercer stainless. It's an Asian style general purpose knife. That and a victorinox paring knife is all that I need for my kitchen. Not that I don't have a few specialized knives and a couple of larger all purpose knives. I keep the HC ones for my camping set along with a couple different stones. Since while camping you always clean up after and it's easier for me to keep an edge on it. And yes, I literally use that knife for everything from apples to skinning.

There is enough moisture in the air to make it rust.

>negligible
The I must inform you that this word does not mean what you think it means.
t. Inigo Montoya

>the glorious irony of someone suggesting research without having done any and "corrects" with complete misinformation
KYS.

> The only absolute truth is that Japan is decades ahead of Europe on delivering good value for your money.

Only for mass manufacturing. For boutique knives in stainless you are better off with western makers, cryo is rare in Japan and makes a difference.

One less absolute truth.

I would actually stick with the roll. Ferris metals can become magnetized, though it's not super strong. I have my cheaper sets up there. This isn't a set that I'd allow my roommates to handle. They can buy their own knives. If they wanna screw around with their shitty knives, then let them. But enjoy using and abusing that edge yourself.

>The I must inform you that this word does not mean what you think it means.
"so small or unimportant as to be not worth considering; insignificant"
>insignificant
The benefits High Carbon has as a blade over stainless don't matter much in a kitchen. Therefore they are insignificant. How am I using it wrong?

You've got it backwards innawoods guy, carbon and meat are perfect for one another. It's plants that have all the reactive chemicals.

>though it's not super strong
300 series just isn't stainless no matter what you do. 400 series is just as magnetic as regular steel.

I was referring more to how much iron is in red meat from the blood and shit. The hell is in wood and plants that reacts with steel?

>just isn't stainless
Fuck me, *isn't magnetic

Acids, sulfur, etc

I thought about making a new roll, but I do have woodworking tools and I don't have a sewing machine. Not that I couldn't do it by hand, but it would be time consuming.

I would also prefer to get the logo onto whatever I use to store it.

Anyway, I'm sure all this was too /diy/ for here. Thanks for the help.

I mean if you're cutting vegetables and shit, I don't do much of that innawoods. Usually just wood for the fire.

>Not that I couldn't do it by hand, but it would be time consuming.
Nigga it will take you like maybe 30 minutes of sewing once it's all laid out. You could do it while watching tv.

Because it's the reverse you dolt. Carbon doesn't have any edge retention benefits. Not even an insignificant one. It has _worse_ edge retention than modern stainless knives, ranging from significant to insignificant.

If someone points out you reversed the properties, you don't get away from it by saying 'oh, but I said the difference was small'. That's not what 'it was small' means.

Can't stick with the roll. It's been moth-or-mouse - eaten to the point where it's filthy and full of holes.

Yeah it's not going to be much of an issue for chopping firewood, I'm talking onions, fruits, that sort of thing

>Carbon doesn't have any edge retention benefits
I'm sorry user I'm tired. I meant to say finer edge, I don't know why I said hold it longer.

Really? Huh. I'm not much of a seamstress, so I don't really know how to lay something like that out. I'll give it a look. Thanks again, pally.

Just get some thick canvas, a thick waxed thread and a sturdy needle. You're not doing embroidery, make the stitches 3/16-1/4 inch long and you'll be fine. Maybe get some brass rivets just to keep the knives from cutting clean through like on a sheath.

So OP, do you have a clearer idea of what you want/need?

It's the third or fourth thread on knives that I go through and it's the same bullshit story every time. At most o got an idea of what brands to go for and what price threshold is from where you start paying for brand and bullshit

Funny how barely anyone lists what they have, what they've tried in the past, and their experience with it. It's always just he says she says bullshit pseudoscience

>good value for your money
>custom boutique knives
Are you a TV survivor reality show contestant? In what universe is a hand made knife ever a good value? Even if you are a survivor show contestant you should just carry a backpack full of fallkniven and throw them at wild animals, it's still cheaper than getting Jay Fisher to harangue you about coefficients of expansion for $1200

There's nothing psuedoscience about anything in the thread save the idiots that thing a HC blade won't rust if it's not soaking wet. It really just boils down to the fact what you buy doesn't matter all that much as long as it was made properly. Anything above $30 or so for a single knife will perform about the same to the average user, especially if they know how to sharpen it properly.

>what brands to go for
Cheap: Victorinox.
Mid: Tojiro/Masahiro.
Expensive: Impossible to say as personal preference and feels starts to overshadow any minute technincal details by orders of magnitude.

There. YW.

>cheap: Victorinox
2003 called, it wants its memes back
'nox is almost the same price as Tojiro now, you might as well get something good
If you want to go cheap get Dexter or Mundial

>'nox is almost the same price as Tojiro now
TOP KEK M8! Seriously, stop shitposting.
amazon.co.uk/Victorinox-Swiss-Classic-Extra-Length/dp/B00G404ZLK/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1464110794&sr=8-17-spons&keywords=victorinox&psc=1
>meme
Pic related.

>getting this emotional about knives
Never change, Veeky Forums

Also, your link supports my point of view. That's a Dexter-tier knife for 85% the price of a Tojiro. Just save your money and buy the exact same knife for $15 from a restaurant supply store, forget the 'nox meme

I can vouch for mundial, great for the price

Don't buy this. It's soccer mom tier.

I have a couple of Wüsthofs but the small flexible fish knife and a sandwich knife. They are really good.

Value for money is dependent on how much money you have, not what TV show you are on. The final little increases in quality cost the most. The boutique and custom knife makers are the only ones using high tech powder steels and cryo treating the older fine grained steels.

Unless you want a custom knife from some celebrity knife maker 1200$ hyperbole. A boutique Chef's knife from the Jews at Florentine sets you back 325$. Too rich for my blood, but I'm a poorfag.

There are several Japanese mass market kitchen knife manufacturers offering powder steel knives, what did you think, they're all staffed by old men hammering pig iron in a dark cave?

A computer will always do a better job than a human, hand made knives are for fapping over, not for using.

Obvious bait is obvious.

Just get a new one, what the fuck.

>The boutique and custom knife makers are the only ones using high tech powder steels
You absolute dimwit.

Do you sharpen your knives regularly?

If not, don't bother with expensive knives as they will not have any substantive advantage over cheap knives.

Just buy the thinnest, cheapest knives you can get with comfrortable handles if you don't sharpen.

I only hone my knives. I have once sharpened my knives, took them to a guy to get sharpened because I don't have the equipment.

First of all, you cannot speak of "carbon steel" in general in terms of how quickly it will oxidize, since different non-stainless steels oxidize at wildly different rates.

Relatively pure carbon steels like 1084, 1095, and Japanese white and blue paper steels will oxidize fairly quickly if left wet or used on acidic foods, however, unless you live in an extremely humid environment, they should NOT be oxidizing if stored dry.

Plus, if you are concerned about it, you can always boil some vinegar and soak the blade in it to force a thin black oxidation layer on the outside of the knife that will protect all but the cutting edge from the orange kind of oxidation.

But do note that there are other non-stainless carbon steels like 52100 and Aogami Super which react to moisture or acid much more slowly than pure carbon steels do.

"All but the cutting edge" doesn't do you much good when the cutting edge is the part that rapes the cells of the stuff you're cutting. All you're doing is demonstrating that the usefulness of a carbon steel knife is inversely related to how recently it was sharpened. Not exactly a good property for a cutting tool to have.

And of course I'm speaking in generalities. Anyone who needs to be told this stuff isn't going to know 52100 from 1095. If they do, they'll know what's good under what circumstances

>Stainless is just as hard and sharp these days

While it is true that there are stainless steels out there that can be heat treated to similar hardness levels to those used on carbon steel kitchen knives (i.e. in the 60-65 rockwell C range), it is patently false that most stainless steel kitchen knives are run anywhere close to that hard.

Japanese cutlery makers will run VG-10 into the 60s, and many small makers in North America will run AEB-L that hard, but most non-Japanese stainless steel cutlery is still run 53-57 HRC.

You are just about as wrong as it is humanly possible to be.

It is fairly easy to heat treat relatively pure carbon steels to 60+ HRC, while it is usually expensive and difficult to do the same with stainless steels as a result of their carbide structures.

You are right that you are better off with western boutique makers for stainless steels, but you can achieve similar properties minus the corrosion resistance in carbon steels without the need for exotic heat treatment protocols, so I don't see how that is much of a mark against the Japanese makers.

That depends mostly on what grit you run your kitchen knives at. If you prefer finer apex finishes, then carbon steels will, in general, have a distinct advantage over most stainless knives in that:

- carbon steel knives tend to be run significantly harder

- carbon steel knives tend to have a much finer mettalurgical microstructure, which facilitates them taking a very fine apex and retaining it in use better than stainless steels with tend to have fairly coarse microstructures.

- They are much easier and faster to sharpen than most stainless steels, which facilitates keeping them at a higher grit apex finish.

(Note that I don't mean boutique knives in AEB-L/13c26/N680 or similar steels at high hardness)

That depends on what you mean by edge retention, which knives you are comparing, and how you measure it.

Leaving aside all the systematic biases in how edge retention is typically measured, literally no volume production kitchen knife maker uses any highly wear resistant stainless steels in their knives, nor runs them hard enough to be able to get into the same league as carbon steel kitchen knives for ability to take and hold a high sharpness.

I have used various cheap kitchen knives, and have and/or have used a Zwilling Kramer, and typically use a Kohetsu Aogami Super gyuto.

I also have spent more on sharpening stones than probably all of you combined on kitchen knives, and have tried almost every conceivable variation of sharpening stone (waterstones, oilstones, diamond plates, guided systems, freehand, strops, stropping compounds).

I had to basically try every medium and technique myself for sharpening since the vast majority of information out there about sharpening is so bad, misguided, half-true, incomplete or flat wrong as to be mostly totally worthless.

I agree there is a lot of terrible information out there, but I will say the marker trick and getting a loupe made a big difference to me, both of those are common recommendations

You can get boutique made knives from small makers for a lot less than that. There are people out there doing chefs knives for ~$200-250 USD.

In reality, the inherent vagaries of a production environment mean that production makers are always going to have to use less aggressive heat treatment protocols than boutique makers can, because they are going to have to account for variance.

They are also typically more profit oriented and less likely to put int he work required for multiple normalizations, multiple tempers, cryo, and other more involved heat treatment processes.

One boutique maker I've dealt with literally fine tunes his HT protocol to reflect the compositional differences in each sheet of steel stock he receives to make knives out of.

You are never going to get that kind of attention lavished on individual knives at a volume producer.

As long as you are wiping semi-regularly, I've never had oxidation noticeably degrade cutting performance in use.

I've used 1095, Aogami Super, 52100, HAP40, ZDP-189, and CPM-M4 in the kitchen and it's just never been an issue for me.

Your guy who tunes his heat treat per batch, what's he charging for, say, a 9.5 inch chefs knife in powder steel? Is that in the $200-250 range? Because a Tojiro powder steel chef knife is under $150. It had better be a LOT better than the Tojiro

I feel there is a real systemic weakness out there in terms of burr minimization and removal techniques, as well as a very poor understanding of stropping, and how to use it effectively without risking "killing the edge" as people often complain about.

I'm not talking about cutting performance per se. I'm talking about the fact that a freshly sharpened blade is going to leave your pile of diced onions looking and smelling like rotten eggs, even with a strong patina.

The way around this is never to sharpen your knives. Do you see the problem now?

Sorry new Android keyboard is shit and deletes words

I typed "looking grey"

He charges about $225 USD for chefs knives, and the main advantage you would see compared to a Tojiro is in high sharpness edge retention because his 1095 should be far less prone to microscopically chipping at the apex than a Tojiro.

I'm not saying that a Tojiro DP isn't a way better value, but boutique produced knives do have certain performance advantages if they are made right.

Honestly, I've never noticed the effect being that pronounced, even using 1095 on onions, at most I've noticed a little discoloration on an initial cut into an onion, but after that the effect didn't seem to persist or get worse.

It may be relevant that I keep my edge bevels fairly polished, which tends to resist oxidation much better in use than coarse finishes.

Wait, $225 for 1095? The $150 I quoted was for powder steel, not DP
I'm polishing to 4k and sometimes using CrOx. On other forums people have suggested that this is from sulfur content in the steel itself. Of course, it would vary (my worst offender is a mystery steel suisin HC, my white steel usuba and my blue steel santoku aren't nearly this bad)

Yes 1095, but differentially hardened, triple annealed, triple edge-quenched, triple normalized, triple tempered 1095 AT ~62 HRC is basically boutique heat treated American White #1.

Also, if White and Blue steels aren't that bad, then I have to agree that the specific knife you are referring to is the issue.

I finish my own edges to around 6k and use CBN emulsions on suede, typically 16 micron (strops massively increase the effective grit of particulate abrasives used on them. 16 micron CBN leaves a convex micro bevel that behaves like a ~6k waterstone edge).

We're talking in the context of a generic advice question from a non-enthusiast. I'd argue that my low end no-name steel carbon knife (from a reputable brand, mind you) is more of a likely scenario than the op buying a fairly nice white steel knife like the ones that *aren't* giving me any problems.

If you Google "carbon knife smell" you'll see discussions much like this one.

Going back to my original point, carbon in general brings some baggage that needs to be carefully considered, just writing off these problems as freak/fringe cases and pretending that using carbon is the same as using stainless but with more wiping is disingenuous.

OP, I prefer carbon steel to stainless because I have always believed that the steel for a blade should be chosen for its ability to take and hold an edge rather than because it is easy to clean.

>I prefer carbon steel for its ability to take and hold an edge
[citation needed]

>not posting your kit in a knife thread

This is now a professional knife kit thread

For beginners. I recommend some cheap stainless chefs knife, paring knife, a set of waterstones, 600-800, 100/2000 combi, ceramic steel. Learn to use these then it's time to move on, should be able to get these for under 220$ total.
ex. Tojiro, Global, random brands

I'm not a baby tier. Try a couple high carbons, add on a 4000-6000 polishing stone. Stick with chef's knives for now, unless you have a need for a different style of knife. If you struggle to debone or fillet with a chef knife, get a boning or fillet knife. Nakiri, Chinese cleaver, Usuba for extreme veggie work. There's never a reason to get a utility knife, get an exacto knife or cheap paring knife with a cover to keep in your pocket for breaking down boxes and shit. If you like bolsters, don't like japanese knives, or prefer heavier knives, try Wusthof Ikon, Henckels. cutco(I've never tried though).

Pretty good at this game tier. Start looking into clad high carbon, powder steels, and swedish steels. Lots of variety, the majority of these knives are in the 150 USD+ range, pretty much seperated into personal preferences. At this point you should understand edge geometry, what blade widths you're comfortable with, you should know the knife styles you need and can ask intelligent directed questions for recommendations.Being able to use a variety of knives effectively is key, technique is important as you should be able to adjust your edges based on your style by now. Sharpening is key at this tier. Some sharpening systems can work at this level, but best results will come freehand, as not as bevels will be 50/50 anymore. 70/30 80/20 100/0 are more common and take better advantage of the steel and tempering techniques available. Invest in a natural finishing stone and understand how and why they work.
Ex. Misono, Glestain, Aritsugu, Mac, Messermeister, Masahiro.

Doesnt' matter anymore tier. At this point, you can use a 5$ knife from wal-mart, sharpen it and use it effectively for the entire day or a 900$ handmade knife and keep it in pristine condition for months if not years. Any knife is personal preference. You can sharpen a random persons blade in a few minutes because your technique is very good and you understand what you're trying to accomplish. You can appreciate the difference between a 500$ handmade knife and a 20$ sweatshop knife, but can use both effectively in a professional environment.

What knife should you buy? Pick a tier, or give a general description of your abilities and what your intended use is. Otherwise we will continue to have shitposting general when we talk about knives.

I work with a few guys that have 600$ carbon steel knives who have them chipped, rusty and dull, and a sushi chef who's been doing this for 35 years who uses a dexter russel safety knife(20$) for most chopping, to be fair he also has a 1400$ honyaki yanagiba he uses for fish.

Not him but carbon steel has a higher hardness rating meaning it is more brittle but will hold an edge better and be harder to sharpen

it's not rocket appliances

Not him, but carbon steel kitchen knives are typically run at a significantly higher hardness than most stainless steel kitchen knives, and typically feature a much finer metallurgical microstructure.

The above, plus the relative ease of sharpening high hardness carbon steels means that carbon steel kitchen knives typically are both easier to sharpen to a very high sharpness and retain their high sharpness longer than usually softer and coarser stainless steel kitchen knives.

Buy a wusthof 20cm

Try making a leather knife roll, granted it'll be more expensive and you'll probably need a punch and rivet setter. However, they look much nicer and last significantly longer.

I have two 16 cm wüsthofs, one flexible and one stiff. Really like them.
I have been thinking of getting a Mora 1891 chef knife.