Help me buy a knife

buy twenty 1 dollar knifes and kick me 180 and i'll buy 180 1 dollar knifes

deal!

if your sharpening game is strong then a kiwi is all you'll ever need

This is the same as Coffee. Don't buy a great Espresso Machine buy a great grinder. With a knife. Don't buy a great knife, but a great sharpening system.

All the Naniwa whetstones in the world will put an edge that lasts longer than three days on a Kiwi knife.

I have no idea what a kiwi knife is. Is that RS 58?

Well the most important question is what do you want to DO with that knife? Do you want a general purpose chef's knife?

For a chef knives are very personal and very precious. Just like a pro golfer has their own clubs and a pool shark has his own cues, a chef has their own knives. Its all about what's most comfortable in your hand and your particular style of cooking.

The size and shape of your hands matters, as does your preferred cooking style. Describe those and I can offer recommendations.

I sharpen knives for chefs and you're not wrong.

Chef-fag here, in my 5 years of experience i can tell you that Victorinox worth every penny.

I still have my 7 inch knife -the one i used in college- and it's perfectly fine,

...

medium/medium-large man hand (5'10 height)
vegetable chopping and some meat prep
prefer rock chopping vegs over slicing

>Is that RS 58?
Not sure, I think it's AU B8.

>5 years of experience
lol
5 whole years, eh?

Most "chefs" die from fentanyl overdose before they reach 5 years.

how do you sharpen a kiwi?

So sad, I CRY EVRY TIME.

Line cook here.
I use a 8in chef, 10 1/4 bread, 3 1/4 paring and a 6in boning that doubles as a fillet. All victorinox. Add a honing steel and a knife roll with some sharpies/pens, a notebook and a peeler, and you're have the basics at around $200. Obviously that is for a resturant setup. For home cooking I prefer a Susin 210mm high carbon gyuto at around $100. Build as you need. Buy a good main chef/gyuto/santoku and buy less expensive alternitives of other knives, like the victorinox. When you upgrade, turn that into a beater set for guest.

How do you sharpen?

with a knife

Sous chef here, 8" western shun or go home.

Used to use whetstones. Now I use a cyclical diamond hone and strop. If you do shop tools, use whetstones, but cutlery isn't worth the work.

the guys at jki are really helpful and put some really helpful videos on youtube.

desu fujiwara might has nice blades but overall when it comes to carbon blades i'd recommend going for moritaka, simply because of AS and the kurouchi. the saya won't help much when it comes to rust on a fujiwara, the kurouchi on the other hand though will

Buy The World's Sharpest Knife™

no he's saying you'll only need a kiwi. no sharpening tools needed, just kiwi.

I got ayy hands basically. Thin, skinny, bones. Consequently my fist isn't large but the handle must be fairly nice to hold. It's a shame I don't know any stores nearby where I could handle some nice knives and really get a feel for them. I think the Victorinox handles unfortunately look uncomfortable for me so any suggestions are definitely welcome.

How did you get in that line of work?

>ayy hands

That rules out most Japanese knives then.

Came here to post this

The owner of Japanese Knife Imports is Jon Broida. He is a very active member of www.kitchenknifeforums.com and you can ask him any question you want on there. There are plenty of other very knowledgeable people on there, including some pretty famous custom knife makers.

OP the knife you posted is very capable and an overall good choice (I'd recommend the 9'' version over the 8'' version shown here - better balance). Even if you buy nicer knives later on you will always reach for that one for jobs that require a really sturdy knife. You could also try the Le Cordon Bleu series from Wüsthof, seems like they are being discontinued or something. I bought a 9'' LCB for just 66€ instead of 97€ last Saturday, from the official Wüsthof online shop. The messermeister Meridian Elite or the San Moritz Elite are also very nice knives, just as good as Wüsthof and a good deal more exotic. I wouldn't spend 200$ on a knife, if you were really that into knives you woudn't have needed to ask us about it.

>go to kitchenknifeforums.com
>ask for noob knife recs
>they all recommend obscure knives sold by one website that charges $80 for shipping

Don't get advice from hobbyists. Most of them don't care about their hobby, just jerking off over the tools.

A cooking/foodservice forum would be the place to ask.

Well if you just want to know whether to choose Victorinox or Mercer it's not really necessary to visit an enthusiast's website. They are going to assume you want something more exotic, unless you clearly say you want a dishwasher safe knife with a plastic handle for under 50$.

And 80$ for shipping??? I have bought several knives from japanesechefsknife.com and shipping from Japan to Germany was a very reasonable price, just a few bucks IIRC. The German customs tax on the other hand, that added about 20% to the price ...

cheftalk.com has got a subforum for knife reviews too.

>how do you sharpen a kiwi?
Often, but it will teach you. Really good knives for the price, actually.

Those knifefags hate JCK now because the prices are too cheap.

JCK makes self-branded monstrosities like these.

shipping from japan usually costs like 3000 yen, anything above is a ripoff.

Shipping from U.S.-based store to Canada costs like $35 minimum.

American stores can live off domestic sales, so they never bother to line up carriers that offer cheaper international shipping. They go like "we already use UPS and Fedex, and they say it costs $35 to ship to Canada and $50 to ship to Europe, so we just charge that" instead of signing up with international mail-forwarding/local-injection services like DHL Globalmail that can bring down international shipping to less than $10 (and is used by larger sites like Amazon US and B&N).

I have an 8 inch Shun Chef's and an 8 inch Wusthof. Go Wusthof if you're going to be cutting through bone, otherwise the Shun is fine.

What's wrong with it, except for the pseudo-hammer forged finish (or is it pseudo)? I have a JCK Kagayaki Basic 210mm gyuto and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Small business owner here.

I have looked into those services for our international customers, and in my experience they are either just as expensive as the big boys like DHL, FedEx, UPS, etc, or they require an impractical amount of paperwork to be done. We did use one mail-forwarding service for our customers in Canada, but the lead time was very long and the ability to track the packages wasn't as good as the alternative. This led to so many customer complaints that we dropped the service entirely.

Big companies like Amazon can certainly negotiate better rates given the massive volume that they're doing. But most companies? Nope.

>What's wrong with it
VG-10

Thanks user. I just went into the sharpening business myself.

Best of luck to you