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I don't know chef's knives from Adam, but I'll counter that with some stuff I do know about, which is hand tool woodworking. TL;DR: I buy handmade saws because

by gchpaco 15y ago

I don't know chef's knives from Adam, but I'll counter that with some stuff I do know about, which is hand tool woodworking. TL;DR: I buy handmade saws because they are demonstrably superior. Time was you could not buy a quality Western saw new for love or money[1]. And by "time was" I mean "as recently as six to ten years ago". Independence Tools were the first people since the 40s, probably earlier, to make a dovetail saw worth using and that was in 1996 or so; if you wanted a full sized hand saw pretty much only the Lynx/Pax brands existed and as an owner of three of those let me tell you they do not come ready to use (think re-setting, resharpening, and making the handle comfortable to use). Most people working in the western tradition used their grandfather's factory made saws, which despite being factory made required extensive hand work to e.g. get the taper grind right. Relatively recently it has become possible to buy a very good mass produced dovetail/small carcasse saw from Lee Valley. But those saws aren't very old, and nearly everyone else in the industry (and it is an industry now, albeit a small one; I can't even remember all the small-factory superb saws made now. At least a dozen different marques) does it basically the way Disston and its competitors used to; skilled artisans. It would not surprise me in the least to learn that cheap factory made knives have bad handles, bad balance, bad steel and a bad grind, and any one of those things can screw up a knife you are using all day every day.

ericd 15y ago
Fascinating. Have you tried any of the Japanese pull saws? How do those compare to a good handmade western saw? I've only dabbled in woodworking, but I found those pull saws to be much more manageable than the other saws I had available to me. On the knife front, I use some cheap carbon steel French knives called Opinel. They're excellent, except for their penchant for rusting (not a huge issue, it wipes away, they just don't stay shiny). I would assume that they're factory made, given that they're less than $10. I think they use the same design they've been using for 100 years.
- gchpaco 15y ago
  For reasons I don't understand entirely, Japanese pull saws never experienced the massive decline in quality all Stanley products (and those of their competitors) experienced after WWII. As a result even inexpensive pull saws tend to be at least mediocre and sometimes quite good. The best are (as far as I can tell) still reckoned to be the hand made variety, which coexist peacefully with their modern, stamped, cousins. For this reason they nearly displaced the western saw in North America. The definitive history of the decline and rise in tool manufacturing has yet to be written, but I certainly think the widespread adoption of modern stick framing practices in conjunction with portable power tools has led directly to a sharp decline in the skill of a modern carpenter. The looks I get when I sharpen a chisel acceptably are really surprising to me, and my grandfather worked as a finish carpenter after WWII and considered these skills important. For some reason hand skills in professional carpenters never seems to have experienced this sharp decline in Japan.
  - ericd 15y ago
    It might just be that a pull saw is simpler to mass produce well, since it lends itself well to stamping - it mainly needs tensile strength, which I think is much easier than compressive rigidity.
    - gchpaco 15y ago
      That is true, but the teeth in a Japanese crosscut saw are very delicate and fiddly and there's lots of room to screw them up if you don't care about the product. And yet (with some exceptions) they actually seem to come sharp from the factory, something that is still a novelty in Western tools. They're not all good--I have a modern pruning saw that is particularly crudely made--but they're startlingly high quality in an era that has seen near total collapse of, say, chisel manufacturing[1]. I suspect the tendency toward impulse hardening the teeth made it vitally important that the teeth actually be ready to use, because it would take a diamond file and some real patience to sharpen them after hardening, but I really don't know. [1] A chisel is a bar of metal with a wedge at the tip and a handle. You'd think it would be pretty hard to screw up, but you underestimate the ingenuity of idiots. From using the wrong steel, to forging it wrong, to hardening it wrong, to grinding it wrong, to putting the handle on crooked, any and sometimes all of these have been spotted in the wild. I would no more use a department store chisel for woodworking than I would use a screwdriver as a drill.
      - ericd 15y ago
        That is pretty shocking that you could mess up a chisel... that seems like something people could figure out a single good design for and repeat for eternity.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
tptacek 15y ago
Actually, mass-produced chef's knives seem to be underrated; the stamped knife you can buy from Victorinox is, if you aren't way more fussy than the typical cook, likely to outperform a handcrafted aggressively-sharpened 440 high-carbon blade. Finer materials and carefully sharpened edges require a higher amount of care. There's a legitimate joy to take in using competently hand-crafted chef's knife, particularly if you can have it made to a specification. But a lot of the "best" knives sold really are status symbols (like the "best" of everything sold). Real pro kitchens don't always reach for the "best" stuff, since pro kitchens abuse their kit. Bourdain's sous talked about treating his Global knives as disposable.
- gchpaco 15y ago
  And that's actually perfectly normal even back in period when things were handmade; "gents'" tools tended to be flashy and functional but not really intended to be used, per se. Your ivory handled plow plane (think the guy in the upper right on http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/AuctionWatch/2008-04-29__13-52-47.html http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/AuctionWatch/2008-04-...) was not intended to be used. I can testify from personal experience that most people using chef's knives today should not be using fantastic hand crafted things, because they respond very poorly to abuse. Also the definition of "sharp" relevant in a kitchen is very different from the definition of "sharp" used in, say, a woodworking context; using a woodworking chisel on a tomato will actually squash it because the edge isn't serrated enough to tear the skin. But for certain applications precision and balance really matter and professionals will, in my experience, gravitate toward "good but replaceable" tools for that application and use them to death. As an example I know a butcher's daughter who waxes rhapsodic on her father's insistence on keeping his (carbon steel and meticulously prepared and put away) knives razor sharp at all times but especially right before he was about to make even the simplest cut. Said knives looked like bananas by the end of their lifespan, having been sharpened to the maximal extent.
  - tptacek 15y ago
    How anybody downvotes a comment like this is beyond me. Fixed it for you though. Thanks for writing this.

by gchpaco 15y ago

ericd 15y ago

Fascinating. Have you tried any of the Japanese pull saws? How do those compare to a good handmade western saw? I've only dabbled in woodworking, but I found those pull saws to be much more manageable than the other saws I had available to me. On the knife front, I use some cheap carbon steel French knives called Opinel. They're excellent, except for their penchant for rusting (not a huge issue, it wipes away, they just don't stay shiny). I would assume that they're factory made, given that they're less than $10. I think they use the same design they've been using for 100 years.

gchpaco 15y ago
For reasons I don't understand entirely, Japanese pull saws never experienced the massive decline in quality all Stanley products (and those of their competitors) experienced after WWII. As a result even inexpensive pull saws tend to be at least mediocre and sometimes quite good. The best are (as far as I can tell) still reckoned to be the hand made variety, which coexist peacefully with their modern, stamped, cousins. For this reason they nearly displaced the western saw in North America. The definitive history of the decline and rise in tool manufacturing has yet to be written, but I certainly think the widespread adoption of modern stick framing practices in conjunction with portable power tools has led directly to a sharp decline in the skill of a modern carpenter. The looks I get when I sharpen a chisel acceptably are really surprising to me, and my grandfather worked as a finish carpenter after WWII and considered these skills important. For some reason hand skills in professional carpenters never seems to have experienced this sharp decline in Japan.
- ericd 15y ago
  It might just be that a pull saw is simpler to mass produce well, since it lends itself well to stamping - it mainly needs tensile strength, which I think is much easier than compressive rigidity.
  - gchpaco 15y ago
    That is true, but the teeth in a Japanese crosscut saw are very delicate and fiddly and there's lots of room to screw them up if you don't care about the product. And yet (with some exceptions) they actually seem to come sharp from the factory, something that is still a novelty in Western tools. They're not all good--I have a modern pruning saw that is particularly crudely made--but they're startlingly high quality in an era that has seen near total collapse of, say, chisel manufacturing[1]. I suspect the tendency toward impulse hardening the teeth made it vitally important that the teeth actually be ready to use, because it would take a diamond file and some real patience to sharpen them after hardening, but I really don't know. [1] A chisel is a bar of metal with a wedge at the tip and a handle. You'd think it would be pretty hard to screw up, but you underestimate the ingenuity of idiots. From using the wrong steel, to forging it wrong, to hardening it wrong, to grinding it wrong, to putting the handle on crooked, any and sometimes all of these have been spotted in the wild. I would no more use a department store chisel for woodworking than I would use a screwdriver as a drill.
    - ericd 15y ago
      That is pretty shocking that you could mess up a chisel... that seems like something people could figure out a single good design for and repeat for eternity.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]

tptacek 15y ago

Actually, mass-produced chef's knives seem to be underrated; the stamped knife you can buy from Victorinox is, if you aren't way more fussy than the typical cook, likely to outperform a handcrafted aggressively-sharpened 440 high-carbon blade. Finer materials and carefully sharpened edges require a higher amount of care. There's a legitimate joy to take in using competently hand-crafted chef's knife, particularly if you can have it made to a specification. But a lot of the "best" knives sold really are status symbols (like the "best" of everything sold). Real pro kitchens don't always reach for the "best" stuff, since pro kitchens abuse their kit. Bourdain's sous talked about treating his Global knives as disposable.

gchpaco 15y ago
And that's actually perfectly normal even back in period when things were handmade; "gents'" tools tended to be flashy and functional but not really intended to be used, per se. Your ivory handled plow plane (think the guy in the upper right on http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/AuctionWatch/2008-04-29__13-52-47.html http://antiquesandthearts.com/Antiques/AuctionWatch/2008-04-...) was not intended to be used. I can testify from personal experience that most people using chef's knives today should not be using fantastic hand crafted things, because they respond very poorly to abuse. Also the definition of "sharp" relevant in a kitchen is very different from the definition of "sharp" used in, say, a woodworking context; using a woodworking chisel on a tomato will actually squash it because the edge isn't serrated enough to tear the skin. But for certain applications precision and balance really matter and professionals will, in my experience, gravitate toward "good but replaceable" tools for that application and use them to death. As an example I know a butcher's daughter who waxes rhapsodic on her father's insistence on keeping his (carbon steel and meticulously prepared and put away) knives razor sharp at all times but especially right before he was about to make even the simplest cut. Said knives looked like bananas by the end of their lifespan, having been sharpened to the maximal extent.
- tptacek 15y ago
  How anybody downvotes a comment like this is beyond me. Fixed it for you though. Thanks for writing this.