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We moved house recently and I bought some new knives for the kitchen. My wife is now constantly cutting herself because she has no intuition for how sharp a kni
by thom 1y ago
We moved house recently and I bought some new knives for the kitchen. My wife is now constantly cutting herself because she has no intuition for how sharp a knife should be. I can’t really imagine what the safety argument is against dull knives.
- rkomorn 1y agoMaybe there's some bell curve of knife skills proficiency where the better you are with knives, the safer they are when sharp, but generally: Dull knives are more likely to slip on whatever you're cutting (and cut you instead). They're also more likely to need more force when cutting which means less control.
- IanCal 1y agoPeople say this a lot but the dull knives I have won’t cut my hands around the force required to cut, say, veg. My sharp knife will cut my hand at extremely low levels of force. Also the direction the dull knives can slip is usually along the surface of what I’m cutting which would almost always be away from my hand.
- rkomorn 1y agoI guess it depends on how dull your dull is. The knives I consider dull will absolutely cut me if I do something dumb, and I'm much less likely to do something dumb when the blade goes straight through what I'm cutting without having to use any force. I guess it also depends how and what you're cutting. I sure wouldn't try to julienne carrots with a knife that doesn't easily slice through the carrot.
- bfdm 1y agoThe telltale sign for me is that chopping an onion causes the layers to separate from pressure before the knife starts to cut in. Super dangerous.
- lazide 1y agoA knife which cannot cut anything isn’t a knife? It sounds like she literally has no idea how to use a knife. Is she doesn’t want a knife which can cut things, Butter ‘knives’ are probably more her speed? What was she even using the ‘knife’ for before if it couldn’t even cut her? Spreading jelly? Slicing cakes? Not to be snarky, but it’s possible a couples class which covers things like how to use a knife safely might be a fun and enjoyable way out of this.
- IanCal 1y agoHave you never used a knife like this? I’ve got one that’s been used by people on plates enough that it’s dull - I can press it into my fingers and pull back and forth and it won’t cut me with pretty reasonable pressure. With more pressure if it’s a glancing thing it’ll not take off a knuckle. I’ve just used it so that I could say this but chopping up a cucumber is totally fine and easy. I can’t cut like I can with my actually sharp knife but it’ll cut stuff.
- lazide 1y agoThe ones that bad I ran across couldn’t even cut tape. Like clear, typical tape you’d use on an envelope. Zero chance of cutting meat, or 90% of vegetables.
- novosel 1y agoA dull knife you cannot control, is slides across the surface, it can slip. Try cutting onions with a dull knife. You will cry yourself out of the room.
- 7bit 1y agoTo be fair, you also will cutting onions with a sharp knife.
- YeGoblynQueenne 1y ago>> Try cutting onions with a dull knife. You will cry yourself out of the room. Have you tried that or are you speaking in principle only?
- mauvehaus 1y agoNot the person your asking, but can confirm: a dull knife releases much more of what makes you cry than a sharp one when cutting onions.
- YeGoblynQueenne 1y agoI should also ask you then: have you tried that, or are you speaking in principle?
- mauvehaus 1y agoSorry for the slow reply; it's noticeable in practice. I'm pretty sensitive, and it's usually a good indication that it's time to sharpen knives when I start crying a lot. Sharpening generally improves my onion-cutting experience, unless it's a particularly pungent bag of onions.
- RHSeeger 1y agoBut that's the thing, we _do_ cut onions with our dull knives. And it's never been a problem.
- soegaard 1y agoWhen a large force is applied unintentionally to a finger we have the problem. With a dull knife you need to apply a larger force than with a sharp knife. [The video illustrates this with breaking the skin of the tomato.] For a normal cut this is not a problem. But - if the knife slips and a large force is applied at the same time - then you will get a large cut. If the knife slips and a small force is applied, you will get a smaller cut. If the probability of slipping is the same for sharp and dull knifes, then due to the forces applied, the cuts you get with a sharp knife are less dangerous.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- makr 1y agoDull knives seem to have destroyed her intuition of how dangerous knives can be and how to use them safely, that's a safety argument right there.