6 ms·
No knives, only cook knives
- darknavi 9mo agoI enjoy seeing glimpse into other people's niche hobbies. I really enjoy markets like they describe and I've experienced them in Asia, but I have no idea where I'd find one in WA State.
- rpearl 9mo agoThis niche hobby became https://bernalcutlery.com/ https://bernalcutlery.com/ which is a fairly successful Bay Area knife store
- eps 9mo agoThey also have an excellent book, covering both the subject matter (knives and sharpening) and how the company came to be. Somewhat similar to the book of the Blue Bottle founder on coffee and his company path. Both are basically, as the GP remarked, are glimpses into other people's passion and deep fascination with a certain subject. Fantastic reads IMO. * In fact, let me add two more books - Ivan Ramen and Tartine Bread. Similar introductions into lives of people and their obsessions with a specific subject. https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Definitive-Introduction-Sharpening-Techniques/dp/1452163065 https://www.amazon.com/Sharp-Definitive-Introduction-Sharpen... https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Craft-Coffee-Roasting/dp/1607741180 https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Bottle-Craft-Coffee-Roasting/dp/... https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Ramen-Obsession-Recipes-Unlikely/dp/1607744465 https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Ramen-Obsession-Recipes-Unlikely... https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/0811870413 https://www.amazon.com/Tartine-Bread-Chad-Robertson/dp/08118... If anyone knows other books of the same nature, I'm all ears.
- voicedYoda 9mo agoI have Tartine bread and this book is incredible
- kingkongjaffa 9mo agoI've eaten at the Ivan Ramen in New York and it was outstanding.
- scelerat 9mo agoGood people too. a friend of mine used to babysit for them
- DeathArrow 9mo agoI find ebay being overpriced if you are into collecting stuff so flea markets can be an option if you don't want to overpay.
- b-kuiper 9mo agoi also find, with the arrival of catawiki (more a european market?), nice products for regular/normal prices seems hard to come by nowadays. Our "local" online market (marktplaats.nl) is therefore losing its value, local (town/neighborhood) (whats)app groups seem to somewhat take over this roll within the digital space.
- jorvi 9mo agoThis is a general trend worldwide. OP's writing is nice, but he is de facto a scalper looking for the maximum amount of arbitrage. There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy really get a chance to find any. What they're doing isn't illegal or forbidden, but it has completely destroyed the spirit of flea markets and secondhand stores as quaint places. And in response to becoming as hypercapitalist as the rest of society, a large contingent of people on flea markets has started to offer whole tables stuffed with cheap AliExpress / Temu crap. Or AI art being sold as "handmade". The enthusiast offering artisanal coffee or lemonade or cinnamon rolls from his stall or food truck has quadrupled his prices, because if everyone else is gouging the visitor, why shouldn't he? The same goes for secondhand clothing stores. They're wise to the scalpers looking to flip stuff on Vinted or whatever, so they have also doubled or even tripled their prices. It's an open secret that a lot of stores let the girls working there have a first lookover of whatever comes in.
- KolmogorovComp 9mo ago> There's enough of them, like mentioned in the article, that they'll pick any flea market or secondhand store clean off diamonds in the rough before you as a regular guy Usually the flea markets is open to everyone, it’s just that the ‘regular guy’ is not motivated enough to come early. There is nothing you find you cannot if you show up at the same time.
- mgaunard 9mo agoFrench knives are far behind Japanese ones, be it in metallurgy or design.
- tclancy 9mo agoPfft. The knives in my kitchen are all original Damascus steel I use them to make food from recipes that were lost to time as well.
- KaiserPro 9mo agoI love that all my food now tastes of rust and light oil.
- tclancy 9mo agoJust you wait for the next set of FDA recommendations! We are ahead of the curve I tells ya.
- giardini 9mo agoYeah, My kitchen knives were once auto leaf springs. Soak 'em in the olive oil after use to keep the rust down (the knives, not the leaf springs). Arrr.
- mgaunard 9mo agoFree iron supplements, that's stuff is good for you.
- throw0101c 9mo agoFor a practical guide to which knives to buy, American's Test Kitchen gives pretty good advice: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6LggwoL_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st6LggwoL_4 * https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/8204-three-essential-knives https://www.americastestkitchen.com/articles/8204-three-esse... * Under USD 75: https://archive.is/https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equipment_reviews/2357-the-best-chef-s-knives-under-75 https://archive.is/https://www.americastestkitchen.com/equip... For most daily needs: chef's knife, pairing knife, serated/bread knife. Possibly useful 'extras': kitchen shears, petty/utility, boning, slicing/carving. They do not recommend sets.
- hylaride 9mo agoI consider good shears to be a daily requirement (they double as random available scissors as well). Specialty knives are really only worth it if you use it for its intended purpose at least once a week. We do have two chef knives as it allows simultaneous work to be done with my spouse, though. More important is learning proper knife skills, including maintenance and sharpening. Even the best knives need to be taken care of.
- buescher 9mo agoKitchen shears and a boning knife were “why did I wait this long” tools for me.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoEspecially when I have to prep green beans
- dessimus 9mo agoKitchen shears but with a 4 ft chain to keep them near the sink to wash them, preventing so family stops taking them into other rooms and using to open shipping packing, cutting clothing tags, etc.
- trueismywork 9mo ago
- draw_down 9mo ago[dead]
- m0llusk 9mo agoThe swipe against IKEA at the end seems out of place. In my experience IKEA knives have decent materials, design, and build quality despite the low price point. Maybe this is an artifact of the author's focus on resale value? IKEA knives have a low initial acquisition cost which contributes to extremely low resale prices, but they seem to function well and much better than Forgecraft knives.
- Freak_NL 9mo agoNo kidding. Most of our knifes are the same IKEA ones we bought fifteen years ago. Honing steel, whetstone and the occasional coat of oil for the wood part of the handle and they just last. I can understand the brand might dilute the resale value because IKEA tends to have a broad range of quality/cost in the line-up.
- throwaway173738 9mo agoIkea is very heavily a “value for money” company in my eyes. Their cheapest furniture in each category is basically pressed sawmill garbage but it will withstand everything but moving. If you move up in price the stuff actually gets better, not just fancier.
- currydove 9mo agoAgreed! I have had an IKEA Slitbar Santoku since 2014, it's been abused (even tossed in the dishwasher a couple of time because I didn't value it at the time) and it has outlasted most of my other knives. Not to mention, it's my preferred knife when I pull out my drawer. So much so, that I went out of my way to get the longer chef knife/gyuto version of it off eBay last year! It's freaking fantastic! They're both well maintained now, honed often and my two go-to knives over a wusthof and bunch of Misen knives
- mikkupikku 9mo agoI had a hell of a time buying a new whetstone for my kitchen knives recently. I didn't want to buy online and I also didn't want to get ripped off. Walmart and Target had nothing but those shitty little widgets you pull a knife through to fuck it up. Home Despot and Lowes only had those and also bizarre sharpening contraptions that included wetstones but also other nonsense to justify bumping the price to north of $50. I finally found what I was looking for, just a regular whetstone with no bells and whistles, for about $3 at harbor freight. My conclusion is that very few normies care about edge quality and most of those that do are making some sort of hobby out of it and want to buy something excessively fancy. See also Japanese knives; I'm sure they're very nice but two minutes with a whetstone will get any shitty piece of metal sharp enough to cut some chicken. There's no reason to overthink this stuff.
- nine_k 9mo agoMy no-frills set of two large whetstones (4 grades) cost me north of $70 in a pro restaurant store like 20 years ago. They are still in a good shape, and can make my knives razor-sharp with little effort. Even the knife I bought for $5 in a local supermarket.
- metalman 9mo agono need to overthink is the truth I make a wide assortment of edge tools and sharpen them,including damascus, and regularly sharpen whatever is dull, drill bits, lathe tools, planer blades, etc etc, by hand or with power equipment. And in moments of need, like not having a long enough wood bit, I have hand ground a long bolt, into a wood bit, no thinking, just doing.
- mmh0000 9mo agoYou didn’t want to buy online but then were happy with the poorest quality stone harbor freight had to offer? That’s an odd choice. There are many quality whetstones to choose from and a lot of debate on the absolute best. But TLDR, KING is generally highly rated: https://www.hocho-knife.com/king/ https://www.hocho-knife.com/king/
- 9mo ago
- convolvatron 9mo agoMy shop is next to the flea market described in the article, I’m really surprised that so many people that live in sf don’t know about it. It’s a really interesting way to spend an hour, and you see a really broad swath of San Francisco residents. plenty of vinyl, other collectibles, hand tools, antiques, ‘antiques’, ephemera from the 70s, strange old electronics, etc. alemeny near bayshore at the farmers market. Every Sunday, pretty much over by noon
- pimlottc 9mo agoWhich flea market is that?
- quesera 9mo agoAlemany. I haven't been there in (way) too long, but there used to be a great pierogi vendor -- so even on cold rainy mornings (too common) you'd at least get some warm delicious breakfast.
- vl 9mo agoThe article says you need to show there at 5 am though.
- convolvatron 9mo agojust to get the best pickings. most of this stuff comes from storage units.
- prpl 9mo agoI assume he also meant the Alameda Antiques Fair as well.
- JennyWeston 9mo agomy current favorite kitchen scissors / sheers: https://www.amazon.com/CANARY-Cardboard-Scissors-Blue-PS-6500H/dp/B000EFZKRY https://www.amazon.com/CANARY-Cardboard-Scissors-Blue-PS-650... I tried a bunch of kitchen sheers. They lacked leverage. These cut bones with ease.