As an aside, this feels very familiar as a sci-fi weapon, does that ring a bell for anyone? I was thinking William Gibson first but I can't place it there.
dune?
Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
191–200 of 697 posts
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my case I just wait for the sharpening knife guy who pass once a week in my neighborhood. It is quite easy as I am working from home and he plays those distinctive panpipes notes.
That definitely sounds like Mexico.
This happens in Italy aswell.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#193This is a QVC product with the name of a US tech city slapped on it. Signed, a guy living nearby the home of QVC in a decidedly non-tech area of the US. Ps. don’t buy future e-waste kitchen ware unless you have accessibility reasons. You can get a good-enough victoronix 8” chef knife for $65 (I paid $36 a long time ago) and a world class chef knife for less than $250.
Say more? I'd love to see a takedown of this, but this isn't one. QVC does not appear to sell this product, nor would its performance differ whether or not QVC did.
QVC might not be a well written takedown of it, but he’s right that you don’t need an electronic knife.
My first job was at a knife shop so I’ve seen everything from stamped steel fantasy nonsense to traditional style hand forged items. There’s a lot that goes into making a good knife and you don’t need to spend a lot to get one. Similarly you can spend a lot of money for marginal to no benefit.
In general a hard edge with a softer back is necessary for a strong knife that will cut well. This is a function of heat treatment. A knife that is tempered the same the whole blade is fine for smaller knives but it’s possible to break the tips or edges off larger knives. From there metallurgy affects the edge retention and how easy it is to sharpen. Plain 440C will make a fine enough knife if heat treated properly but can also make blades that can’t be made particularly sharp and can’t easily be sharpened. These knives will be very stainless so this is why poor quality and good quality knives will be made in 440C. The next tier of knives beyond singular steel forging will be a very hard edge steel wrapped around a softer core steel. The sky is the limit from there in terms of metallurgy. The highest end knives will use powdered steel where precisely composed steel bars are made using uniform grains of steel and other attractive metals and doping materials as part of the forging process.
Once it gets home a good edge has to be maintained.
People do all sorts of things to dull perfectly good cutlery (I cringe when I see people use glass or marble serving/cheese boards as a cutting board). A off hand toss of a knife into a sink can roll the edge.
The worst offense is when I see someone at a farmers market with the grinding wheel “sharpening” a knife by crudely removing the hardened steel edge of a knife. Good luck cutting much with the softer core steel or softer tempered back steel.
While having an Evangelion style ultrasonic knife is cool, it’s certainly not necessary and I expect it can be ruined in many of the same ways a $400 traditional knife can be.
At home I have Henkels for the holidays and some forged food service knife’s for general use. When visitors throw the food service knives into the sink I just take out the sharpening stones and don’t cry all that much.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#194As an aside, this feels very familiar as a sci-fi weapon, does that ring a bell for anyone? I was thinking William Gibson first but I can't place it there.
Dune's vibrating shield and corresponding weapons.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and materials. i'm surprised at all the apparent knife enthusiast posts trashing this device. I take my victorinox (which is absolutely nothing special and surprises me that it costs $60+ dollars) to the farmers market for sharpening but sharpness isn't even the proble…
my new favorite kitchen gadget is small deli slicer, $75 on amazon. minor pain to clean, but MUCH faster than a knife, totally safe (pusher keeps fingers away from the blade) and you get precise thickness cuts every time, which means they cook precisely too. Especially good for vegetables like potatoes, onion, eggplant, etc.
Is it worth the cleaning hassle? I often avoid using a mandolin or food processor just because cleaning my knife is so much easier.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
A talented chef might cut vegetables at 25hz, while the blade is moving at 44khz. So whatever cutting improvement is conferred by the ultrasonic tech will certainly be applied towards fast cutting. It seems that the main benefit for fast cutting would be that food doesn't stick to the blade. I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed…
I'm not saying it can't work, just that they didn't show it, and after the required thin-tomato-slice that's the thing I'd most want to see the knife doing.
For reference it would be also nice to see your (and your Slack friends) knife handling skills.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#197As an aside, this feels very familiar as a sci-fi weapon, does that ring a bell for anyone? I was thinking William Gibson first but I can't place it there.
It's seemingly quasi-semi-related to The Foundation's 'atomic knives'?
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, and a pass with a honing steel every day to maintain the cutting edge between proper whetstones sharpening every few months.
don't use honing steel. at best it doesn't do anything, at worst it damages your knife. here's a closer look at it with a microscope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ReQ83CZOQ
Ceramic honing rod. Works amazingly well and is appropriate for japanese knives.
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#199Your cat is gonna LOVE it!
Re: Ultrasonic Chef's Knife
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
Check out Japanese knives. The Tojiro DP I got for an inflation adjusted $75 is a dramatically better knife than that Victorinox.
One note on high quality and carbon Japanese knives - they are way harder to sharpen, also usually come with 17 degrees apex. Higher HRC would retain the sharp edge for longer, of course - but again much harder (literally) to sharp them.
Its my understanding of knife sharpening that carbon steel is easier to sharpen then stainless and that softer steels are more difficult then high hrc steel due to burr removal.