There’s also the possibility of corrosion. While stainless steel is resistant to corrosion it’s not completely impervious to it.
What could a trip through a dishwasher have done to ruin a knife to where you had to toss it out? It will definitely blunt the edge and doesn’t do wooden handles any good, but I think you threw away perfectly good knives that needed little more than a sharpening.
You don’t want a stainless steel knife in the kitchen anyway.
As was mentioned above, the dishwasher primarily screws the wooden handle up. Yes, the knife will probably develop rust spots, or could possibly get banged around, but that really isn’t my primary concern. I’ve seen knives (ones without wooden handles) run through dishwashers in professional kitchens multiple times a day, and their edges were maintained just fine. I have no idea what a dishwasher could ever do to an edge that a professional sharpener couldn’t repair, yet someone above actually threw a knife away? Strange.
Glad you like your knife, Chefguy. I’ve had their santoku for just under a decade, and it’s been a workhorse.
I refuse to answer this question on the grounds that my wife might read this thread some day. Last time it happened, the chef’s knife somehow rolled onto its back, edge facing up. I didn’t even see it before I ran my thumb down the edge, creating much hilarity.
Why is this better than other knives? Is it sharper or does the side of the blade not stick to the potatoes in a way that other knives do?
Southern men, at any rate, do not enjoy cooking unless it is physically dangerous.
It is also good to have something that will slice sushi.
I do fairly well except for sushi with some run of the mill knives my would have been FIL took care of. I wish he’d taught me to do that.
I keep thinking on variations on that every time I notice this thread.
Tourist 1: “Say, what do they do here if you break the law?”
Tourist 2: “The guidebook says they ‘practice Shunning’.”
Tourist 1: “Hey, I can handle that!”
Thinner blade, less angle on the bevel = easier slicing/cutting. There are knives out there with texturing on the blade that supposedly helps keep food from sticking to it.
I agree with this. Great knives, low cost, NSF certified for food prep. You’ll find them in a lot of restaurant kitchens where stuff has a tendency to “walk away”. If they have one drawback it’s that it wont hold an edge as well as Cheffguy’s Shun and should be sharpened about twice a year - really sharpened, either professionally or by someone who at least knows what they’re doing.
But for the well heeled the Shun sure is a great knife.
… or for the people buying at the post-Christmas sales, which is how I got mine.
I got 10% off because we were taking a class at Sur la Table. 
We got a set of Shun Knives for our wedding. My god I love those knives.
My wonderful wife bought me a Ken Onion 10" chef’s knife for Chritsmas a couple years ago. It’s made by Shun. So awesome. It feels perfect in my hand, although my knife-skills instructor* doesn’t like it. The 10" is hard to find, the 8" version is the one I see in stores. It may seem like a monster, but the extra length really helps.
*: also via Sur La Table 
My knife-of-choice when I’m on KP duty is one I got 17 years ago in Tokyo’s KIya blade store. I dunno why you guys are liking Stainless Steel, but my Kiya is a carbon-steel (not shiny) 10-inch mini-katana. It certainly wasn’t cheap, but then I’ve only had to sharpen it three times since I bought it and it’s not something I restrict to special occasions.
Cleaning a used knife requires simply wiping it off with a cloth. If necessary, a light scrubber and/or soaking to get the goop off – but if you’re cleaining the blade immediately after use, as you should, then goop shouldn’t harden enough to require soaking. As I do with my katana, a light treatment of mineral/clove oil before storage is routine (to repel water in the air or drawer) and sometimes I’ll wipe off the oil just before use.:dubious:
A friend of mine said he learned in the army never to put a knife under running water, as the current will dull a microscopically sharpened edge. I scoffed at him at the time, but I follow that rule with my Kiya blade.
I suspect the problem with dishwashers is that, with the sharp edge turned safely downward, the upward-spraying jets are attacking the nanometer-thick edge and wearing it down by literally breaking off microscopic bits of sharpened metal. That might not be such a problem with a Kitchenaid blade, but when you want to preserve the effortless slicing ease of a perfectly-sharpened high-quality expensive blade, you also want to minimize the wear and deterioration of that edge as much as possible. Sure you can hone, straighten, and resharpen. Eventually, you can repurchase as well. But with a few simple behaviors, you can save a ton of time, effort, and money on keeping a good product in great shape.
—G!
Better see if you’re holdin’
the wrong edge of the blade.
. --Steve Perry (Journey)
. Edge of the Blade
. Frontiers
I bought a couple of knives at a knife store in downtown Yokosuka, Japan in about 1983. One was similar to a Chinese chef’s knife and the other was more of a boning knife. My ex-wife has them now. :mad:
Grestarian, I’ve only seen one person in this thread mention stainless steel. Shun knives are carbon steel.
I doubt that the water itself is breaking off bits of the edge. More likely, the silicaceous abrasives that are one of the ingredients in dishwasher detergents abrade the edge.
I, as something of a blade fetishist, believe some of my sisters and brothers greatly overstate the fragility of a properly honed quality blade. Go to a hammer-in sometime and watch first hand what is expected from a blade produced by a smith who covets the title “master.” They are expected to cut huge amounts of hemp, get hammered through seasoned hard wood, flexed and returned to true, and all sorts of things that your kitchen knife will never experience without damage or edge dimunition. A trip through a dishwasher is nothing. Much of this, I expect, comes from Western (mis)-interpretation of the Japanese cultishness surrounding the daisho.
Ahhhh…good!
My respect for the products has returned.
And, Scumpup, I suspect you may be correct about the Daisho worship thing but that didn’t stop my good friend (and his wife) from getting really itchy about the running water issue. I’m simply glad they did not expect me to commit seppuku with the veggie-chopper at the end of that conversation.
–G!
…but I think I can do more for you
With this here fork and knife!
. --Tyler & Perry (AeroSmith)
. Eat the Rich
. Get a Grip