I don’t quite understand the snotty attitudes so many people have toward stamped kitchen knives.
I have both stamped and forged ones, and honestly, aside from the forged one being bigger and the handle fitting my hand well, I don’t notice much difference between them. I have stamped Wusthof & Henckels and a forged Mercer (off-brand).
I’ve used Wusthof Classic knives at a friend’s house, and while nice, aren’t any better than the Mercer or the stamped ones. And I cook a fair amount. I imagine that if I was a professional chef, it might make a difference.
Yet, if you read on the web, you get a-holes who say things like “Stamped knives suck; I wouldn’t pay more than $10 for a stamped knife.” and similarly asinine things. It strikes me that these folks paid too much at Williams-Sonoma and now feel like they have to justify their purchases.
The more important thing is to keep your damn knives sharp! A sharp commercial-grade stamped knife will outperform a dull $1000 plus hand forged knife any day of the week.
Forged are stronger, don’t dull as quickly, are pretty much indestructible, will have a better edge, and will last a lifetime. Apart form that…no difference.
I’ve had both and when my wife and I switched to forged they simply lasted longer in terms of holding an edge, battering about the dishwasher on occasion, no rust ever, and never lost tension in the handle.
Same here. I didn’t know that knives were supposed to be that good until I got my forged Wusthof. Just the one, the main one, the chef’s knife. It changed my life. If I’d know how good it was going to be, I’d’ve spent the $100+ dollars on the knife and avoided the many thousands of dollars on gutting and installing a new kitchen.
I use the cheap cleavers bought at the Asian grocery for $6.95, so they’re most likely stamped. They’re lightweight so they don’t wear out my wrist if I have lots of veggies to chop or garlic to mince, and they’re sharp as the devil’s razor blades. But they lose their edge fairly quickly because they’re so soft. But those same qualities makes it easy to bring them back to life again with only a few passes over a sharpening stone. I haven’t thrown one away in years.
I guess it depends on how you feel about steel in general. A knife is pretty much a tool and if you use your tools everyday you will want good quality ones. Tools I don’t use much I’m not worried about the quality so much as long as they get the job done. The better quality the steel the longer you can go between sharpenings.
While this one was started in General Questions, which was OK, I debated whether it was more appropriate in IMHO, but then I felt that the Cafe Society Chefs could certainly have much experience concerning the matter------so that’s where I plunked it.
Personally, I have a 10" Shun Elite chef’s knife and I can’t describe how much of a leap it is over the old Henckel knife I had. The edge is considerably sharper, holds for a much longer time, and the product is overall just better, in ways that aren’t obvious unless you spend a lot of time handling a knife.
I’d take that with a grain of salt. I work in a kitchen, and in my experience, the people who are serious about their work have their own set of knives. You won’t see any $3000 extragances except in high-brow sushi places, but most people have either Globals or Wüsthofs.
Personally I have no interest in any stainless-steel bladed knife.
None of my knives get submerged in water and certainly doesn’t go in the dishwasher. I dry them carefully after each washing. Blades are just the right hardness: not so hard that you can work on it with a whetstone without making appreciable difference in the blade, but hard enough to hold a sharp biting edge for awhile once you’ve put it on there.
Ontario Knife Works / Old Hickory. All the knife that you need.
I think the main difference is the quality of the steel. As many here have said, the stamped knives don’t hold an edge as long. In order to be stampable, the alloy has to be a bit on the soft side.
I did not mean to write most. I meant to write a lot. I tried to find my copy, but as remember it everyone had their own knives and a lot of them had really cheap knives as they did not see the point of buying expensive knives considering the abuse they put them through.
No. No. No. Forged are heat-treated and repeatedly folded, pounded, folded, pounded, etc. until they reach almost indestructible qualities. It’s not the steel; it’s the technique. Invented by Japanese Shogun warriors if I recall. Or maybe not. But it definitely is the technique.
That’s certainly how my first boss at the old chinese restaurant felt. He had a decent set at home, but at work, he used cheapo knives and just sharpened them every night. Didn’t seem to bother him. Me, the comfort of a knife that fits perfectly between your fingers and glides effortlessly through anything is worth the extra cost. You can’t make good sushi with a cheap-o knife and slicing through a tomato with anything but a razor-sharp blade means you’re going to squish it a bit.
Anyway, Henckel and Shun (the two companies that have made my chef’s knifes) offer lifetime warranties, so I’m not all that concerned about the blade wearing out.
From a blacksmith and toolmaker’s perspective.
Any steel that gets a cutting edge needs at least one point of carbon (1%).This enables molecular transformation and pages of geeky technical stuff.
If that steel is stamped to a knife shape,hardened then tempered,the shape has relatively uniform properties.
A forging of the same steel can have location improvements in the way of more refined dense grain at the cutting edge,ductility in the spine,and by folding/laminating ,achieve mechanical and decorative effects.
Current metallurgy has raised stainless almost to the level of carbon steels.They're a pretty good trade-off between edge holding and rusting.
Yep.Sharp is the main thing.
Talking about knives gets me so excited, I went on Amazon and splurged $65 on a diamond sharpening stone. My knife is already sharp enough to remove a finger without much trouble; now I’m going for the head
That is the technique for making pattern-welded steel, sometimes also called “Damascus steel.” It’s labor-intensive and it has to be done just right to get good results. The smith is forge-welding all those layers together. If the forging and heat-treating aren’t done properly_including very precise temperature controls during the processes_you end up with poor welds and layers of junk steel. Good pattern-welded steel isn’t cheap. The forged kitchen and sporting knives that one typically buys aren’t pattern-welded. They are forged to general shape from a piece of steel bar stock, using a powered trip hammer, and then ground to final shape. The more hand labor that is involved in this process, like having the knife hand forged by a skilled smith, the higher the price is going to be.
