Before buying new kitchen knives perhaps many people think "which manufacturer’s knives are the best?".
If you are far from being a knife-junky, the answer is simple: "The best are those, which appeal to you most and are most comfortable in the hand".
Because any knife (not yet totally dull) can cut. And you can adapt to characteristics of a poorer steel (correspondingly re-sharpening the knife and using properly). Whereas uncomfortably formed knife is difficult to get adapted to and it is much more difficult to reconcile with an unappealing design.
There are lots of kitchen knives currently in production, thus every user can easily find something suitable according to his/her financial capabilities and personal understanding of knives.
However, those more discerning, those knowing "who is who" and understanding what specifications they want the knife to have, encounter the problem of choice because manufacturers, when introducing products in the market, focus on understanding of a mass consumer and do not bother giving detailed technical specifications of their products. Especially if the specs are rather poor.
For the sake of being objective it should be noted that almost all manufacturers of kitchen knives produce models of several different levels: some for mass consumers that are more concerned with general appearance and low price, and others for professionals or advanced amateurs, i.e. for those who are anxious about quality or particular characteristics of a knife.
However, it poses the question how to evaluate quality and the characteristics objectively before buying knives?
It may seems to be no problem at all – find out what steel is used for a knife and according to the steel composition and external features of the knife you will know what to expect of the knife made of a particular steel.
However the reality is more complicated, because the technological process of the core of any knife – the blade – is difficult. It involves both mechanical processing and thermal treatment and the steel stock, where discrepancies or deviations can greatly affect specifications of a final product.
Similarly to bakery, a knife is like a finally baked cake, and the steel, which the blade is made of, is only flour that has to be properly kneaded and baked. Obviously, you won’t make a good cake with poor flour. Just like you won’t make a good knife from unsuitable steel. However, it is quite possible that a cake will be a disaster even when the best flour is used, just like it can be a failure of a knife made of good steel. Moreover, the external appearance can be far from performance characteristics.
So, what to do for a user, who wants to know “what cake is tastier”? You can rely on manufacturers’ advertising and recommendations or you can taste it yourself. And better to taste all of them in order to compare.
Only with respect to knives it is hardly manageable in practice, because good knives cost much thus you won’t buy all that appeal to you, on the other hand, it will take a lot of time to test each of them in different kitchen chores...
But you can be not alone testing them, it is useful to share a user’s impressions about knives from different manufacturers. However, the questions is whether it is going to be objective since in the absence of uniform criteria and a common reference point everyone would evaluate subjectively and individually...
There should be a solution of some sort nonetheless.
A kitchen knife is a tool for cutting, thus it seems logical that the easier and the longer a knife cuts in equal conditions the better it is.
Of course, with certain reservations, because due to the steel structure carbon steels will cut better than alloy steels, and powder-technology steels – longer than the carbon. In addition, there are also knives made of ceramic, metal ceramic, cera-titanium or pure titanium, which would be incorrect to compare to regular knives due to their specific advantages and disadvantages. Another reservation is geometry of the blade, since it is obvious that thick and low-beveled blade will be more difficult to cut through a medium compared to a thin blade with high-ground bevels, on the other hand a thin blade is easier to get damaged than a thick one...
However the wear resistance parameter (which defines how long a used knife will remain sharp) can be compared with respect to different knives and is important for a user to know regardless of how and what the blade is made of.
This parameter (wear resistance) can be quite quickly and objectively tested by cutting comparatively abrasive substance such as cardboard, ropes or felt. The most important thing is to test each knife with the same material and in as much as possible identical conditions, in such case the results can be compared then directly without complicated correlations. The conditions can be easily equalized by purchasing a sufficient amount of identical material and cutting with an equal section of the blade.
Thus this has become the beginning of the blades’ wear resistance test. 1 cm thick natural felt was chosen for the abrasive substance, which has an advantage that it has quite a uniform structure, is sufficiently hard and rough, dulling blades sufficiently fast. The length of freely suspended cut felt (till a knife fails to cut further) will be the measure that specifies wear resistance of blades of different knives. If cutting tomatoes or meat, the test would take significantly more time and it would be more difficult to define a quantitative aspect of knives’ characteristics, moreover, the blade would inevitably contact a cutting board that would also affect wear resistance results.
In order to have the test’s results more correct, prior to cutting all knives participating in the test were sharpened equally – at 30-degree angle.
Furthermore, whereas the blades of the knives are of different lengths thus n order to equalize the testing conditions and to compare results by different knives and also to shorten the duration of the test, a scotch tape was put on each blade leaving 5 cm of exposed blade to perform cutting with:
Despite of the shortened length of the blades, the knives dull in felt slowly and testing of all the knives will take longer than expected...
However, first results have already appeared. But it is too soon to make any conclusions.
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(Continuation follows...)
