- Joined
- Jun 23, 1999
- Messages
- 1,209
I do a lot of cooking, though I am not a pro, I wouldn't mind being one someday. In the meanwhile, my family and friends (sometimes as many as 15 or 20 of them) enjoy the product of my culinary labors. I also have a few nice kitchen knives (mostly Chicago Cutlery) including a few French style chef's knives (8" and 12" blades), a boning knife, pairing knife, filleting and meat carving knives, bread knife, etc. I find this set pretty much covers my needs.
But a friend of ours asked me to help prepare food for her wedding (one week from today). She has better kitchen cutlery than I do, but just for the heck of it, I decided I wanted something of my own to bring along. I'd seen the A.G.R. "Honcho" in A.G.'s catalog for a long time, but have never purchased one as it seemed a little too short (4.25" blade) for my style. For this event however, it had just the "cool factor" I was looking for so I went ahead and ordered one. It arrived yesterday, one week prior to the big event, so I'm going to give it a good workout, starting last night!
First things first. The knife feels nice in the hand. It has some substantial weight. The handles have thick liners, and a pair of floating (on what appear to be spring liners on both sides of the blade) ball detents that really hold the blade positively closed. I like this! The knife has a mid-back-lock, and lock up is absolutely solid, both up/down and side to side. There is a hole in the blade to assist opening (very good with wet hands), though this is by no means a one-handed folder. Fit and finish are very good though not perfect. The handle is double walled, picture one handle nestled inside the other. The inner handle (like a pair of liners) carries the ball detents at the blade end. The blade nestles very neatly in the center of this inner handle, but at the very end of the handle, the inner handle is not perfectly centered in the outer handle. This does not affect performance in the least however.
The knife has a clip mounted about midway on the handle for tip down carry (makes perfect sense this is not a defensive knife). As a result, the knife does not disappear IWB, but is very easy to get at. This is also probably a good compromise as the 5" handle might get a little uncomfortable if it was buried too deep in pocket or waistband.
The blade is 1/16" thick, perfect for its size and role as a cooking knife. It is 1.25" wide and drops to a semi-sheepsfoot style tip except that the blade isn't flat, but curves very gently along its entire length meeting the spine well below the blade's center line, but with enough curvature to rock the knife on a cutting board French Chef's Knife style. This also makes for a real point which can be used, for example, to cut the core from a tomato or strawberry. From the spine, the stock is parallel for not quite 3/4" and then it is flat ground down to the secondary edge which is less than 1/16" thick. The top part of the blade is mirror polished, while the ground part looks to be bead blasted until about 1/8" from the actual edge where it goes mirror again. Don't know why it was done this way, perhaps A.G. can explain.
I worked the Honcho by cutting up a typical dinner, some cauliflower, broccoli, a few onions, etc. I smashed garlic and minced it. Yes the knife will behave like a French Chef knife, though I had to get used to its small size, and I had to watch where I placed the garlic cloves so they didn't slide through the hole in the blade when I smashed them. Balance was excellent, right where I like a chef's knife to be, right at the index finger when the handle is gripped in its most natural position. There are some nice scallops in the handle for the fingers that guide the hand to where it is supposed to be, another nice feature. When I was through with all this cutting and mincing, I did see some very tiny deformations in the edge that were not there before. The edge is very very fine, and all my work against the wooden cutting board probably put them there. A few passes on a steel took them out, but it did seem a little strange that the edge should have deformed (however slightly) after only one meal's worth of work.
All in all, this seems to be a very good knife for the price and the job its supposed to do. It would be nice if the blade were an inch longer, but that was probably a trade-off that had to be made in order to fold the knife and not make the end result too big to fit comfortably IWB. There were only two things I didn't like. First the handle was not super comfortable thanks to the slot running down the middle of it. Since you can't make the slot go away on a folder I don't suppose there is anything that can be done about this, and its not so bad that you can't work with the knife for long periods. After all, you don't have to grip a handle super-hard when preparing food. The one other thing is that the blade does not come down far enough below the handle (less than 1/2") to prevent the fingers from making contact with the cutting board. My hand is not large and my fingers not thick, but even I need about 1" of clearance. I think the blade could be about 1/2" wider and that would do it nicely.
Well, enough for now. I'm very much looking forward to traveling with this knife and doing the food prep next week at my friend's wedding. I'm sure the other chefs will be appropriately impressed. Perhaps one of the better looking ones will throw herself at my feet and ask that I make love to her. Yes, my wife will be at the wedding too, so I'll have to say no, but it would be nice knowing someone else wanted me
But a friend of ours asked me to help prepare food for her wedding (one week from today). She has better kitchen cutlery than I do, but just for the heck of it, I decided I wanted something of my own to bring along. I'd seen the A.G.R. "Honcho" in A.G.'s catalog for a long time, but have never purchased one as it seemed a little too short (4.25" blade) for my style. For this event however, it had just the "cool factor" I was looking for so I went ahead and ordered one. It arrived yesterday, one week prior to the big event, so I'm going to give it a good workout, starting last night!
First things first. The knife feels nice in the hand. It has some substantial weight. The handles have thick liners, and a pair of floating (on what appear to be spring liners on both sides of the blade) ball detents that really hold the blade positively closed. I like this! The knife has a mid-back-lock, and lock up is absolutely solid, both up/down and side to side. There is a hole in the blade to assist opening (very good with wet hands), though this is by no means a one-handed folder. Fit and finish are very good though not perfect. The handle is double walled, picture one handle nestled inside the other. The inner handle (like a pair of liners) carries the ball detents at the blade end. The blade nestles very neatly in the center of this inner handle, but at the very end of the handle, the inner handle is not perfectly centered in the outer handle. This does not affect performance in the least however.
The knife has a clip mounted about midway on the handle for tip down carry (makes perfect sense this is not a defensive knife). As a result, the knife does not disappear IWB, but is very easy to get at. This is also probably a good compromise as the 5" handle might get a little uncomfortable if it was buried too deep in pocket or waistband.
The blade is 1/16" thick, perfect for its size and role as a cooking knife. It is 1.25" wide and drops to a semi-sheepsfoot style tip except that the blade isn't flat, but curves very gently along its entire length meeting the spine well below the blade's center line, but with enough curvature to rock the knife on a cutting board French Chef's Knife style. This also makes for a real point which can be used, for example, to cut the core from a tomato or strawberry. From the spine, the stock is parallel for not quite 3/4" and then it is flat ground down to the secondary edge which is less than 1/16" thick. The top part of the blade is mirror polished, while the ground part looks to be bead blasted until about 1/8" from the actual edge where it goes mirror again. Don't know why it was done this way, perhaps A.G. can explain.
I worked the Honcho by cutting up a typical dinner, some cauliflower, broccoli, a few onions, etc. I smashed garlic and minced it. Yes the knife will behave like a French Chef knife, though I had to get used to its small size, and I had to watch where I placed the garlic cloves so they didn't slide through the hole in the blade when I smashed them. Balance was excellent, right where I like a chef's knife to be, right at the index finger when the handle is gripped in its most natural position. There are some nice scallops in the handle for the fingers that guide the hand to where it is supposed to be, another nice feature. When I was through with all this cutting and mincing, I did see some very tiny deformations in the edge that were not there before. The edge is very very fine, and all my work against the wooden cutting board probably put them there. A few passes on a steel took them out, but it did seem a little strange that the edge should have deformed (however slightly) after only one meal's worth of work.
All in all, this seems to be a very good knife for the price and the job its supposed to do. It would be nice if the blade were an inch longer, but that was probably a trade-off that had to be made in order to fold the knife and not make the end result too big to fit comfortably IWB. There were only two things I didn't like. First the handle was not super comfortable thanks to the slot running down the middle of it. Since you can't make the slot go away on a folder I don't suppose there is anything that can be done about this, and its not so bad that you can't work with the knife for long periods. After all, you don't have to grip a handle super-hard when preparing food. The one other thing is that the blade does not come down far enough below the handle (less than 1/2") to prevent the fingers from making contact with the cutting board. My hand is not large and my fingers not thick, but even I need about 1" of clearance. I think the blade could be about 1/2" wider and that would do it nicely.
Well, enough for now. I'm very much looking forward to traveling with this knife and doing the food prep next week at my friend's wedding. I'm sure the other chefs will be appropriately impressed. Perhaps one of the better looking ones will throw herself at my feet and ask that I make love to her. Yes, my wife will be at the wedding too, so I'll have to say no, but it would be nice knowing someone else wanted me
