Alton Brown explains Kershaw's Shun knives

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http://www.kershawknives.com/products.php?brand=shun

I'm not sure if this has been posted yet, but doing a search for "alton brown" didn't seem to come up with anything.

The above link is to a video where alton brown describes the basic features, care and maintainence of kershaws shun knives. For anyone who has never thought about the care of their kitchen knives, or is completely new to knives in general its a nice visual begginers video.

For those who like alton brown, he does a nice job of being easy to understand while sound technical, but not delving into technical terms or explanations.


does anyone know if this video was created specifically for kersaw, or if it aired on the food network?
 
Worthless !! He said 'Mo improves brittleness' !!. Then confusion , did he mean the edge was 16* on each side or 16* total ???? I think Shun knives [mine are agrussell white handled ones] are fantastic. I think Brown is a jerk !!!
 
I don`t believe that Shun makes the knives for A.G. Russell. The Russells are made in the same town but sourced elsewhere.
 
Then he said leave the sharpening to the professionals. Bull crap. If anyone does the research and gets the equipment they can sharpen knives. I'm a Master chef in a casino and the guys used to send thier knives in to get sharpened for alot of money a few times a year, until I got there. I sharpend thier knives for them at my house with either a sharpmaker or an edge pro, then tought them how and now they do it themselves and got the equipment and love it. It's funny sometimes when we are super busy, I mean REAL busy and I can't get to my steel I'll just steel it on the side of my spatula or on the edges of the ceramic tiles then strop it on the cutting board real quick while I'm cooking 20 meals at once. Now I tought everyone how to do that and they love it. I guess Alton could call all of US professionals now right?
 
mete said:
Worthless !! He said 'Mo improves brittleness' !!. Then confusion , did he mean the edge was 16* on each side or 16* total ???? I think Shun knives [mine are agrussell white handled ones] are fantastic. I think Brown is a jerk !!!
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You say he's confusing, but I cant understand a word of what you said???
 
killerskill- you have to remember he is addressing the vast majority of people who are not going to take the time to learn to sharpen a knife correctly. this is not targeting the relatively small percentage of people who know how to sharpen or are willing to learn how to sharpen.

Alton is one of my favorites on FoodNetwork.
 
dpimpc said:
You say he's confusing, but I cant understand a word of what you said???
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Mo is the abbreviation for molybdenum. Brown said that molydenum improves brittleness, which in and of itself is a confusing statement, however, it is also kind of wrong. Molybdenum, when used as an alloying element in steel, improves hardenability (more so than chromium I believe). Replacing hardenability with brittle could lead to misconcpetions (as in Mo fixes brittleness problems).

The 16* (* being a replacement for the little circle used to indicate degrees of an angle) angle thing is that he didn't specify whether or not it's a 16 degree total edge (the angle formed by the intersection bevels which create the edge), or the angle formed by the perendicular line that runs from the spine to the edge of the blade, and the bevel of one side of the edge (in which case, the total angle for both sides would be 32*).
 
Peter_E_Ryt said:
Mo is the abbreviation for molybdenum. Brown said that molydenum improves brittleness, which in and of itself is a confusing statement, however, it is also kind of wrong. Molybdenum, when used as an alloying element in steel, improves hardenability (more so than chromium I believe). Replacing hardenability with brittle could lead to misconcpetions (as in Mo fixes brittleness problems).

The 16* (* being a replacement for the little circle used to indicate degrees of an angle) angle thing is that he didn't specify whether or not it's a 16 degree total edge (the angle formed by the intersection bevels which create the edge), or the angle formed by the perendicular line that runs from the spine to the edge of the blade, and the bevel of one side of the edge (in which case, the total angle for both sides would be 32*).
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"the edge on my shun is only 16 degree's per side" was the exact statement he made. Meaning 32 degree's total. As far as molybdenum "improving brittleness", I assume that he means that it will reduce the amount or severety of brittleness present in the heat treated steel.

I know nothing about elemental effects on steel, from my search molybenums end result is an increase in "high temperature strength", wich I assume is in regards to the ability of a steel to maintain form without fracturing under heavy heat situations (caused by friction or an outside source of heat) wich would be found in high speed tooling and machineing operations. If I'm right in this, it does reduce brittleness in that it increases strength at high temperatures. (I could be completely wrong and I'd have no idea)
 
If you look up the Talmadge tutorial on steel on this forum you'll see he says 'Mo REDUCES brittleness' !!! 16*[ 32* ] or the european types Brown says is 22*[44*] ??? My Henckels I used for years are certainly not 44* total angle ,that would be far too great an angle for anything practical !! I used a knife recently to dress out a deer .I knew it was "sharp" but I realized something was wrong .It had a 40* total angle which I measured.!! ...We have some excellent tutorials in various parts of this forum. Some of you need to read them !
 
Alton Brown is great. I saw that clip when I was researching Shun knives, and still have yet to show it to the GF, who got me hooked on Good Eats. And Iron Chef America.

And just to clear something up, Mete--Alton Brown has used Shun knives for a while on his show, and a profile of his head is on the Alton's Angle series of Shun knives.

I don't think he dislikes the brand :)

As far as brittleness, I'm sure with the keen, fine edge Shun knives have, and the type of steel they use, they are very sharp, but a little 'brittle' in the hands of the average "Hay, watch what this knife kun do, Bill!" consumer. This explains why many of the 'demo' Shuns at a nearby Chef Supply have as many chunks missing out of the edge as they do...
 
mete said:
If you look up the Talmadge tutorial on steel on this forum you'll see he says 'Mo REDUCES brittleness' !!! 16*[ 32* ] or the european types Brown says is 22*[44*] ??? My Henckels I used for years are certainly not 44* total angle ,that would be far too great an angle for anything practical !! I used a knife recently to dress out a deer .I knew it was "sharp" but I realized something was wrong .It had a 40* total angle which I measured.!! ...We have some excellent tutorials in various parts of this forum. Some of you need to read them !
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That depends on if you take his words as infering that the knife model is a kitchen knife, rather then a vague reference meant to cover all knives in general. If its in regards to kitchen knives only, I can see where one would immediately assume he means german brand kitchen knives, such as henkels.

I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is using the large scale models as general references to knives in general. There does seem to be a bit of social bias/stereotypeing in naming one model german, and the other as japanese (given his comments on the "german made knife").

As far as edge angles, it depends on the steel and what your going to be doing with it. If the edge can hold up to the task and be 5 degree's per side (10 degrees included) then thats fantastic.


I honestly beleive his statement "molybdenum improves brittleness" was simply a poor choice of words, and that his meaning was that it makes the knives level of brittleness better - as in lowers it.
 
The only thing I disagree with is storing knives in a block. It'll keep the edges (and unwary fingers) safe, but they are bacteria traps. I keep my blades on a magnetic strip up high out of the reach of kiddos.
 
bgspecialk said:
I don`t believe that Shun makes the knives for A.G. Russell. The Russells are made in the same town but sourced elsewhere.
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All Shun range knives are made in Seki City, Japan by Kai. In Europe they are badged and sold as Kai - Shun, and in North America they are badged and sold as Kershaw - Shun, but all are of Japanese manufacture.

I can't see them being badged 'A.G. Russell' either.

PB Wilson said:
The only thing I disagree with is storing knives in a block. It'll keep the edges (and unwary fingers) safe, but they are bacteria traps. I keep my blades on a magnetic strip up high out of the reach of kiddos. .
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Not quite, knife blocks are usually open at the bottom with allows wood particles to drop through. Bacteria needs warmth, food, moisture and time to multiply. Even assuming people was putting dirty knives back in the block, the moisture would evaporate quickly and remove that neccessary part of the equation.

Although magnetic racks have their benefits, they scratch knives.
 
Whether the clip was made for knife nuts or not, he should get his facts straight! I watch him and like his shows but he is not a food scientist, I am. Many of the scientific explanations he uses are just wrong. Many are correct. I would "love" his shows if he spent a little more time on his facts.

BTW you can type a "degree" symbol by: "while holding down the "alt" key, type 0176 on your keypad (not the number bar across the top – just the keypad). It looks like this °. You can also use 248 instead of 0176.
 
I think these knives are awesome. Expensive but awesome. The Ken Onion stuff is awsome too. And the vid clip was pretty cool. Man, look how many of you get so upset. Lighten up.
 
Andrew Taylor said:
Not quite, knife blocks are usually open at the bottom with allows wood particles to drop through. Bacteria needs warmth, food, moisture and time to multiply. Even assuming people was putting dirty knives back in the block, the moisture would evaporate quickly and remove that neccessary part of the equation.

Although magnetic racks have their benefits, they scratch knives.
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I thought about what you wrote and wondered if I was passing along an old wives tale, but after a couple minutes of web searching I found a case where the knife block was the culprit for a salmonella outbreak at a supermarket. http://www.in.gov/isdh/dataandstats/epidem/2007/Jan/spotlight.htm

I do recall the pretty grungy state of the knife block in my parent's home growing up. It too had holes at the bottom, but it was still not the cleanest part of the kitchen. There were untold times of slicing bread and putting the knife back without wiping it off. Whatever was on the cutting board could have been transfered. Anyway, the point is probably moot in the big picture. There are worse dangers out there than bacteria on a knife block. I'm less worried about it in reality than I am about scratching my kitchen blades (which hasn't happened after a decade or so of storage on a magnetic strip).
 
I like Alton Brown, especially as host of Iron Chef America (I don;t like his cooking show much). I had no idea he knew anything about knives until I read this thread.

Go easy on Alton. Like someone once said about the late (and great!) Steve Irwin... (imagine an Aussie voice) "He may be an idiot....but he's our idiot!"
 
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