Chef's knife questions

Is the knife for your personal use or to be given as gift? If its going to be used for anyone other then yourself I would highly recommend stainless steels for kitchen knives because most people dont know how to keep kitchen knives dry. They leave them in the sink or worse put them in the dish washer. 440c as you mentioned is a nice choice and 3/32" is fine but I use 1/16" for chef knives.

It's going to be a gift. I think I will go with 440c since I have experience with it. I'm a little nervous about a flat grind with that thin of metal. Seems that there isn't much room for error. Thanks
 
So, I finally got to work on my chef knife. I went with a Full flat grind on 1/8 inch 1095, cocobolo(or something close) dymondwood handle and a dark grey finish. It turned out pretty good I think. I had to work out some dang "2 inch" marks though. The 1095 will get crazy sharp! Thanks for all of y'all's advice and Merry Christmas!


http://s1247.photobucket.com/user/mattr2589/media/imagejpg1-2.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
 
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So, I finally got to work on my chef knife. I went with a Full flat grind on 1/8 inch 1095, cocobolo(or something close) dymondwood handle and a dark grey finish. It turned out pretty good I think. I had to work out some dang "2 inch" marks though. The 1095 will get crazy sharp! Thanks for all of y'all's advice and Merry Christmas!


http://s1247.photobucket.com/user/mattr2589/media/imagejpg1-2.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Looks nice for a first time. good blade shape and the handle looks comfy.

too Bad you let The EX SPURTS here change your mind about the (forged) finish. I think it would have been nice.
 
Looks nice for a first time. good blade shape and the handle looks comfy.

too Bad you let The EX SPURTS here change your mind about the (forged) finish. I think it would have been nice.


Thanks Bill, I'm still going to do the forge finish on one. This one I just used apple cider vinegar to darken it. I am going to take a forging class soon and hope make some knives with a real forged finish. I like shinny chrome wheels but am a sucker for rustic looking knives.
 
All respect to the answers and real world experience so far... But according to Alton Brown Foodnetwork (He knows his blades too) V10 is his steel of choice albeit laminated wth 410SS.
if I were to make a Chefs Blade for personal use that would be my choice with a Peters or Bos HT and cyro after you pick a profile...
 
How do you "Forge" a piece of 3/32 to 1/8" thick piece of steel? Just curious


I never said I "forged" a piece of 3/32 to 1/8". I originally was going to use 3/32 but used 1/8 instead. The forged finish was what was being referred to. I was thinking of leaving the heat treat finish and just cleaning up the edge kind of like the kurouchi knives.
 
So, I finally got to work on my chef knife. I went with a Full flat grind on 1/8 inch 1095, cocobolo(or something close) dymondwood handle and a dark grey finish. It turned out pretty good I think. I had to work out some dang "2 inch" marks though. The 1095 will get crazy sharp! Thanks for all of y'all's advice and Merry Christmas!


http://s1247.photobucket.com/user/mattr2589/media/imagejpg1-2.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

Nice work. Did you do the hardening and tempering yourself? How well does that edge hold up to use?
 
Nice work. Did you do the hardening and tempering yourself? How well does that edge hold up to use?

Thanks Mike. I tried first with a torch but didn't have real good success. It's an 8 inch blade so it's hard to heat it evenly. I have a local knife maker that is helping me get started that does my heat treat for me. I'm in the process of building a kiln so I can do my own. I have the insulating fire brick, thermocoupler and control board. Now I just have to build it. So far it holds up good. I like to hit it on my sharpener real quick every 2nd or 3rd use. If you keep it sharp it only takes a couple of passes. Now I'm working on my second one.
 
Nice job, I'll be trying a kitchen knife soon for my mother in law as she got me stabilized cocobolo scales for Christmas this morning. Also when posting from photobucket click on the IMG code and paste it, the pic will show up in the post and not a link. If you are using the photobucket app it will look like this
BC7F6669-9805-4932-BFD4-18F90F3D0397_zpskknsbndh.png

It'll post a big long URL, I erase everything that is not between the [ IMG ] [/IMG ]
When clicking on your link there's a couple website buttons, a mail, and a chain link button, click on the chain and copy the bottom one that pops up.
imagejpg1-2.jpg
 
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