Knives and Steel- cool web site

[lizzie]

Or at least interesting to me.

https://couteliernola.com/steel-info/

I recall that a few of you are into knives and steel. I have never known very much about them, except that I have a specific fondness for good quality kitchen and cooking knives.
My general favorite knife in the kitchen is an older Japanese made vegetable knife that I have had since about 1985. It has only been sharpened once in all those years, and it has been used OFTEN. I bought it from an Oriental gift shop on the west side of Fort Worth, where you could find spices and other items used in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean cooking, back before these types of stores were popular, and were very difficult to find. The only  marking on it is MSC-450 Stainless, and has a long simple rectangular blade.

I also have several old Victorinox knives, some Forschners, and several Henkels, from before they were being made outside Germany.

The hubs was a bit of a knife collector, and I still have his knives, but I know NOTHING about them. They seem to be primarily survival-type knives, and I bought him a couple of old carving/ butchering knives.

Anyway....as I said, I don't really know much about knives overall, but found this page and thought it interesting, thinking maybe a few of you might appreciate it. I found the simple explanations of different types of steel informative, so now I am ready to go out and buy some white paper steel kitchen cutting tools!
Haha

[bantam5s]

I'm a real knife nut and currently have at least 50 traditional knives I rotate through, If I'm not gonna use it I don't need it.
I understand the interest and everything and I'm sure some will really love to read that.
I'm a knife guy but not a steel guy, that is to say that I don't have any interest in the different types of steels available.
Basically I like a good ol' traditional pocket knife or belt knife in whatever basic steel they use because they serve me perfectly well , they stay sharp as long as I need them to and are easy to sharpen.

Here's my most used kitchen knife and my most used slipjoint.
I don't know much about the Chef knife other than that it's a rebranded Dexter, the slipjoint is a Case 62032 Texas Jack in peach seed jigged Amber bone I've had about a year now.



Yep I love carbon steel most of all, I love patina and have no problems keeping rust at bay.

[Wepster]

Good basic info on knife steel. Thanks!
Few years ago took a knife forging class, one of the hardest things I have ever done (two weeks) My wrist strength was not up to the task. Finally started to catch on to the grinding part.

[lizzie]

GREAT kitchen knife David!

[lizzie]

Very cool Bill!  I have heard that knife-making (steel-working in general) is a difficult endeavor. I have never done anything along those lines, but we built our own house here 17 years ago and it is steel-framed.
I found steel to be a very difficult medium to work with,  because it is so unforgiving.
Haha

[Wepster]

Building your own house is quite an accomplishment. I can not imagine tacking on that task. I have never worked with steel framing, ssems like a bit more to learn, but it seems to have a lot of advantages.

[lizzie]

Building your own house is quite an accomplishment. I can not imagine tacking on that task. I have never worked with steel framing, ssems like a bit more to learn, but it seems to have a lot of advantages.

It was an interesting project. - hard work, and took us two years to complete, but it's built rock-solid!
I don't know how familiar you are with building, but what we did was take a pole barn main frame, and designed the house within a series of 12x12 ft square sections. (Pole barn is essentially the same thing as timber framing, which is common in the northeast).

Anyway....I learned much in the process, and if I had it to do again, I'd keep the steel pole barn framing for the primary structure, but use standard wood "stick framing" between the steel uprights and cross-members, for building the walls and placing doors and windows. Wood is just so much easier to work with.
But anyway........

It's a great skill to have!