On Monday, June 23, 2014 8:40:22 AM UTC+10, pltrgyst wrote:
> On 6/22/14, 2:13 PM, bigwheel wrote:
[...]
> Some other Japanese knives are even harder. They generally use more
> exotic alloys, selected specifically to allow sharpening to a finer edge.

.... or just high-carbon steel, which is hardly exotic. Can do HRC63 or so with high-carbon steel.

At those kinds of hardnesses, steels (i.e., "sharpening" steels) become pretty useless. But then the knives are hard enough so the edges don't roll.

> > ....Get the Fibrox handles. Pros dont like wood handles.
>
> Most lowly-paid kitchen staff use their own knife rolls, and choose
> Forschner and the like primarily because of price -- that's all they can
> afford, or all they want to put at risk in a commercial kitchen.

Food safety inspectors/auditors can be pretty down on wooden-handled knives (and wooden cutting boards, and wood in general). That's driven a lot of the non-wood handles for commercial knives. That, and plastic being cheap.

> There are many high-end restaurants full of German and Japanese knives
> with wood or similar (e.g., pakka or bamboo) handles.

Pakka-wood, being a resin-wood composite, is usually fine with food safety people. Not wood in their eyes.

I like wooden handles (a I don't have to worry about food safety inspectors).

> What I like best about Forschner and Global chef's knives is that the
> bolster does not come all the way down to the heel, so you can sharpen
> the entire length of the blade.

All-the-way-to-the-heel bolsters is a funny way to make knives, but sort-of popular. At least we only have to deal with it in classic Western knives, not Chinese, Japanese, etc.