Quote:
Originally Posted by buzzard767
Goodweed, I disagree (why else would I be responding?)....
Your point - progressively more difficult to sharpen etc - tell me, how many decades does it take to get to that point, and then, why not re-hollowgrind?
Did I say anything about soft "low quality" blades? Nope.
And finally, your comment that hollow ground blades "wedge" food apart. Jeeze man. Think about it. The hollow ground area of the blade never touches the medium, but your straight angled blades contact the medium the entire width of the blade, thus creating more friction and therefore, relatively inferior cutting ability.  Buzz
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I understand what you are saying. And in principle, it makes sense, but... When the cutting edge first meets the flesh of, say, a rutabagga, it starts to separate the flesh. As it slices deeper, it exponentially pushes he flesh apart until it reaches the flat grind part of the knife. When that happens, you are correct, only the cutting edge and the main body of the blade touch the flesh. This is another place where a problem can arize. Because of the hollow grind, the thickness of the blade at the spine is greater than it is for a straight-grind knife. It has to be to preserve knife strength as the grinding process removes more metal from the blade. This then causes the straight sides to force the flesh apart, maybe without the cutting edge ever coming into direct contact with the flesh. Hence, you are wedging the food apart rather than slicing through it.
This of course isn't true where the susbtance being cut is soft and pliable. But for hard foods such as carrots, rutabeggas, winter squash, onions, etc., it is significantly harder to drive the knife through the veggie.
To confirm this, I have used my high carbon, stain resistant, and very sharp Chicago Cutlery Chef's knive, with a hollow grind, side-by-side with my very sharp, straight-grind Croma 10-inch French Chef's knife. The Croma sliced through the tough veggies with significantly less effort than did the Chicago Cutlery.
All that aside though, I do believe that there is a place in my kitchen for ceramic knives. But I think I would get smaller knives such as for paring and detail work. I'm not sure how a ceramic fillet knife would work as it may not have the flexibility for the task. Maybe a ceramic utility knife would be a good thing as well. But those will ahve to wait for a Christmas where I have less of my paycheck helping others

. Right now, I think that it's a bit too much of a luxury. My existing hodge-podge collection does the job. It'd be like me purchasing a new bow for $1200. It would be a dream-come-true, and my arrows would fly at 335 fps, but do I really need such speed to kill a hay bale? Just because it's available doesn't mean tha I
need it.
Seeeeeeeya; Goodweed of the North
Seeeeeeya; Goodweed of the North
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