Butchering knives vs chef's knives?

L

Leon Husock

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Jul 17, 2019
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I've been asked to make a knife that can be used for general kitchen use as well as breaking down whole hogs and large fish. I imagine that'll take a slightly thicker spine than I usually make (I like to keep my knives at 1/8" or under) but other than that I don't really have a good idea what a knife used for that kind of butchering looks like. Does anyone have any insight into the best profile for something like this? Is it basically just a long chef's knife with a heftier spine?
 
Google "breaking knives". A chef's knife would not be a great choice for such jobs.

That type breaking knife/cimetar or a butcher knife slightly different tip. And boning knives are what are used most.
 
1/8 thick is plenty. You could do all of that with a thinner thickness as well. You are just cutting through joints and flesh.
 
JJ_Colt45 said:
Google "breaking knives". A chef's knife would not be a great choice for such jobs.

That type breaking knife/cimetar or a butcher knife slightly different tip. And boning knives are what are used most.
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Interesting. Is there a possible intersection of a chef's/general purpose kitchen knife and a breaking knife? Because looking at it that knife is pretty much just for slicing meat and it'd be hard to do much else with it.
 
Butchering is a different task than what a chef's blade is made for.

Chefs blades cut vegetables, already broken down pieces of meat, and chop things. They are normally medium weight bades between .06 and .10" thick. Edges are at a moderate angle.

Butchering knives are thinner and very sharp. They have somewhat curved blades in most cases. They are for breaking down whole meat cuts and deboning.

A middle of the road knife would be a petty. While initially a Japanese shape, it is popular with most all good chefs.
Petty_1_1200x.jpg
 
IMHO a chef knife will do both, but won't excell at butchering.

A proper butchering knife won't do a lot of good in chopping on the board.

As Stacey said, a petty would be the middle ground.

I broke a 20kg swordfish with a sharp edc in about 10 min, which doesnt mean its the right knife to do it.

Question your client what he really intends to do with the knife and explain him that there is no one knife to rule them all :)
 
A good friend raises and butchers hogs and he wanted a butchering knife from me. I ended up with a 7 inch blade that looked like the top Petty in above photo. Steel was M2 at 64-65rc with a 0.075 inch spine. He still is raving about it and had me make a couple more for him. His wife confiscated one for kitchen use and the other went to a pro chef who also uses it in kitchen.
 
Seedy Lot said:
A good friend raises and butchers hogs and he wanted a butchering knife from me. I ended up with a 7 inch blade that looked like the top Petty in above photo. Steel was M2 at 64-65rc with a 0.075 inch spine. He still is raving about it and had me make a couple more for him. His wife confiscated one for kitchen use and the other went to a pro chef who also uses it in kitchen.
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Do you work with M2 much. I have made a couple of knives from it and loved them both. If my HT was on target mine should have been around 66Rc and didn't have any chipping issues on a very thin edged chef knife. I would love to get some advice on how it should be HT'ed.
 
Storm W said:
Do you work with M2 much. I have made a couple of knives from it and loved them both. If my HT was on target mine should have been around 66Rc and didn't have any chipping issues on a very thin edged chef knife. I would love to get some advice on how it should be HT'ed.
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I have been using Starrett Redstripe power hack saw blades for my M2 blades so already heat treated. I have checked hardness on a few different blades and it is always 64-65rc. While the hack saw blades are a little bit of a pain to work they can at times be picked up ridicoulsy cheap on ebay.
 
I butcher a pig leg (ham) from time to time because I like to make fresh chorizos for my BBQs, last time I had 4 knives ready for the task just in case, but I ended using just one and its always the same one. Its like a boning knife, but thicker and with a belly on the edge at its end, please don't look at the scales, they were hacked in a hurry :D
The same knife was used to butcher a whole pig too. Then, for processing the meat, a 7-8" kitchen knife works fine.

Pablo

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Leon Husock said:
I've been asked to make a knife that can be used for general kitchen use as well as breaking down whole hogs and large fish. I imagine that'll take a slightly thicker spine than I usually make (I like to keep my knives at 1/8" or under) but other than that I don't really have a good idea what a knife used for that kind of butchering looks like. Does anyone have any insight into the best profile for something like this? Is it basically just a long chef's knife with a heftier spine?
Click to expand...


I've used everything, on so many things. Hands down the best blade i've ever used and made for carving up and going through animal and game is a rat tail 8 inch bowie knife with a 5,5inch razor sharp clip point and a 1inch by 3,5inch bronze-plate guard. 1/4inch thick 115crv3 steel. It beats all sorts of crazy kitchen knives.

Pretty much stopped using all my kitchen knives in favor for this bowie, except for my single beveled ones... The next bowies being made are single beveled so will probably end up even replacing this one for personal use. But if you're looking for something casual for cooking you certainly don't neeeed a kitchen knife. After 20 years of living in the wild i would find it insane to go another 20 years without a razor sharp clip point and a guard on my main edc knives. You should expand your horizon imo, a really large and well made cutting board and a sharp clip bowie knife goes a LOT further than a kitchen knife on a terrible cutting board.
118378164_2717238698516354_7700768364008210584_o.jpg
 
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Thomas Rönnberg said:
I've used everything, on so many things. Hands down the best blade i've ever used and made for carving up and going through animal and game is a rat tail 8 inch bowie knife with a 5,5inch razor sharp clip point and a 1inch by 3,5inch bronze-plate guard. 1/4inch thick 115crv3 steel. It beats all sorts of crazy kitchen knives.

Pretty much stopped using all my kitchen knives in favor for this bowie, except for my single beveled ones... The next bowies being made are single beveled so will probably end up even replacing this one for personal use. But if you're looking for something casual for cooking you certainly don't neeeed a kitchen knife. After 20 years of living in the wild i would find it insane to go another 20 years without a razor sharp clip point and a guard on my main edc knives. You should expand your horizon imo, a really large and well made cutting board and a sharp clip bowie knife goes a LOT further than a kitchen knife on a terrible cutting board.
118378164_2717238698516354_7700768364008210584_o.jpg
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I'm going to have to disagree with this. A Bowie is going to be a fairly terrible replacement for a chefs knife, doing any pretty much every kitchen task a chefs knife is used for.

To thick, to heavy, wrong profile, guard gets in the way of a proper grip for chopping and doesn't allow you to use the heel.

The sharpened clip seems plain dangerous for boning and butchering an animal.

While like with almost any sharp thing you could make it work, I'll bet you I can dice and onion about five times as fast with a kitchen knife than anyone can with that Bowie. Would probably break being stabbed into a branch like that though :D
 
You can break a fish down pretty effectively with a standard 180mm gyuto/chefs knife profile, doesn't need to be super thick. However the same knife is going to be pretty hopeless boning a pig. Too big and unwieldy and too deep to manouver around the joints and bones.

A good 6 or 8 inch european boning profile knife will break down a pig and a fish with equal poise and ease but will be pretty hopeless for a lot of common kitchen tasks.

As Stacy says a petty is probably the closest middle ground, which will be a bit of a jack of all trades but a master of none.

If your mate doesn't plan to do any boning with it and is planning to use it more like a slicer/steak cutter you could probably get away with a standard chef profile
 
Nick-D said:
I'm going to have to disagree with this. A Bowie is going to be a fairly terrible replacement for a chefs knife, doing any pretty much every kitchen task a chefs knife is used for.

To thick, to heavy, wrong profile, guard gets in the way of a proper grip for chopping and doesn't allow you to use the heel.

The sharpened clip seems plain dangerous for boning and butchering an animal.

While like with almost any sharp thing you could make it work, I'll bet you I can dice and onion about five times as fast with a kitchen knife than anyone can with that Bowie. Would probably break being stabbed into a branch like that though :D
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''To thick, to heavy, wrong profile, guard gets in the way of a proper grip for chopping and doesn't allow you to use the heel.'' -This is all illusionary. You're thinking like a western consumer. I've forged over 1000 kitchen knives by hand in the last 15 years and have national championship status in kitchen knife making. If your don't work in a kitchen, a sharp piece of work hardened bronze will cook you the same mediterrainian food it did 2100 years ago. I mean heck, haven't you seen how thick sashimi knives are? The thinnest slicing knives on the market are the thickest.


''The sharpened clip seems plain dangerous for boning and butchering an animal.'' -It actually speeds up the process about 400x. I strip, skin and bone a moose faster than 3 people do one moose with this bowie. Same with sheep, lamb, deer, bear, racoon, badgers, pheasants, ducks, etc... I mean, when i cut up two 250,000 thousand dollar porks last year, i used my sanmais, single bevels, etc... But honestly the bowie was all of those knives in one. If you have a good cutting board it doesn't matter how large your guard or shallow your heel is. It's literally 100% no different.

''While like with almost any sharp thing you could make it work, I'll bet you I can dice and onion about five times as fast with a kitchen knife than anyone can with that Bowie. Would probably break being stabbed into a branch like that though'' - If you work in a kitchen, use a kitchen knife.
 
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