Cheap 6" kitchen knife from VG10/ATS34/154CM/S30V?

H

huugh

Joined
Jul 16, 2005
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Hi,
do you have suggestions for good, yet cheap kitchen knife made from good steel?
 
Cheap and good are oxymorons !! You can't take the better steels [expensive, hard to grind etc] and end up with a cheap knife..On the other hand a top quality tool of any kind , if taken care of , will give you many years of good service ! $ 75 will get you a very fine VG-10 ,laminated with damascus from someone like www.agrussell.com. Buy value not price.
 
Why are you offended? Cheap doesn't mean cheapest, but I want to avoid recommendations like William Henry kitchen knives set for few thousands $.
 
mete said:
Cheap and good are oxymorons !! You can't take the better steels [expensive, hard to grind etc] and end up with a cheap knife.
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Some of the best steels for knives are very cheap, bandsaw blades, power hacksaw blades are two of the best and are free. Bandsaw steels are also not expensive when new. Some of the best stainless for that specific type of use are also very inexpensive, 12C27m for example or 420HC both make very nice kitchen knives and are superior to the high carbide steels in several respects. Some of the cheapest knives are also some of the best knives, Opinels, Mora's, etc. .

huugh said:
Hi,
do you have suggestions for good, yet cheap kitchen knife made from good steel?
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Martha Stewart has a flat ground line which is really cheap, meaning you can get a full size chef's knife for less than $10. I picked up one as a semi-joke a few years back wanting a sort of low end baseline. However it is actually really solid. The balance is on the index finger, the grind tapers to a very thin edge. The initial sharpness was low, but resharpening it showed a high polish readily.

I typically keep it sharp using a butchers steel as it is soft enough to file readily. This isn't the ideal finish for a large chef's knife which does a lot of chopping/dicing but it is the main work knife in the kitchen so sees a lot of impacts off of plates and pans, so whatever steel was used it would get mauled anyway. I usually regrind the edge on a belt sander ever few months at about 10 degrees per side and then clean the edge on waterstones and micro-bevel at 15.

I ran some edge retention work on 3/8" hemp and it was on the same level as a Twistmaster from Cold Steel. It would cut about 256 pieces of hemp before the force required (15 lbs) doubled. Generally though in the kitchen it doesn't wear smoothly it gets dents off of hard contacts.

-Cliff
 
I want stainless for sure. Corrosion resistance is important (resistance to acids (cutting onions, fruits etc) but not most important. Edge retention is.
Knives currently used are Zepter, don't know what steel (no markings) so I am looking for one or two better. 12C27, 420HC aren't desirable enough.

What drove me to this question - I saw Al-Mar Sere Operator (6" blade, S30V) for $99 (here. I think if Al-Mar (quite expensive brand) can put out fixed blade with 3.5mm thickness with kydex sheath for under $100., then there has to be someone who produces kitchen knives from good steel for reasonable price as well.
I want something around 6" as I'm not too fond of smaller blade in kitchen.
 
If corrosion resistance isn't a large priority then the Old Hickory line is fairly dominant as they run from about $5 to $15 dollars. Spyderco's kitchen knives are very nice for stainless but I don't think they are currently in release. There are lots of decent ones around the $100 dollar mark, there was another thread exactly on this topic recently.

-Cliff
 
Fiskers of Sweden makes a little red colored wood handled knife with a laminated blade. I have cut up so many boxes with this knife I can't remember how many but this little knife just keeps and edge almost forever. I usually just give it a quick buff on my white wool wheel with green rouge, even though it doesn't need it, and is just stays razor sharp.
It's not made to chop up tree limbs or any other tough jobs but for what it was made for...light work, it stays sharp as hell
I don't know what the laminated Swedish steel is but will last you for a long time if given minor care now and then.
Oh, yeah, and they only cost about $6.00.

FWIW
Ciao
Ron
:cool:
 
One thing I do not understand is when people indicate that cheap, soft steel is OK for a kitchen knife.

Every time my wife cooks meat that needs to be thin sliced, I usually do it. In order to cut a pound of beef in thin slices, I usually need to resharpen or steel at least twice. The knives dull rapidly from touching the maple or birch cutting boards. We have cheap no name knives as well as a couple of Henkles. The Henkles are no better than the cheap no-names. My Henkles carving knife dulls halfway through carving a chicken. Sure, a few swipes on a steel and its sharp again, but I have serious doubts if any of our kitchen knives could hold an edge better than bronze!

Don Clark
 
Rip -

I sure don't want soft steel for my kitchen knives, why would anyone? The type of steel can vary greatly, it is the heat treatment that determines the hardness. Even steels that are not the toughest can reach a high Rc value although they will tend to be a little chippy with hard use.
 
Don,

JA Henckel's (and most other German manufactures like Wusthof-Trident) run their knives relatively soft, somewhere in the range of 54-56 RC. They'll sharpen-up easy, but as you see, they're pretty sub-par in the edge retention department. I find them clumsy and too heavy after using several brands of Japanese knives for the past couple of years. I hate to sound cliché' about Japanese knives in the kitchen, but once you use them, it's night-and-day from traditional European knives.

Will that $10 Martha Stewart chef's knife take care of most any kitchen chore? Of course it will...my mother does the majority of her cooking with a dull, partially-serrated Farberware steak knife and can put together a fantastic meal. It's more a question of ease-of-use when preparing meals than anything. It's a real joy to use some of my kitchen cutlery. Knives like that $10 chef's knife from K-mart would probably just frustrate me.

I never understood how someone who collects and uses folding/fixed blade knives would want to skimp when it comes to kitchen cutlery? Maybe I'm in the minority, but I use my kitchen knives more than any other knives, except for my EDC.
 
Ripantuck said:
My Henkles carving knife dulls halfway through carving a chicken. Sure, a few swipes on a steel and its sharp again ...
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I buy chickens from a local farmer several times a year so have about 50 lbs of chicken to cut up, including through the wing tips and similar, so not all meat cutting. I would never have to sharpen a knife through the cutting. If the edge is blunting that fast then it isn't sharp initially - this is one of the effects of steeling and having an edge which is too thick/obtuse.

symphonyincminor said:
Will that $10 Martha Stewart chef's knife take care of most any kitchen chore? Of course it will...my mother does the majority of her cooking with a dull, partially-serrated Farberware steak knife and can put together a fantastic meal. It's more a question of ease-of-use when preparing meals than anything. It's a real joy to use some of my kitchen cutlery. Knives like that $10 chef's knife from K-mart would probably just frustrate me.
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That knife isn't a dull steak knife, I run it at about 20 degrees included and the edge is very thin. Initially it was 0.008" thick behind the bevel and it has a high flat grind on thin stock. I have used very nice japanese kitchen knives and they don't outclass that knife when properly sharpened. I could just as easily shapen the knife to a 10 degree included edge if I wanted, which I would do if I was exclusively using it.

The edge retention isn't optimal of course, ideally it would be 13C26 at 65/66 HRC. But I certainly don't sharpen it every day and it doesn't frustrate me and I have some extreme ground knives, far more so than any japanese kitchen knife made. You might also want to adjust your finish, if you are doing mainly slicing then drop the grit back, it will vastly increase the edge retention. You can also run multiple grinds along the edge to make it multi-purpose.

-Cliff
 
Global makes a great knife for about $80. They use a proprietary steel that I don't have alot of info on, but the steel takes and holds an edge very well. I have many chefs knives (Kershaw, Henkels, Wustoff...) and it is by far my favorite.

Many chefs prefer the Global because of the feel, balance and great steel. For me they are the perfect kitchen knives.
 
www.dick.biz has good choise of Japan made western stile kitchen knives out of ATS-34 and SRS-15. I have boning knife from them with laminated blade (SRS15 core) it is pretty good. It take about week to get one here from Germany. Which is faster then some dealers can offer here in US.

Thanks, Vassili.
 
Have you tried Spyderco's line of kitchen knives? I bought that wide blade Santoku model and am quite happy with it's edge retention. It's steel is MBS-26 at HRc 58 IIRC.
I agree with Knife Outlet's suggestion too. I bought 7 various models of Tojiro's line and have since given away my Henckel's, Case and various other expensive kitchen knives. They don't hold a candle to the Tojiro's in the kitchen.
 
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