Martha Stewart Everyday Full Tang 8" Chef's knife

Will,

I have been meaning to. They are quite pricey on the secondary market, $400 for the last one I saw with an etching and whale bone handle (I won't mention which bone the seller claimed it to be.)

How do his dive knives compare to the hunters? I have seen the dive knives from time to time for a good price, and I know JKM liked them.

The dendritic steel has some interesting qualities, it seems rather like talonite in its slcing abilities, but instead of being too soft it is too brittle.

I have a set of knives in Dendritic D2 that I have never used (they are a "collector" set) but I am very interested in how well they work.
 
Originally posted by Eric_Draven
They are quite pricey on the secondary market, $400 for the last one I saw with an etching and whale bone handle.
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Chad-

That's just because of the etching and whale bone. Boye's plain ironwood handled ones retail for less than $300 and at this time of year they are often put on sale. I'd think you could find one for $200 used, or contact him (David) direct for best price new.

How do his dive knives compare to the hunters?
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Not quite so good. I think Cliff still has some reviews of both styles up on his website, but I just swapped out computers and don't have Cliff's website address handy. Maybe he'll check back and give us the scoop, or you might check some of his other threads for a link to his home page and find it from there.

-Will
 
The fixed blade dive knives are very thick, ~3/8" at the spine so they are very difficult to work through thick material. However they have a similar very fine edge, though not as much as the hunters. They would out cut the vast majority of knives on shallow materials like ropes, flesh and the like, but will suffer in comparison on thick and binding materials and do very poorly for example on thick cardboard. As well I don't like the mix of properties of dendritic cobalt. It is the softest of the Stellite alloys which are soft by a class yet isn't very ductilile and is prone to edge breakouts in extended use. However his 440C makes for a truely excellent light use steel with his grind. Last I heard he was making dendritic folders for marine use with serrated blades in a wavy pattern.

-Cliff
 
Working with this yesterday revealed a semi-serious problem with the blade curvature near the handle, there is a very light recurve. This isn't that visible by eye and it doesn't influence performance on most cutting, vegetables and the like. However while cutting up cooked chicken bones, the knife could not finish the cuts in this area as the recurve kept the edge from contacting the cutting board. I had to move out on the blade nearer towards the tip. The edge should be straight or curved upward smoothly as on some Japanese knives in that region promoting the use of a rocking motion on hard cuts.

[The edge was not damaged by the cutting.]

-Cliff
 
A lot of kitchen knives develop a recurve after repeated sharpening. When I sharpen the knives at the local soup kitchen I often take the recurve out with my belt sander. This is the primary reason that I don't like wide bolsters on kitchen knives. It isn't too big a problem for me since I have a belt sander. It is a big problem for most users though they may not realize it.
 
On this one it isn't a functional problem now as it is very light and only shows up on bone cutting, which I mainly did as a test. If the recurve is significant though removing it would indeed be problematic unless you had power tools. On this blade though it could be removed in a few minutes doing some slices into side of a benchstone. I will probably take it out the first time I need to redo the edge relief.

-Cliff
 
I had to regrind the edge on this recently (belt sander, two passes per side) after trying to see if I could rock it through some frozen ground beef. Not a good idea the edge just bent, the edge of this blade is really thin, I would not recommend this even with a high grade knife, I was just curious how much damage would set in.

I set the edge at a really low angle (<10 degree per side) and was rewarded by a very floppy and visiable burr (<0.5 mm wide). The burr would not be readily removed with medium ceramics and I had to grind it off with a very obtuse angle (>35) and then reset the edge. Very time consuming.

Thus to no surprise this isn't a good choice for people who want high performance edges Japanese style which are very acute, however with fairly obtuse edge angles (>15) the performance is solid enough especially considering the price.

-Cliff
 
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