Steel Cutting Board

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Skiller1nc

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Jun 27, 2016
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I have a customer who wants a chef knife that they can use for cutting food on their Blackstone grill, yes like on the steel surface. They are adamant that they want damascus steel. I have warned them that the knife will dull pretty much instantly when used on a steel surface and that it could even chip, they said they are okay with this and still want to procede. I know this person personally so I am not worried about them not paying or complaining, etc. What I want to do however is make them the best knife possible for this use.

My plan was to leave the bte thickness a bit thicker and not grind to a zero edge, I was also going to convex the edge and run the blade at like 59 rc. Are there other things I need to be concerned with or better ways to go about this?
 
Cutting food on a griddle is really common in restaurants. Go to any taqueria and watch how they chop up the meat on the griddle. Usually its a standard NSF food service 8" or 10" chef knife. A beveled griddle scraper/chopper is common too. These are dull, low-HRC, ductile tools, but they work fine for slicing up small boneless cuts of beef, pork and chicken.
 
CasePeanut said:
Cutting food on a griddle is really common in restaurants. Go to any taqueria and watch how they chop up the meat on the griddle. Usually its a standard NSF food service 8" or 10" chef knife. A beveled griddle scraper/chopper is common too. These are dull, low-HRC, ductile tools, but they work fine for slicing up small boneless cuts of beef, pork and chicken.
Click to expand...
Yep, I just got back from taco Tuesday, so I can confirm.
 
I don't have much to add about the knife itself, but it is worth mentioning that habachi chefs use good technique to keep their knives from dulling. If you look at any of their videos, you'll notice that they use short, relatively straight knives. They place just the tip on the griddle and only use backward draw cuts. The main edge of the knife barely ever touches the griddle surface.

With taco chefs, they use a sharpened bench scraper in an up and down motion to basically chisel the cooked protein. I'm pretty sure those bench scrapers are sharpened at forty five degrees a side.

In either case, a sawing motion is a bad idea.
 
Damascus cladding over some other core?
My guess is that low hardness that will bend and can be steeled back into shape might be better than high hardness in this case. 5160 at 58rc?
 
Use some cheap thin stainless sheet metal and etch a pattern on it.
Or make him pay double price for some quality stainless damasteel, and sell him a new one every year.
Sorry but this like asking for a hammer that drives wood screws the tool/material simply doesnt match the use.
 
Run it a bit harder and keep it thicker bte with a steeper edge bevel so it's not chippy?
 
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