What are best budget,lower priced butcher/kitchen knives?

L

lonestar1979

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Mar 2, 2014
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I know theres many choices,victorinox,etc,but what do you think which ones have the best performance,heat treat,steel and grinds,and any experiences with major brands.
 
Probably Victorinox and Dexter russell, those are the go-to for commercial use.
F.Dick is a common one as well, especially with professional butchers.


Personally I'd go Russell green river because I like carbon steel.
 
If you're a fan of carbon steel blades, I can recommend a couple from Lee Valley:
- Peasant Chef's Knife: 6 3/4" blade, resin-impregnated wood handle
- Large Chef's Knife: 8 1/2" blade, resin-impregnated wood handle

I've had the Peasant knife for about 15 years, and really like it. My only complaint was the shortness of the blade. The "large" version looks like it will fix that, and will be on my Xmas list this year.
 
If you aren't wanting knives in blocks on display and just want good working knives, cost wise it's hard to beat Victorinix and Dexter for butcher and boning knives. I use them for processing deer and hogs often. Work great in the kitchen too.
 
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Dexter carbons work well. I have $300+ Japanese sujihiki and still use a 10" Dexter Butchers knife for slicing a lot instead of the Sujihiki. The blanks are like $20 and are easy to build up yourself with basic hand tools, too if you are handy!
 
Kitchen knives, Victorinox are an excellent budget choice, maybe hard to beat at the price point. Tojiro would be an excellent step up.

Butcher knives, Dexter Russell are my go to for a budget choice. Mac is more expensive but remarkable quality for the price.
 
Victorinox are good knives, but like most Eiuropeam knives they are soft steel about 56 HRC. Which makes them tough but prone to edge rolling as compared to say Tojiro that uses VG10 at 59/60 HRC in ther DP series. While VG10 is often reported as being chip prone I have yet to it on any Tojiro knife.
 
Does anyone know dexter russell hrc?I see a lot of Mercer knives for cheap,does anyone have experience with them,also cold steel boning knife is inexpensive on sale...
 
I know you requested budget choices, but for just 20-30% more than a Victorinox rosewood knife, you can get a Fujiwara FKM series semi stainless knife or a Richmond Artifex II ( even better steel). Either option would be quite a better quality for a little bit more money.
If budget price is the most important, get several Kiwi knives and a Wok Shop vegetable cleaver for less than the price of a Victorinox fibrox chef knife + boning knife.
 
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Thx for advice,will look into fujiwara and artifex,never heard of them before,already have one victorinox boning and few solingen butcher knives.
 
The Fujiwara and Artifex are nice kitchen knives, but not necessarily butcher style knives. Japanese kitchen knives in general are thinner, harder and will hold an edge longer, but are a bit more fragile in use than the western style knives. I use Japanese (or Japanese style) kitchen knives almost exclusively except for the Dexter 10" butcher blade and some fillet/boning knives I made myself.

Japanese knives are often different shapes/styles for their type of butchering animals. They are often single bevel, and thicker than their western counterparts with little to no flex. They work well once you get used to them, but I prefer a western shape/style of butchering knives, but use better/harder steels that hold an edge better.
 
Taz said:
The Fujiwara and Artifex are nice kitchen knives, but not necessarily butcher style knives. Japanese kitchen knives in general are thinner, harder and will hold an edge longer, but are a bit more fragile in use than the western style knives. I use Japanese (or Japanese style) kitchen knives almost exclusively except for the Dexter 10" butcher blade and some fillet/boning knives I made myself.

Japanese knives are often different shapes/styles for their type of butchering animals. They are often single bevel, and thicker than their western counterparts with little to no flex. They work well once you get used to them, but I prefer a western shape/style of butchering knives, but use better/harder steels that hold an edge better.
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I apologize for misunderstanding the OP’s request. I thought he talked about kitchen AND butcher knives, not only butcher knives. Fujiwara has a semi-stainless boning knife. The AUS8 steel in that is not hardened to the tipical high hardness of quality Japanese knives, so it should be tough enough for butchering.

I second the Old Hickory suggestion for toughness.
If you already have a Victorinox and several Solingens, then you have the typical Western options.

To better understand what are you looking for, maybe you should tell us what is the intended use. Is it large scale butchering of big carcasses (cow, deer, pig, goat) or occasional processing of smaller animals?

The Japanese honiyaki knives are usually shorter butcher knives used mainly for breaking down poultry but can be used for other butchering tasks too. They can come in a variety of steels, hardness and toughness.

For deer camp you have a very wide range of options: from cheap mass produced to customs, single knife or butchering kits etc.

For a low price comfortable user you may want to try the Chicago Cutlery BioCurve boning knives. Very comfortable ergonomic handles, 420 HC steel blades which are on the softer side (you can use steeling to maintain sharpness between sharpenings).
 
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I had old hickory butcher knife,their steel is little soft,will try some of Japanese choices.Victorinox flexible boning knife already does well,plus i have one of f.dick,swibo,eicker and zwilling knives,theyre pretty good.Dexter Russell ones and few other ones that i have no experience with are always on sale,but probably arent any better in any way than the ones I have.
 
Define “budget”. Your cheap and someone else’s cheap may be wildly different. How much per knife roughly?
 
20-30$,could be up to 50$,does anyone know if there is any difference between victorinox fibrox and victorinox swibo knives in steel and heat treat,or it is same knife basically?
 
In this price range I doubt you will find anything better than what you already have. I also doubt that Victorinox would use different steels, but I don’t know. If they are made in the same factory, it would be cheaper to use the same alloy and heat treatment for the same type of knife ( e.g. flexible fillet knife), but this is just speculation.
 
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