Great master class. The sign of a good teacher is the small steps between A and B explained well. Always learn something new every time I watch one of these videos. Thank you.😊
30 years ago, I had one kitchen knife, and it was dull. Now I have a dozen 3" paring knives, a pair of 8" chef's knives, and a trio of these "in-between" Petty Knives, which are the ones I use the most often. Kept sharp, they're versatile, comfortable, and easily my favorites of the whole group, and I use them for just about any kitchen cutting task.
I know this might be basic stuff for more hardcore cooks but honestly I learned so much from this video. I have an extreme fear of getting cuts (it is more painful to me than physical injury) but I also love cooking. I just invested in two very nice Japanese knifes and I am trying to learn as much as possible so I can use them faster but still safely.
Hey Mike, just wanted to say I took your advice and purchased a Ko-Bunka (Masakage Koishi Ko-Bunka)It was my first Japanese knife. Awesome knife. Incredibly sharp and useful. Great advice.
Good call out on the carrots and hummus after doing a grocery shop! Thanks for the video, very informative just as I'm about to make a purchase of one.
Great video as always Mike .. I love the ko-bunka as well because of the height and constant contact with my knuckles .. and as a bonus, I'm not going to get those that must, commenting on my onion cutting jokes, thanks for the save!
I have a nice Japanese handmade paring knife but I never end up using it :/ I find myself using my Santoku (200mm) for pretty much every task Great video and presentation though
thinking about a 140-150 petty with a narrow blade just for trimming meat. For any cutting on the board tasks I prefer a larger knife like my 180 Santoku.
After deboning chicken bits and other things, it would be great to see you hone up the knife after use. How many strokes etc. I get that if the knife is sharp in the first place it shouldnt take that long with the honing rod to put the edge back on. But every time i hit the knuckle on a chicken bone for example i feel i have done some damage to the edge.
I find the ricaso detail on that musashi petty interesting. Small story, this all comes back, trust me. I lost half a golf ball of steel on my 12 inch do all cold steel chef knife fighting a frozen block of chicken, no big loss. But last week I decided to snap the handle off grind everything above and behind the missing chuck of steel into a japanese style tapered tang since there was 8 inches of blade infront of the very large "chip", if you could even call it that, it was the whole fucken potato tbh. I was still using it with the usable edge starting 4 inches infront of my hand since everything else in the house was somehow worse but something needed to be done so I decided to settle for the 8 inches of blade it had left and a new handle (8 inches was alot more reasonable than its original size for how the purposes I used it tbh, like nobody should be cutting chilli with 12 inches of steel lmao.) I had decided to rehandle it with a wa style handle since I thought it hit a few design elements of a japanese knife now that the blade was so tall with its new proportions aswell as being suitably thin, with a bit of effort it could be revived. I had also been bitten by the bug. You know it of course, its why im here. I wanted a japanese (looking) knife and I was willing to commit sacriledge to get it. I used wood from an axe handle, probably hickory, removed heeeeaps of fat till I got a vague rectangle, then laminated some maybe 3.5mm thick black paper micarta I made between two sheets of copper I flattened from a pipe. I come more from the western knife crowd so I used two vertical hidden pins in all 5 layers of my handle for rigidity then burnt in the tang after forming the slot in the handle, once I got solid fitment I pulled the blade, notched the tang and used epoxy to set it and fill/plug the slot where there were gaps. If I do it again I want to try the dowel method and some nicer materials and better tools like a bench grinder I wish I never got rid of, this was just cobbled together by hand but im proud of it, especially how well I did hand filing the octagonal shape and making something pretty out of otherwise junk materials, I couldnt really be happier with how it turned out. (linked photos below) TL;dr: The interesting part is how I ground the heel, I too swept it out like that but I ended up with a slightly more agressive transition in the armpit, only cause I liked how it looked though and I somehow managed to pin the balance point right on the very beginning of the heel by complete accident and it feels superb in the grip shown, I guess now I know why haha, pretty stoked accidentally jacked a solid design principle. I've also learnt that while one (very large) knife can do most stuff, it probably shouldnt(which is a hilarious thought looking at those knfe racks), I picked up a yaxell ran plus kiritsuke for a stupid good price while I was working on the cold steelu mustinky (ive named it) and obviously since im here, im looking into other knives to round out the collection and hit certain niches to spare knives of tasks outside their purpose. Added some photos to go with such a long winded story. (imgur.com/a/lx7WxHg?fbclid=IwAR3ZD-l7-nDBffvAqtjHWBZJjneahCKBPAk-Pz5IlLLotWN9PiYcBxwVhc0) Yes I did most of this bare foot on my garage floor lmao.
This video has some great information, but the way you were waving those knives around made me seriously twitchy. If I were in that kitchen I'd be all, "Oh, don't mind me, just staying as far away from you as I can get..."
