Latest / Chef's PSA Podcast / Blade Geometry, Steel Science & The Truth About Sharpening (Ep. 181)

Transcript

Blade Geometry, Steel Science & The Truth About Sharpening (Ep. 181) · Chef's PSA Podcast

• 0:00
  Hello chefs, this is Chef's PSA and I'm your host, Andre Natera.
• 0:03
  Today I'm joined by two experts in the knife world, Don Smolick
• 0:06
  from Study the Blade professional knife sharpener and
• 0:08
  Coulter Living Good, a professional knife maker, former
• 0:11
  chef. We breakdown proper knife
• 0:13
  maintenance, sharpening technique and everything you
• 0:15
  need to know to keep your blades performing at the highest level.
• 0:18
  And stay tuned at the end of this episode, we have a full
• 0:21
  sharpening tutorial from start to finish.
• 0:23
  If you're listening on audio only and you want to catch the
• 0:25
  demo, check out the YouTube or the Spotify version.
• 0:28
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• 1:22
  You know the steel has the guard.
• 1:24
  Yeah, right. And it's it's there to prevent
• 1:26
  you and I've never seen anyone other than this one time in my
• 1:28
  career someone hit themselves with with the using a steel with
• 1:32
  the guard. I did you have.
• 1:34
  Oh yes, what happened? So the restaurant we worked at
• 1:37
  super fancy and guests could pay like $500 to experience a day in
• 1:41
  the kitchen. And those are always extremes of
• 1:44
  stressful days for us because, you know, working that fast and
• 1:49
  with all that stress and you had to just bury it really deep down
• 1:52
  when someone had a glass of Chardonnay in their hands are
• 1:54
  like, oh, what are you working on?
• 1:57
  So we're all playing it up there.
• 1:59
  You give them a good time and I have my honing rod in my left
• 2:03
  hand and I'm kind of looking back talking to her and I go
• 2:06
  think I grabbed my petty and I grab an 11 inch slicer.
• 2:10
  So when I come down at the angle it goes right into my thumb and
• 2:13
  I just like covered it like wasn't any blood spurt or
• 2:15
  anything. And I said, oh, hold on, I'll be
• 2:17
  on my back. And I went back to the three pot
• 2:19
  sink and chef came over because he saw what I was doing and I
• 2:22
  like open my thumb up and you'd see my joint like, oh, this is
• 2:25
  really bad. We're busy and he's like, well,
• 2:28
  we're going to. He's, I said, I'm going to
• 2:30
  personally take you over to the emergency room.
• 2:32
  But the entire time that he took me there, he made me keep my
• 2:36
  hand above my head like I had a question in class just to shame
• 2:39
  me. Like it wasn't worse enough that
• 2:41
  the dude in the kitchen that had the nicest knives and hopefully
• 2:44
  the best knife skills because I was the knife guy had to walk
• 2:48
  around like this. For like.
• 2:49
  Two hours in the ER and then come back and finish prep.
• 2:53
  Hand brains Fucking yeah. Holy shit, yeah, that's wild.
• 2:57
  I I joke around on chef's PSA and I'll say a knife's not
• 3:00
  really yours until it cuts you. It's like marking its territory.
• 3:03
  It's like whenever you're really comfortable with the knife and
• 3:07
  all chefs fucking nick themselves.
• 3:08
  It doesn't matter how long you've been like, you'll nick
• 3:11
  yourself. But I notice I nick myself when
• 3:13
  it's a different knife most of the time.
• 3:14
  It's like when I, when I pick up something that I that I haven't
• 3:16
  ever used, like, hey, can I borrow your knife?
• 3:19
  And it's like some it's like one of these bad boys here and I'm
• 3:21
  going to cut chives and like, there goes the tip of my finger
• 3:25
  with the chives. Yeah.
• 3:27
  These are beautiful times, by the way.
• 3:28
  Thank you. What do you got going on here?
• 3:30
  So. For people that are audio only,
• 3:33
  there's a there's a some there's a what, 4 knives right here on
• 3:37
  the table. This is a good time to switch to
• 3:39
  video. So if you're on Apple and you
• 3:41
  can only listen and go to Spotify or YouTube so you can
• 3:44
  see. So these are obviously highly
• 3:48
  customizable, one of one types of chef's knives and big part of
• 3:52
  my inspiration is like hypercar lines.
• 3:55
  So that's where a lot of the materials and the quick angles,
• 4:01
  you know, some of them are carbon steel, like this is a 80
• 4:03
  crew, 4GB carbon with a carbon Damascus in the center.
• 4:07
  And then it has a very fancy marbled carbon fiber handle.
• 4:13
  And this is a custom Commission that I'm making for my boss
• 4:16
  because I'm an electrical contractor now.
• 4:20
  And you know, I try to keep in mind they're the person's
• 4:24
  strengths that I'm making it for.
• 4:26
  Like this is specifically made for someone that cooks at home.
• 4:28
  So it's more simple, it's not as aggressive, it's not huge and
• 4:31
  long, it's not dangerous. But then these I just kind of
• 4:34
  make hoping someone's going to want to buy it because, you
• 4:37
  know, using these materials and just kind of letting them form
• 4:41
  themselves into a basic idea of what I have.
• 4:44
  And for people that are listening and, and they can't
• 4:46
  see what, what are the three, the three types of or four types
• 4:49
  of knives that we have here? So.
• 4:51
  The first one that you spoke about.
• 4:52
  I'd say this one is a chef knife.
• 4:54
  This one's kind of like an in between petty chef.
• 4:57
  I mean most people this is a chef, but I think a chef knife
• 4:59
  is at least 10 inches. Anything smaller is more of like
• 5:02
  a line knife in my opinion. This is kind of a hybrid.
• 5:05
  Sand man inches or knife inches? Knife depends.
• 5:09
  On what you judge yourself. In particular metric.
• 5:15
  This one's kind of a hybrid cleaver santoku, but with a chef
• 5:18
  knife tip. Very tall it's got a hollow
• 5:21
  grind above the bevel that which not only makes it a little bit
• 5:24
  lighter, but it helps it pass through the product with less
• 5:27
  friction. And then I also have a suji Hiki
• 5:30
  or a meat slicer as Americans would call it.
• 5:33
  And this is with a new steel that a company called pops knife
• 5:38
  supply developed with like the godfather of American
• 5:40
  metallurgy, at least like now. And it's a it's a high carbon
• 5:44
  steel that's low alloy, but it gets extremely hard.
• 5:47
  It's very easy to work with and is a little bit less reactive.
• 5:52
  It's a beast. Yeah, these are all very
• 5:54
  beautiful. I love, I love all of them.
• 5:57
  You posted something yesterday, I think, and it was a Shun knife
• 6:00
  that has like the the scalloped edges.
• 6:03
  You said this is the the fucking worst, the worst knife that's
• 6:06
  ever been invented. What is that knife for anyways?
• 6:09
  It's kind of like a weird hybrid like petty serrated for like
• 6:13
  bread and tomatoes and God knows what else.
• 6:16
  But it's the dumbest design I've ever seen stupid.
• 6:18
  And cuz you can't sharpen it really like you cuz the scallops
• 6:21
  are so rounded and waved. You have to like do a very light
• 6:25
  technique on sharpening cuz you can't really recut serrations in
• 6:29
  it cuz it's really not serrated. It's like waved.
• 6:31
  So I don't know. It's one of those things that
• 6:33
  like, I just hate Shun. Yeah, nice.
• 6:35
  Why? Why do you hate Shun the the
• 6:37
  audience? You know all the all the
• 6:38
  culinary school students looking right now?
• 6:40
  They have that right now. Yeah, their stomach.
• 6:43
  They just bought the entire state chef.
• 6:46
  I think from my perspective as a sharpener, literally like 85% of
• 6:51
  shoe knives that I get are typically chipped in some sort
• 6:53
  of fashion. So I don't know what they do
• 6:56
  with the heating process, heat treatment, but it they're just
• 6:58
  very brittle. Yeah, I agree with that.
• 7:00
  They do a good job marketing it to mass.
• 7:02
  And so it's kind of like people's, you know, a lot of
• 7:06
  home cooks and early chefs like intro into like nice Japanese
• 7:08
  knives, but they just are poor quality from my perspective
• 7:12
  compared to knives that you can get that are equal in price and
• 7:16
  like way better steel and better design.
• 7:18
  So there was there was a point in time in the US where I feel
• 7:21
  like everyone was using like a a Hankels of Mercer, a Victorinox
• 7:26
  and trying to think who else was big of the time Woost off and we
• 7:30
  all use these heavy German knives.
• 7:32
  And then when Shun came on the market, it was like this was at
• 7:35
  least, and I'm I'm talking general, of course, there's
• 7:38
  there's restaurants on the fringe like they were.
• 7:40
  No, we've always been using the, the gangster ship.
• 7:43
  But there was a, there was a point in time, like maybe I'll
• 7:46
  call it like 2005 when Shun kind of came on the market and it was
• 7:49
  like, oh, everyone wanted a Shun.
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  I know I bought 1. I haven't dropped it and tip
• 7:53
  chipped off. But I, I just remember like that
• 7:56
  was a lot of in the United States, that was the first
• 7:58
  introduction to Japanese knives for a lot of, for a lot of
• 8:01
  chefs. And then I feel like shortly
• 8:02
  after that there was this big explosion of, of Japanese
• 8:06
  knives. So I guess my question is for
• 8:07
  both of you and you guys can answer it whoever whoever would
• 8:11
  like to take this, what is the big difference between Japanese
• 8:15
  style knives and you know, German style knives or Western
• 8:18
  style knives? I can start.
• 8:20
  It's typically like design and metals, Japanese style.
• 8:24
  You're going to have typically higher carbon steel content.
• 8:27
  Carbon steel holds a better edge.
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  It's a harder steel than say a stainless that a lot of German
• 8:32
  knives are made from. There's pros and cause on both
• 8:34
  side. Carbon steel gets harder, has a
• 8:37
  nice edge retention, but it's also more brittle because it's
• 8:39
  harder. Whereas German steel is a little
• 8:41
  bit softer, has a little bit more durability, I would say,
• 8:46
  but also softer steel is harder to sharper and harder to
• 8:49
  maintain. And they also kind of loses edge
• 8:50
  a little quicker. Now there's a lot of middle
• 8:54
  ground now, especially in Japanese making where there are
• 8:57
  doing a lot of carbon core and like a stainless laminate on the
• 9:00
  outside. So you kind of get the best of
• 9:02
  both worlds where you get a really hardcore interior steel
• 9:06
  wrapped in stainless. So you kind of get that edge
• 9:09
  from carbon in the easy maintenance from stainless.
• 9:13
  And I'm not exactly sure like why.
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  I'm sure it's just like access to metals and initially is why a
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  lot of German steels were made out of stainless.
• 9:21
  And it could have been more around easy maintenance for, you
• 9:25
  know, chefs and home cooks in Europe that were, you know,
• 9:28
  getting chef knives. Now, once that kind of
• 9:30
  restaurant boom happened long time ago, whereas on the
• 9:33
  Japanese side, every knife was super hyper specified and had a
• 9:37
  certain job typically. So you had a fish knife, you had
• 9:41
  a chicken knife, you had a, you know, all-purpose knife and you
• 9:44
  only use them for those things. Whereas you know, German
• 9:47
  European style knife started coming out and they were, you
• 9:50
  know, you had one knife for all of it.
• 9:52
  Your chef's knife, so your your paring knife fresh rated and you
• 9:55
  know, maybe a slicer. Yeah, so they made a more
• 9:57
  durable knife because it was doing a lot of different things.
• 10:00
  Whereas like my deba's only breaking down fish and it's the
• 10:04
  only thing I use it for. Yeah, from a Japanese.
• 10:05
  Perspective. My bird's paring knife was only
• 10:08
  used for tornay, by the way. Yeah, yeah.
• 10:11
  I mean, what do you even use that bird's big for?
• 10:12
  I guess, like clean corn, tomatoes.
• 10:14
  Tornay. Yeah, that's what we used.
• 10:16
  Used to have to peel green asparagus with.
• 10:18
  Yeah, yeah. Like like like color it.
• 10:20
  Well, he would expect us to take the skin off without removing
• 10:24
  the green underneath it. So when we're talking about like
• 10:28
  60 heads of asparagus for 30 dishes a night, that job could
• 10:33
  take almost an hour. And if you screwed it up, you
• 10:36
  were redoing it during service, and nothing is more stressful
• 10:39
  from it than that. That sounds fun.
• 10:42
  But I think I tried to do it the other day with a knife that I
• 10:45
  made. I'm like, man, I'm washed.
• 10:46
  I can't. Do that.
• 10:47
  Yeah, I can't do it. Yeah, it's funny game.
• 10:49
  But I was, I was talking with Amanda Rockman.
• 10:51
  She was on the podcast and we were talking about how, yeah, I
• 10:54
  used to make my cooks do like Brunois like all day long,
• 10:57
  especially when they would get hired.
• 10:59
  Like, OK, you're new. You're going to Brunois for 8
• 11:01
  hours until you're really good. And then tomorrow, guess what
• 11:03
  you're doing fucking Brunois again.
• 11:05
  And it was like perfect Brunois. Like pedal by pedal each onion,
• 11:09
  make sure everything is perfect. And you know, what am I going to
• 11:12
  do with it? Like fucking soup, right?
• 11:14
  It's, it's going, it's going in the puree, it's going in
• 11:16
  something. It's like, I don't really need
• 11:17
  the Brunois. I need you to get good.
• 11:20
  And so I had to had to make a meat pie and I decided to, it
• 11:25
  was I was doing a pork meat pie and I decided to Brunois the
• 11:28
  celery root and the carrots and the onions, you know, the way I
• 11:32
  would. And I was like, why the fuck did
• 11:34
  I make people? I was like, fuck, I forgot how
• 11:37
  hard this is. This is fucking silly.
• 11:39
  They'd be laughing at me right now.
• 11:40
  Look at how much my skills have eroded anyway.
• 11:45
  And I'll say to that for a young cook that is doing a lot of
• 11:49
  Brunois something you really need to understand that if you
• 11:51
  get into high carbon steel knives and you Brunois red
• 11:55
  onion, they will turn brown and black.
• 11:58
  The the onions, yeah. Because they will react with the
• 12:01
  create an oxide layer on the carbon steel, which will
• 12:04
  transfer to the onion. Now, if it's something that
• 12:06
  you're cooking, that oxide will like disappear if you were to
• 12:10
  saute them or sweat them or something.
• 12:12
  But if, like we, we had a lot of caviar go out and you know, it
• 12:15
  was all, you know, just the past yolks, the past whites through a
• 12:20
  Tammy and then a lot of like perfect, you know, chives and
• 12:25
  red onion. And I'd just gotten probably my
• 12:27
  first carbon steel knife and I'd spent you know, 30 minutes doing
• 12:31
  a nine pan of like the most pristine.
• 12:34
  Like, even though I would, I would filet the red onion to get
• 12:37
  them the size of the square that I was going to make every single
• 12:41
  one. And 30 minutes later I look in
• 12:44
  that pan and they're fucking black.
• 12:48
  And there is. I don't think there's anything
• 12:49
  worse than that. Yeah, no, that's just a heart.
• 12:51
  Heart drop, Yeah. So stainless for your.
• 12:54
  Did you go up to chef and say chef?
• 12:56
  I think there's something wrong with the onions that's.
• 12:59
  If I got bad onions. Shit in the garbage instead of
• 13:02
  behind his back. He's like, why are you doing
• 13:03
  those again? I was like, I think I need a
• 13:04
  little bit more. That's too funny since we kind
• 13:08
  of touched a little bit on the difference between Japanese
• 13:12
  knives and, you know, Western style German knives.
• 13:16
  If if you're, if you're a new cook, what do you recommend
• 13:19
  people typically start with? I'll tell you what I tell people
• 13:21
  and I'd love to know if you agree or disagree.
• 13:24
  But from my stance when I was training cooks, I might change
• 13:27
  my stance on this now. I would say start out with
• 13:30
  German knives. It's a little heavier, it's a
• 13:31
  little safer. And then when you get as you get
• 13:34
  better, transition to a Japanese knife.
• 13:36
  Because if you start out when you don't know what you're
• 13:38
  doing, like you're going to take some fingertips off pretty
• 13:40
  quickly with those Japanese knives.
• 13:41
  They're fucking razor sharp. And so it's like start out here
• 13:47
  with training wheels, graduate over here to, you know, training
• 13:49
  wheels free that that that's always been my perspective, but
• 13:52
  I'm curious if you guys agree or disagree with that.
• 13:55
  Well, you can find Japanese handmade knives that are in the
• 14:01
  price point of a German knife. And I think it's important to
• 14:04
  find something that is going to let you execute the job that
• 14:08
  you're doing nicely. And if you first start with the
• 14:12
  Henkels and you have that like really WAVY, there's no flat on
• 14:15
  the blade, you're going to find yourself not being able to do
• 14:18
  the skills that you maybe want to do.
• 14:20
  And if you can get something for the same price that has a better
• 14:23
  profile, regardless of it, like cuts better or sharpens as well.
• 14:26
  I think getting used to something that's going to be in
• 14:28
  your future. You know, you don't buy like a
• 14:31
  weird looking guitar if you want to learn how to play a good
• 14:33
  acoustic guitar because you're going to buy a cheaper acoustic
• 14:35
  guitar and if you can get one that's going to do the job and
• 14:38
  get you used to that shape and how to hold it and how to
• 14:40
  sharpen it. I think that's what I would
• 14:42
  recommend. But just understand that the
• 14:44
  very first knife you have, you need to learn to sharpen it
• 14:47
  immediately and you will destroy it.
• 14:49
  Yeah, and I think that that's a good point.
• 14:50
  And and part of the reason why I recommend the Germanized or a
• 14:54
  less expensive knife is because when you're young, you don't
• 14:57
  really appreciate the value of it getting stolen yet, which
• 14:59
  happens a lot, happens a lot in kitchens.
• 15:01
  You don't want to spend $1000 on your first knife ever and then
• 15:03
  boom, the, the, the, the, the line cook that's been eyeing it
• 15:08
  like, oh, where'd you get that? Right?
• 15:09
  That's mine. I don't know what happened.
• 15:12
  So and so was using that someone's using it or you, you
• 15:16
  don't know how to maintain the steel or you drop it in it.
• 15:18
  You know, you chip it and then you like, I would say, learn how
• 15:22
  to understand the knife before you go spend a lot of money on
• 15:24
  the knife. That's that's part of why I say
• 15:26
  what I say. Yeah.
• 15:27
  And like you said, you can you can find really good comparable
• 15:30
  pricing on Japanese knives that are lower maintenance but still
• 15:33
  really high quality, like Mac, for example, or Missono.
• 15:37
  Pretty sure both of them are like Swedish steel but made in
• 15:40
  Japan. It's a really high quality
• 15:42
  product. And I think a chef knife runs
• 15:44
  like 100 bucks, 120 bucks maybe for those.
• 15:47
  So pretty comparable to a Henkels.
• 15:49
  I think like from German eye perspective, like I try to tell
• 15:53
  people to avoid anything that has like a full bolster all the
• 15:56
  way to the heel. And if you watch any of my
• 15:58
  videos, you know that I fucking hate full Busters because they
• 16:01
  are a pain in the ass to sharpen.
• 16:02
  And what happens over time is you start to get a little wave
• 16:06
  hook that culture was meaning. And those, like, notoriously
• 16:09
  Hankels. And yeah, yeah, I mean, I feel
• 16:11
  like every Hankels knife I could imagine in my brain right now
• 16:13
  has a full bolster. Yeah, and they're just a pain in
• 16:16
  the ass. So try to stay away from those.
• 16:17
  And there's a lot of other German brands that will make
• 16:19
  them without them that you can find.
• 16:21
  I think from like a performance and just design perspective.
• 16:24
  If you can find them without a full bolster, that's typically
• 16:26
  the best way to go. That's also just going to last
• 16:27
  you a lot longer overall. What are OK, So what are some of
• 16:33
  the rules of the kitchen like? If we're solving the world's
• 16:35
  problems like cook one O 1, here's what you need to know
• 16:40
  when you walk into a kitchen for the first time.
• 16:41
  These are the rules when it comes to chef's knives.
• 16:44
  What are some of those rules like?
• 16:46
  Have a sharp knife. Have a sharp knife, right?
• 16:48
  That's like step one. Have a.
• 16:49
  That's how I learned to sharpen. I was working in a kitchen and I
• 16:52
  was like breaking down brisket and, and pork shoulder for this
• 16:55
  like meatball dish we had. And I, I was naive.
• 16:58
  I didn't know I was young. I didn't, I was just kind of
• 17:00
  going through and cutting and everything.
• 17:01
  And my Stew chef could see I was struggling.
• 17:03
  He's like, what the fuck's going on?
• 17:05
  And I was like, I'm breaking this down chef.
• 17:07
  He's like, your knife is dull as shit.
• 17:08
  And I was like, I don't know. So he like kind of showed me the
• 17:12
  basics on how to sharpen on whetstones.
• 17:14
  And I was like, oh, OK. And then it clicked.
• 17:16
  I was like, man, like I've been a fool for so long.
• 17:19
  And that kind of kicked off my like, obsession with knife
• 17:21
  sharpening. What?
• 17:22
  What are some other other laws that should be like?
• 17:25
  Don't touch my knives, Always ask.
• 17:27
  Always ask. Yeah, don't put them in the in
• 17:30
  the don't put. Them in dish bit.
• 17:31
  Yeah, don't, don't put them in the sink, especially like for
• 17:33
  the dishwasher that's unaware. Yeah.
• 17:34
  Super dangerous. Yeah, yeah.
• 17:36
  You lose a finger that way. I've seen it happen.
• 17:39
  Don't put your whole knife roll on your station.
• 17:41
  Right, Honestly, my, my thing is like don't take all the lives,
• 17:44
  you know, especially like when you're a young cook, you have
• 17:46
  like a whole roll with like 100 things, 100 gadgets, like take
• 17:49
  them all out. Like you're only going to use
• 17:50
  your chef knife today? Yeah, that's probably the only
• 17:52
  thing you need on your station. Half sheep hand?
• 17:55
  Yeah, whatever you can fit on there, that should be what you
• 17:57
  have. Yeah, and when it comes to like,
• 18:01
  I'll tell you my recommendation. I'm curious if you all agree.
• 18:04
  For most jobs, you probably only need 3 knives.
• 18:07
  You need a, you know, chef knife, a petty knife, maybe a
• 18:10
  serrated sometimes, you know, for artichokes or something a
• 18:12
  little bit, you know, peeling a root vegetable or something like
• 18:15
  that. Outside of that, you and and
• 18:18
  maybe a Honing Rogers deal, right, That's probably all you
• 18:21
  need for the for most things. For most things, Yeah, for most
• 18:23
  things. So of course, you know, if
• 18:24
  you're butchering fish all day, you might need a dabba or yeah,
• 18:28
  a slicer of some sort. But your sushi chef, obviously
• 18:31
  you have some specialized skills.
• 18:32
  But for the most part, I think 90% of the jobs that you're
• 18:35
  going to encounter in in most kitchens, you probably just need
• 18:37
  a, you know, a good chef knife petty and it's ready.
• 18:39
  You guys agree with that? Totally.
• 18:41
  I agree, the only thing I'll say is the more edge you have, the
• 18:45
  longer it's going to stay sharp. From like a link perspective.
• 18:49
  Yeah. So if you have, the more knives
• 18:51
  you have, the longer they're going to stay sharp until you
• 18:53
  have time to sharpen them at the end of the week.
• 18:55
  I see. And that might be, you know, I'm
• 18:57
  obviously the guy who's trying to sell knives, so I want people
• 19:00
  to buy. More where?
• 19:00
  By the way, where can people get your knives?
• 19:02
  Livinggoodgrindhouse.com. I don't put my inventory up
• 19:05
  there a lot, so if you just follow me on Instagram, yeah,
• 19:08
  it's usually what I do most of my business.
• 19:10
  But I'm on YouTube Shorts and Tick Tock and Reddit which is a
• 19:13
  new one which is very interesting.
• 19:15
  Terrifying almost say good things about me on Reddit.
• 19:16
  Yeah. I mean, yeah.
• 19:18
  But I mean, arguing with idiots increases engagement.
• 19:23
  Yeah, good for you. You're a better band than it.
• 19:25
  Doesn't hurt my feelings because I know I know more about these
• 19:28
  things and I made them. So what?
• 19:29
  The fuck do they know? Yeah, you Do You ever venture
• 19:31
  into like, the kitchen knife forums?
• 19:34
  That's where I got my start in learning how to like trade in
• 19:37
  purchases, like, you know, buy, buy, sell, trade.
• 19:40
  And that's how like most people in the knife world, like enter,
• 19:44
  they get on the forums, they learn a lot because there's a
• 19:46
  lot of information on there that not even chefs know, especially
• 19:49
  chefs don't know. And then you work your way into
• 19:52
  like getting that first thing that's popular and then you can
• 19:55
  sell to someone for a little bit of a loss and then get something
• 19:57
  a little bit nicer and just work your way up to the point where
• 20:00
  you realize internationally there's thousands and thousands
• 20:03
  of custom knife makers that are making knives one at a time to
• 20:05
  your exact specifications. And once you're into that world,
• 20:09
  it's really hard to appreciate, you know, just the pictures.
• 20:12
  But like once you hold one, I mean, it's so much different,
• 20:16
  especially if it's wood that you picked, you know, you.
• 20:19
  You know, I've even like taken pieces of material from people
• 20:22
  and you know, it had a no significance emotionally for me,
• 20:26
  but for them it tied that a lot to them.
• 20:28
  Like their ashes or something. Yeah.
• 20:30
  Well, I mean like that's actually, I mean, it has
• 20:32
  happened. I haven't done it.
• 20:34
  This is my grandfather's handle. Yes, my grandfather's in the
• 20:36
  handle. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:37
  That's why I'm curious like. There have been pets that have
• 20:39
  been crucibled into carbon steel to make knives for.
• 20:43
  And that have a lucky rabbit's butt.
• 20:46
  Maybe just get a photo. Maybe I'll lock it.
• 20:50
  Yeah, yeah. It's interesting that you say.
• 20:54
  You said a couple of interesting things that really piqued my
• 20:57
  interest. One I thought about this is
• 20:59
  like, there's always that one person in the kitchen.
• 21:03
  Chefs have a general knowledge of knives, but then there's that
• 21:05
  one person that knows everything about fucking knives and
• 21:08
  everyone goes to that one and like, hey, can you sharpen my
• 21:10
  knife? Hey, can you?
• 21:11
  What should I buy? Like you, that was you.
• 21:13
  I sharpen everyone's knives in. The kitchen, I think for free.
• 21:17
  Well, here's here's what I would recommend to chefs that are out
• 21:19
  there because there's always that one cook that also has like
• 21:21
  the crisp blue Brigard aprons that's always clean right And
• 21:26
  then there's the one chef that has you know the, the sharp
• 21:29
  knives is like, why don't you guys just like you don't like
• 21:33
  washing your aprons. I'll wash everyone's aprons.
• 21:35
  You you sharpen everyone's knives like start barter system
• 21:39
  in the kitchen and now everyone has sharp knives.
• 21:42
  Now everyone has clean aprons and maybe a couple of other
• 21:44
  things like hey, I'll be the theCHIVE guy or whatever, right?
• 21:47
  They cut the best chives. I hate cutting chives for
• 21:49
  whatever the barter system in the kitchen could go a long way.
• 21:52
  So I, I, I think that's interesting because a lot of
• 21:55
  times I know I had those people in my kids like, oh, they like
• 21:58
  fucking sharpening the antiques because I never used them that
• 22:00
  much. But yeah, hey, you go, you go.
• 22:03
  You go for it. You go for it.
• 22:05
  But nothing will upset a knife sharpener more than after a
• 22:08
  service. A dudes like these things don't
• 22:09
  show up anymore. Although I saw you cutting into
• 22:12
  a lamb bone with it like it's not a lightsaber.
• 22:15
  What do you think is going to happen?
• 22:16
  Yeah. Especially when the edge is so
• 22:18
  thick, like you've no concept of like maintaining the geometry of
• 22:21
  the knife which actually does the cutting.
• 22:23
  As a matter of fact, I think that's how I chip my shine.
• 22:26
  Like like the first time I bought a shunt is like, I think
• 22:28
  I was butchering something. I hit a bone and it's like boom,
• 22:30
  chips. I was like, fuck there, there we
• 22:31
  go. I just paid $200 for my shunt.
• 22:33
  Yeah, yeah, I think that's one thing you brought up a good
• 22:35
  point of, like chefs don't understand, and a lot of early
• 22:39
  sharpeners too, is like geometry is what is the real deal.
• 22:42
  Like that's what you need to understand.
• 22:43
  Like it's not about sharpness, it's about geometry and like
• 22:46
  making that apex, you know, make sense and like do its job versus
• 22:51
  like, oh, it's just really sharp.
• 22:52
  Like, well, now there's like a lot more behind it.
• 22:54
  Like, I feel like I've learned more about geometry since I
• 22:57
  started this business than I ever did.
• 22:59
  Can you geek out on that? So I, I have no idea, like, and
• 23:02
  also the audience could probably really love to geek out.
• 23:05
  Yeah, geek out on geometry for a bit.
• 23:06
  So I mean, any kind of knife that you're buying is coming
• 23:09
  from a factory, whether it's German or Japanese, Shawn
• 23:11
  Hickel's, whatever it is, they're grounded machine that
• 23:14
  can only grind something flat. So what you're basically making
• 23:17
  in is elongated triangle. So there's not enough ease in
• 23:22
  separating that product and it very quickly comes to a
• 23:26
  thickness of the steel that's going to crack that product
• 23:28
  open. It's going to give it a feeling
• 23:30
  of it not being sharp, which really it just has bad geometry.
• 23:33
  The biggest difference between, you know, handmade knives like
• 23:37
  I'm doing and those is that I can control the convexity from
• 23:41
  the spine of the knife to the edge.
• 23:44
  So instead of it being flat, it's very slightly coming at the
• 23:48
  convex. So both sides kind of have a
• 23:50
  hump and you can see it if you look at it down the choil you
• 23:56
  can see that it almost looks flat, but it if you were to set
• 23:59
  it down on a stone flat it would.
• 24:00
  Only sharpen the edge. So that is actually what is
• 24:05
  doing most of the cutting with the knife and I even all my cut
• 24:10
  testing I never sharpen the knife until it's 100% finished.
• 24:14
  All the cut testing is done with a dulled edge.
• 24:17
  It would still cut your skin because it has burrs on it from
• 24:19
  the grinding. But I on making sure that the
• 24:22
  geometry is doing the cutting and has nothing to do with the
• 24:24
  sharpness. Yeah, yeah.
• 24:26
  So if you're sharpening and you know, a lot of people, they get
• 24:29
  excited when they move up in their grit.
• 24:30
  They're like started at 500 grit and they go up to 1000 or and
• 24:33
  then they go to like 3000 and they cut paper and like, hell
• 24:36
  yeah, this is really sharp. Like a true test is if you can
• 24:39
  start your sharpening process on like a 220 or 300 grit, so a
• 24:42
  very coarse stone and you can cut through paper super clean,
• 24:45
  right for that. Like then you're on the right
• 24:47
  route because you're understanding the geometry of
• 24:49
  the blade. So the convexity there is
• 24:50
  talking about helps give it a little bit more strength behind
• 24:53
  the apex, which is the actual cutting edge.
• 24:55
  And it's just going to help you last the edge last a lot longer.
• 24:59
  Now talking about different types of steel, because that's,
• 25:01
  that's a big question that has come up in, in the comments
• 25:04
  recently is I guess if you could give us a primer on on the
• 25:09
  different types of steel and then when they should and should
• 25:12
  it be used? I think it's not really the
• 25:18
  steel that's important, it's the heat treatment that's important.
• 25:21
  Obviously the difference between stainless and carbon is carbon
• 25:24
  will react to acids and oils and it will develop a patina the
• 25:29
  same way a cast iron pan would rust really quickly if you're to
• 25:32
  scrub it with something abrasive.
• 25:34
  The patina in the pan is when you're, you know, baking on the
• 25:37
  carbon out of the oil and it makes it black.
• 25:40
  The same thing happens over time.
• 25:42
  If you apply the proper amount of acids and don't let it rest,
• 25:46
  it gets black, develops patina. And especially nowadays, there's
• 25:51
  so much advances in metallurgy that you know, the thing back in
• 25:55
  the day is people were like, well, stainless steel feels
• 25:57
  gummy when I'm sharpening it. But I mean, nowadays the playing
• 26:02
  field between the high carbon steels and stainless steels is
• 26:05
  like, I would say stainless steels are much more advanced
• 26:08
  now. They're much harder, they get
• 26:10
  sharper, but that also is going to mean that you're maintaining
• 26:14
  of them is going to be a lot more of a time investment as
• 26:16
  well. Yeah.
• 26:19
  Yeah. And it, it really depends.
• 26:20
  Like there's like you're saying, there's so many different new
• 26:23
  like things being made from a metal perspective.
• 26:25
  Like there's, you know, I think it's SLD is a really good
• 26:28
  example where it's kind of a combo.
• 26:29
  What's SLD? It's a type of metal if you use
• 26:31
  for knives. And so it's kind of this like
• 26:33
  nice hybrid of stainless and carbon.
• 26:36
  So it's really hard, but you get them low maintenance of
• 26:39
  stainless. And I think from if you're a
• 26:41
  cook, especially working in kitchen day-to-day in, day out.
• 26:44
  And either if you're new or if you're a more seasoned chef.
• 26:47
  Like I would rather use a stainless knife and a kitchen
• 26:51
  I'm using all day and then save my carbon for homework or like
• 26:56
  specific tasks where it's not like a lot of daily use.
• 27:01
  I think like more often than not, knives that I get from
• 27:04
  chefs to sharpen, if they're carbon, they're like destroyed,
• 27:08
  not destroyed, but like they're pretty fucked up and so.
• 27:12
  Chefs, are you listening? I'm about to piss some people
• 27:14
  off. Think back.
• 27:16
  Think back who? Who you've been tagging on
• 27:18
  Instagram. Yeah, you.
• 27:19
  It might be me. Fuck.
• 27:22
  By the way, for people that don't know, you did a great job
• 27:23
  with my knives. Thank you.
• 27:24
  Yeah. You.
• 27:25
  You took. I don't know how many knives I
• 27:27
  gave you, but you gave them back to me.
• 27:28
  Fucking razor sharp. Beautiful.
• 27:30
  Yeah, they looked they. I mean, I gave them to you like
• 27:33
  they need some work. I hadn't, I hadn't been very
• 27:36
  active. They did I, I haven't been
• 27:38
  active that much. That was flower, by the way.
• 27:43
  By the way, at home I have two sets.
• 27:46
  OK, so that's like my professional set.
• 27:48
  And then I have a drawer with all Maiden knives.
• 27:51
  Nice shout out to Maiden because you know, they, they, they
• 27:54
  hooked me up when I, when I bought my house, they hooked me
• 27:56
  up and they, I mean, shout out to Maiden.
• 27:58
  I'll give them some love right now because they might be
• 27:59
  listening because you're on. Chip Jakes sponsored podcast.
• 28:02
  Yeah, yeah, hint. Hence they don't sponsor the
• 28:04
  podcast. So I might give a shout out to
• 28:06
  to Heston. But all joking aside, when I
• 28:10
  when I when I bought my house, they sent me a home, a house
• 28:13
  warming gift. Nice.
• 28:14
  And they hooked me up like copper pots, pans, everything.
• 28:18
  They're the copper lines sick. Wine classes, decanter, you
• 28:23
  know, plates, everything. They, they completely took care
• 28:27
  of my entire kitchen. And then so I have two sets of
• 28:30
  maiden knives. I have the red set and I have
• 28:31
  the black set. So it's like I use that.
• 28:34
  I have like a full drawer of like maidens.
• 28:35
  Like it's easy for what I'm cooking in the kitchen.
• 28:38
  Yeah, those are good knives. I mean, the other ten made of
• 28:40
  France, it's like a 7th generation knife maker for their
• 28:43
  maid. Like pretty legit stuff.
• 28:45
  I'm justifying the dust, but I mean, I'm justifying it when it,
• 28:51
  when it comes to knife maintenance, what are what are
• 28:57
  some of the, the most important things that chefs and cooks need
• 29:00
  to know when it comes to knife maintenance?
• 29:01
  Like that's the first question. How often should you be honing?
• 29:03
  How often should you be sharpening?
• 29:05
  And how often and how often should you be cleaning?
• 29:07
  And what should you be cleaning with for for maintenance,
• 29:10
  especially when you have beautiful handles like this?
• 29:14
  I think from like easiest thing is like make sure they're clean
• 29:17
  with soap and water and dry immediately.
• 29:20
  Like don't run into the dish pit, don't run through your
• 29:22
  dishwasher at home. It's just kind of destroy them
• 29:24
  and wear on them a lot harder or a lot quicker.
• 29:28
  From a honing perspective. You know, I try to hold my knife
• 29:32
  every time I'm going to prep or every other time.
• 29:34
  I'm kind of more in the camp now of using a Strop just because I
• 29:38
  do use more Japanese knives. And so if you have prolonged use
• 29:42
  with a honing rod and you're not properly sharpening as well,
• 29:46
  you're going to start getting a kind of a curve in your blade
• 29:48
  because you're going to be doing it too hard and you're going to
• 29:50
  be doing it over and over and it's actually going to remove
• 29:52
  metal overtime. So I suggest getting a leather
• 29:56
  strap that's going to be a lot less damaging to your knife
• 30:00
  overtime than a steel grant. It's a little bit harder to like
• 30:03
  put in a knife roll and stuff and you don't want to get it wet
• 30:05
  because it's leather. But especially if you have a lot
• 30:07
  more Japanese knives, definitely recommend getting a strap.
• 30:11
  And if you have wood handles, just buy some mineral oil.
• 30:13
  Or if you want to go a little bit better get tongue oil.
• 30:17
  Both super cheap to get. That'll help condition your
• 30:20
  knife. The handle keep it like looking
• 30:22
  better over time. What about for those chefs that
• 30:26
  their knives have turned rusty? Easiest thing, they sell these
• 30:32
  on Amazon. They're called like Rust
• 30:33
  erasers. Yeah, little, little square, I
• 30:35
  think those are. 6 bucks, get one of those that'll last you
• 30:38
  your entire career and just give that a little with some water, a
• 30:41
  little wipe on the blade. That'll take the rest off super
• 30:43
  easily. Can use steel wool as well, like
• 30:46
  quadruple a lot and it won't scratch it as much as those
• 30:49
  because they're kind of lower grit.
• 30:50
  There's two of them that you can buy and it'll be very obvious
• 30:53
  that you've been scrubbing it with something that's super
• 30:56
  abrasive. So I mean, if you have carbon
• 30:58
  steel knives and there's rust on it, it's not the end of the
• 31:00
  world. In fact, if you use like WD40
• 31:04
  and some quadruple lot steel wool, it will keep this dark
• 31:07
  patina and remove the rust. And since it already has those
• 31:11
  oxides on there, it's going to make it less reactive over time.
• 31:14
  So the more you can build up your oxides and the patina on
• 31:17
  the knife, the less reactive is going to it's going to be.
• 31:20
  Now just just going back on on knife maintenance when it comes
• 31:25
  to sharpening, there's a lot of sharpening kits on Amazon.
• 31:28
  They're like $10 and then there's some that are super
• 31:32
  expensive. So for people that don't know,
• 31:34
  what are some of the, the basics when it comes to purchasing a
• 31:37
  knife sharpening set? How would you advise people,
• 31:40
  should they, should they get the, you know, the, the, the
• 31:43
  triangle stone with the mineral oil?
• 31:45
  Should they get to the whetstone?
• 31:47
  Should they get the little V thing?
• 31:49
  Yeah, don't, don't get a whole through sharpener, please.
• 31:52
  A whole through sharpener will destroy your knife so fast.
• 31:54
  I stay away from any kind of oil stone.
• 31:58
  It's just it's gets messy and it's a pain in the ass.
• 32:01
  So like, don't waste your time with those.
• 32:03
  Get a whetstone. You know, depending on your
• 32:06
  budget, you can find, you know, little combination stones on
• 32:08
  Amazon for 20 bucks. The downside of that is going to
• 32:11
  be there's a lot more ceramic filler in those and there's not
• 32:14
  more of the aluminum oxide that's actually helping you
• 32:16
  doing the cutting process like of the actual metal.
• 32:20
  So you can find a good middle ground of a 40 to $60.00
• 32:24
  whetstone that you're going to have your entire career for the
• 32:27
  most part, or you're going to have it for at least 10 years
• 32:30
  after use. So I would say like find a
• 32:33
  middle ground on pricing. Go to likesharpeningsupplies.com
• 32:37
  or knifeware or Chubo knives. They're going to have a better
• 32:41
  quality stone than you're. Going to find family.
• 32:45
  Versus finding like an Amazon pay six thing that you're going
• 32:48
  to be pissed off because you're going to buy and you're going to
• 32:49
  spend 20 bucks and you think, you think you're going to suck
• 32:52
  at sharpening because you're not going to get a result, but it's
• 32:54
  because it's a crappy stone so. And and so walk people through
• 32:58
  the basics of how to sharpen your knife using a whetstone.
• 33:00
  If you if you guys wouldn't mind soaking.
• 33:04
  Yeah, go. What are you doing soaking it in
• 33:05
  water? To Harpen back a little bit on
• 33:09
  the sharpening kit, if if you're an executive chef and you're not
• 33:12
  providing your kitchen with the bare necessity necessities to
• 33:16
  teach your cooks how to sharpen their knives and you expect them
• 33:20
  to have sharp knives, Well, if you don't know how they're going
• 33:22
  to know, you're supposed to be teaching them everything that
• 33:25
  they supposed to know. So if you can't afford one stone
• 33:28
  flattener, one set up to where you can put the stone on and one
• 33:31
  combination stone that's in like the four to 500 to 1000 to 2000
• 33:35
  range for your cooks and then expect them to use it and
• 33:37
  maintain it. That's just, it's going to
• 33:39
  increase their discipline because it's giving them
• 33:41
  something that they have on top of their prep, which they need
• 33:43
  because they're all slow and they need to learn how to get in
• 33:45
  the ships and get out of it. And you're going to be, they're
• 33:50
  going to be doing what you want them to do, which is have sharp
• 33:52
  knives and do better knife skills.
• 33:54
  What? Was the next question I forgot.
• 33:58
  No, the process of sharpening, yeah.
• 34:00
  Yeah, yeah. So what what is the the process
• 34:03
  to prepare your whetstones for sharpening and then what do you
• 34:05
  recommend during that process of sharpening?
• 34:08
  I'll talk about stone maintenance then you can get.
• 34:11
  So if your stones are not flat, then your edge is not going to
• 34:14
  be straight and it's not going to get as sharp as it can be
• 34:18
  because you don't have the deck tile and psychic abilities to
• 34:22
  run your edge on 1/2 pipe and keep that angle at 15 to 20° the
• 34:25
  entire time. So with your stone, you should
• 34:28
  always have a flattener. The cheapest they come is
• 34:30
  something that's a lower grit type of material that your stone
• 34:33
  is made of that has grooves for like all of the slurry and
• 34:36
  schluff that comes out of the stone.
• 34:38
  The best thing you can possibly get is something like ADMT
• 34:41
  diamond stone or an Atoma, which is Japanese word diamond stone
• 34:46
  that's in like 120 to 140 grit range.
• 34:49
  And it's basically just a piece of aluminum with a sticky
• 34:52
  backing that has like these little pinpricks of diamonds on
• 34:56
  them and keep them flat. And what you want to do is you
• 34:59
  want to take the stone, take your pencil that you have in the
• 35:01
  kitchen anyways, and do a bunch of diagonal and then
• 35:05
  perpendicular lines the diagonal and basically cross it up.
• 35:08
  And then when you you start to flatten the stone, wash it off,
• 35:12
  you're going to see the pencil mark that the stone is not
• 35:15
  touching. Well, that wouldn't be touching
• 35:17
  your edge either. So and you can continue to
• 35:20
  flatten that until all the pencils gone.
• 35:23
  And then since you've raised the height, the lower the height of
• 35:25
  that stone, all of the edges on the top of that stone are going
• 35:28
  to be really sharp. And if you're not good enough
• 35:30
  yet and you come over, you're going to chip your knife.
• 35:32
  So the last thing you should do after flattening is take a 45°
• 35:36
  angle on every single corner on the front, back, sides, and also
• 35:40
  the corners as well. So you don't have anything
• 35:42
  that's going to bite into the knife if your angle gets a
• 35:45
  little wonky? People that are listening, I'll
• 35:47
  put up a little video of tutorial of you guys how to
• 35:50
  sharpen. I think that would be very cool
• 35:52
  just so they could understand some of the techniques that
• 35:54
  we're talking about on the on the episode.
• 35:55
  So when it comes to sharpening, you're the man you you took care
• 35:59
  of my antiques and a lot of other chefs around here.
• 36:02
  You're like the the Austin knife guru that every every, every
• 36:06
  chef in my in my circle of influence, you know, goes to
• 36:10
  you. But can you walk us through the
• 36:12
  process of basic knife sharpener?
• 36:14
  Sure. Yeah, From a stone perspective,
• 36:16
  there's two different types. There's our, there's two room
• 36:18
  type of ceramic stones. You have a soaking stone and you
• 36:21
  have a what is called splash and go.
• 36:23
  So soaking stones you, they're more porous and you have to soak
• 36:26
  them for 10 minutes or so. Those are usually the cheaper
• 36:28
  ones that you can find. And then once you kind of get up
• 36:31
  into the 50 to $60.00 range, you're going to find ones that
• 36:34
  are splash and go. And so you can literally just
• 36:35
  kind of get them wet and you can start working.
• 36:38
  I recommend those just a little bit.
• 36:39
  Do you know do you know why that is?
• 36:41
  I think it's just from like a, the composition, the ceramic and
• 36:44
  everything in there, like a lower end ones, you have to soak
• 36:46
  them longer because they like drink water.
• 36:49
  They'll get really like they're super porous compared to others.
• 36:53
  So I definitely recommend getting 2 stones for your basic
• 36:58
  maintenance. A either a 220 grit or a 400
• 37:01
  grit. So it's going to be a coarser
• 37:03
  stone and that's where you're going to be doing the actual
• 37:05
  work of removing metal because that was sharpening.
• 37:07
  That's what sharpening is. It's removing metal to create an
• 37:10
  apex to make a sharp edge and then A-1000 grit.
• 37:14
  And if you want, you can go get a third that's like a 2000 or
• 37:17
  3000, but 1000 usually like kind of the a good stopping point.
• 37:22
  You do not need 10,000 grit stones.
• 37:24
  Yeah, don't buy a 10,000. Unless you're a professional and
• 37:26
  you want to make something cool. What, what what like you explain
• 37:28
  why? Well, because of the the teeth
• 37:30
  become so small, like the molecules of the steel, that it
• 37:34
  is sharp, but it won't bite into something soft like tomato skin.
• 37:38
  So even though it'll shave your hair off, you're like oh this is
• 37:41
  sharp. And then your chef grabs it to
• 37:43
  cut a tomato and he's like what the fuck is this?
• 37:45
  It's you've over polished those carbides to be extremely fine to
• 37:49
  the point where they're not toothy.
• 37:52
  Got it. So you're saying start at this
• 37:53
  number? What?
• 37:54
  What are you saying? Stop at 1001 thousand?
• 37:56
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:58
  And think of think of an on a microscopic level, think of an
• 38:00
  edge as like a saw. And if you have big teeth on
• 38:04
  your saw, it's really hard to cut through wood, right?
• 38:07
  So your goal, and that's what a dole knife is equivalent to.
• 38:10
  You have big jagged teeth in your edge and you want to refine
• 38:14
  them and make smaller ones. But to Coulter's point, you
• 38:16
  don't want to go to refined because then you kind of like
• 38:20
  jump the shark a little bit and it's going to be actually harder
• 38:22
  to cut through a product that you need to cut through.
• 38:25
  So you're on your lower gridstone, you're removing metal
• 38:29
  to kind of help create a new apex and you're technically
• 38:32
  scratching up the whole side of your your, your edge, the actual
• 38:34
  bevel, it's going to be real cloudy.
• 38:36
  And that's fine. That's what you want because
• 38:38
  that's the process of removing metal.
• 38:39
  You need that abrasive to kind of do the work for you.
• 38:42
  And then as you move up your polishing and refining, SO220
• 38:46
  grit, 2220 grit, maybe 300. And then, you know, depending if
• 38:52
  you're right hand or left-handed, it's kind of hard
• 38:54
  to do this on and on a podcast, but.
• 38:56
  The video up, yeah. But holding your knife just like
• 39:00
  you would like a pinch grip, like you would like you're going
• 39:02
  to cut something. Angle, I think is the most, one
• 39:05
  of the most debated things in the knife world of like you're,
• 39:09
  if you have a Japanese knife, it needs to be 12° and if you have
• 39:11
  a Western, it needs to be 20. Like you're never going to get
• 39:13
  an exact angle on doing a whetstone.
• 39:16
  Like it's just impossible. So the easiest way I try to
• 39:19
  teach people is, you know, you put your knife perpendicular on
• 39:23
  the stone, kind of leaned over halfway.
• 39:25
  So that's a 45°, cut that in half again and then maybe go
• 39:29
  down just a hair and you're probably in the 15 to 20° range.
• 39:33
  You can also put like a couple quarters into the blade to kind
• 39:35
  of give you idea of like height, but it's never going to be
• 39:37
  exact. And then focusing on your edge
• 39:41
  and segments. So I teach a edge edge trailing
• 39:45
  technique. So you're pushing away, the edge
• 39:48
  is trailing away from you as you're sharpening on the stone.
• 39:51
  And there's so many different techniques and ways to learn.
• 39:53
  Like I've studied so many different types of sharpening.
• 39:56
  There's people that are going to say that what I'm saying is
• 39:58
  absolutely incorrect or they're going to say this is a better
• 40:00
  way. And I think like.
• 40:01
  Yeah, I know. My, they're all they're all
• 40:02
  going to be in the comments. Like destroying me.
• 40:05
  Yeah, and they're all right. Yeah, and they're all right.
• 40:07
  They're all right, right? And in a way, they probably are
• 40:09
  too. Absolutely.
• 40:10
  And my philosophy is like, I found a technique that is most
• 40:13
  comfortable for me and gets the best result.
• 40:15
  And I think that's what I try to teach people.
• 40:17
  Like, hey, like if I'm doing classes, I'll kind of go through
• 40:19
  the style that I do. And I'm like, hey, like if you
• 40:21
  feel like you need to change your hand position a little bit
• 40:24
  or whatever, like can help coach you through that.
• 40:26
  But if it's going to make you feel more comfortable and so get
• 40:28
  a good edge, like, boom, like, do that, Yeah.
• 40:30
  So it's hard to. It's funny.
• 40:32
  I remember you put up a video and there was another knife guy
• 40:35
  that came on there. Like, God, listen to me, he's
• 40:36
  doing it wrong. I was like, holy shit, this is
• 40:38
  like all day long. It's like chefs talking about
• 40:39
  sauce. What the fuck?
• 40:41
  That's not how you make a proper brown sauce.
• 40:43
  Or yeah, whatever. Some of these opinions you're
• 40:45
  some fucking opinions are like assholes, right?
• 40:48
  Yeah, they all stink and everyone has one and.
• 40:51
  They're great at sharpening, but they can't cook.
• 40:53
  Yeah, yeah. What is their opinion?
• 40:54
  Money. Yeah, you see this knife right
• 40:56
  here is beautiful. There's a video I saw.
• 40:59
  I mean, I've seen it before, but I saw it again yesterday where
• 41:02
  this guy's holding a hot dog in his mouth and this guy slices
• 41:04
  his nose off with the sandwich. Wait, yeah, that's a super old
• 41:07
  music video. Yeah, remember that.
• 41:09
  He's like, hold up like a drunk party for people that are
• 41:13
  listening. I don't know how you're going to
• 41:15
  search for it, but it's a guy holding a hot dog in his mouth,
• 41:18
  and his head's tilted back and his friend has a fucking Hattori
• 41:21
  Hanzo sword. And he's like, let me slice the
• 41:23
  hot dog right out of your mouth. But he ends up slicing the guy's
• 41:26
  fucking nose off. Oh, it's a brutal video.
• 41:28
  Yeah, bad. Knife work.
• 41:29
  Yeah, but it looks like, I mean, it's beautiful.
• 41:32
  That's why I was looking at this one.
• 41:33
  It looks like that this this knife is beautiful.
• 41:37
  Do you, do you ever with intention?
• 41:42
  And I want to talk about knife making for a little bit, but
• 41:44
  with intention. Do you ever make knives that are
• 41:47
  like, yes, you could use it, but you probably shouldn't?
• 41:50
  Oh, 100%, yeah. And that's what, because I've
• 41:52
  only been marketing my business for a year and been making
• 41:54
  knives for two years. And so I built up this big stock
• 41:58
  and my philosophy and everything is really to like do the hardest
• 42:02
  possible thing you can do because that's going to teach
• 42:05
  you the most. So instead of justice making
• 42:07
  like the most basic chef's knives, you know, my first
• 42:11
  really big project was I made a knife that looks like an
• 42:15
  electric guitar. Yeah.
• 42:17
  So it looks like the the the top head of the knife is like angled
• 42:21
  like a flying V guitar. Yeah.
• 42:23
  And into the full Tang of the knife I drilled and tapped for
• 42:26
  tuning pins that you could remove if you wanted to do it.
• 42:29
  If you, if you send me an image, I'll put it up in the show.
• 42:32
  I'll send it to you. Yeah, yeah.
• 42:33
  Yeah, and I actually just sent that off to a professional
• 42:35
  photographer because he reached out because I do all my own
• 42:38
  photography. Yeah, but he's like big in the
• 42:40
  after effects and everything. And we just connected and.
• 42:42
  And I was like, he was like, if you ever knife photograph, I'll
• 42:45
  do it for free. And I was like, I'm going to pay
• 42:46
  you. I'm going to send you my most
• 42:47
  expensive one. Don't mess it up.
• 42:50
  Have fun. But yeah, I mean, I think there
• 42:53
  there's plenty of room for like, really conceptual stuff in the
• 42:55
  knife world. Because if you look at like, the
• 42:57
  Japanese philosophy, even though they're not using, you know,
• 43:00
  knives that look like electric guitars and their sushi
• 43:03
  restaurants, they have one knife that does one job per night.
• 43:06
  And that knife probably cost some thousands of dollars.
• 43:09
  But if it fills that creative need to inspire them on that
• 43:13
  particular piece of product to make it absolutely perfect, then
• 43:17
  everyone should have that philosophy.
• 43:19
  Because like, how you present yourself in the kitchen, at
• 43:21
  least the kitchen I did, is really, you know, how you work.
• 43:25
  If you're not clean, your station's not going to be clean.
• 43:28
  If your knives aren't sharp, your products going to be bad.
• 43:30
  And if your knives look like shit, your food and your cooking
• 43:32
  and your mentality and everything is going to tumble
• 43:35
  after that. So I mean, as much as I want to
• 43:38
  tell young cooks, you know, start humble, but like, don't be
• 43:42
  afraid to get into something that's going to put you over
• 43:45
  your head in terms of maintenance and, you know,
• 43:47
  keeping it looking beautiful because that's literally what
• 43:50
  cooking is, is like if you just step into a kitchen and you
• 43:53
  could do 3 Michelin start cooking in the first week, like
• 43:56
  what was the point of even doing it?
• 43:58
  So I mean, the, you learn a lot about knives and how to use them
• 44:03
  by having stuff that takes more maintenance and takes more work.
• 44:08
  It's not like my knives are like, you know, a Toyota Hilux
• 44:11
  where you never have to change the oil and it's going to run
• 44:13
  all the time. Mine's more like a race car
• 44:16
  where like if you Rev it to 12,000 RPMS, you're going to
• 44:19
  have to change the oil and it's going to take more work.
• 44:22
  But it's the type of people that want to put that and like take
• 44:26
  all aspects of their career and just like turn it up to the next
• 44:29
  level. That's what this stuff is for.
• 44:32
  How much is that electric guitar knife?
• 44:34
  It's unsellable to be honest. It's not, it's not sellable.
• 44:37
  I mean, I would take like 2000 for it.
• 44:39
  And that sounds like a lot of money to people listening, but
• 44:42
  you know. 10,000. 70 hours of work.
• 44:46
  Well, and then they buy it and then like they got a frozen case
• 44:48
  of veal bones and. They destroy it in one slide if.
• 44:51
  You're thinking about doing that with something like that, then
• 44:53
  you shouldn't own it and I won't sell it.
• 44:55
  But but the problem is there's a lot of young kids that have, you
• 44:58
  know, mommy and daddy's money and I need an expensive knife.
• 45:01
  I need to have the most expensive knife cuz I'm gonna go
• 45:02
  work at a three Michelin star kitchen right after culinary
• 45:05
  school. I.
• 45:06
  Think social media has made it a lot worse too cuz you get
• 45:09
  marketed. I mean I guess obviously knives
• 45:11
  are my algorithm and stuff but I see them on my other accounts
• 45:14
  like personal account where it's like you get all these ads for
• 45:17
  these super flashy knives that are Japanese made or whatever.
• 45:19
  Or at least that they're trying to propose it as, and people get
• 45:23
  caught up in it and they buy them and they're just shit
• 45:24
  knives. And it's like if you were
• 45:26
  getting a lot of ads about knives, I would take some pause.
• 45:30
  Yeah. Those are very new companies.
• 45:32
  They're getting factories that they've never visited to make
• 45:34
  stuff that just looks pretty good.
• 45:35
  They're they're, they're buying it from what's the Chinese
• 45:39
  Amazon? Team, team.
• 45:41
  Yeah. And they're just, you know, drop
• 45:43
  shipping it. Yeah.
• 45:46
  Speaking of social media, you were telling me that like you
• 45:50
  guys get shadow bound. Is that true?
• 45:52
  Yeah, it started in the knife community, I guess, a couple of
• 45:55
  years ago. Yeah, right around the pandemic.
• 45:58
  Yeah, it was about when it started.
• 46:00
  Yeah, because they Instagram or face Meta, they started
• 46:03
  tightening on guidelines of products and stuff that could be
• 46:06
  featured in the videos. And knives started getting
• 46:08
  tagged as weapons. So knife makers, knife
• 46:12
  sharpeners, knife enthusiasts, all of our content started
• 46:15
  getting blocked. Like you'd post a reel and it
• 46:17
  would get blocked and you'd have to appeal it and then you could
• 46:19
  obviously never talk to a human being to like make your case.
• 46:23
  So it's not a human being that's blocking it, right?
• 46:25
  It's AI. So it's only when you're talking
• 46:28
  about knives, but like, chefs are showing themselves chopping
• 46:31
  all it. Doesn't happen as much when
• 46:33
  you're using it as a tool. It's when you're displaying it
• 46:37
  and what could be deemed threatening, which is it's in
• 46:39
  your hand and you're a human being.
• 46:41
  Yeah. So that could become a weapon.
• 46:43
  So like they literally in the description of why it's being
• 46:47
  only being shown to your followers and not to non
• 46:50
  followers is like weapons manufacturing.
• 46:54
  I've even gotten a post seen someone post something that said
• 46:56
  it was for like sexual exploitation and there was
• 46:59
  nothing other than them like holding a knife and showing a
• 47:01
  knife. I mean, I could see why they
• 47:02
  would think that. Yeah, sexy as hell.
• 47:06
  So yeah, it's been, it's been hard for people to like grow
• 47:07
  organically, like even mine, like I, my organic growth has
• 47:10
  been super tough in the last year or so, even though my
• 47:12
  business has grown a lot. Like if I'm not running some
• 47:15
  sort of ad like my engagement growth like will will be
• 47:20
  diminished which is annoying. Yeah.
• 47:22
  Well, I mean, I feel like the the paid for engagement model
• 47:26
  has really taken off since they introduced the blue check mark
• 47:29
  that you can pay for. Yeah, I, I, you know, not to get
• 47:33
  into social media analytics, but I remember my account was
• 47:35
  growing and the day that they put out the blue check mark that
• 47:38
  you could pay for, because I'm like, I'm not going to fucking
• 47:40
  pay for that. The day that they put it out, I
• 47:43
  saw my engagement drop by like 80% just overnight.
• 47:46
  And I was like, this is fucking crazy, crazy.
• 47:50
  I, I can't believe that they, I mean, that's fucking stupid.
• 47:53
  These are beautiful knives you're talking about.
• 47:55
  You're talking to chefs about a tool.
• 47:57
  It's not a fucking weapon because it could be a weapon,
• 48:00
  but you're, you're trying to run a business and your business is
• 48:04
  making knives for chefs to cook right?
• 48:07
  Or for, you know, for to display.
• 48:09
  It's fucking insane. And it's, and it sounds like
• 48:12
  just a surface level problem, but that can eventually become,
• 48:17
  you know, especially in the UK, there's been cooks and chefs
• 48:19
  that have been detained for carrying their knife kits to
• 48:22
  work just in transportation. And that'll eventually turn
• 48:26
  into, well, now the restaurant owns your knives.
• 48:28
  You can't have personal knives. You have to lock them up and
• 48:30
  take inventory at the end of the night.
• 48:32
  And then the tips can't be tippy.
• 48:36
  They just like rounded. And like the first video I
• 48:39
  posted when I came back to social media to tell people that
• 48:41
  I've become a knife maker was this big dramatic video of me
• 48:44
  making something. And it was the dumbest knife.
• 48:47
  It like it, it's like it looks like a big butter knife.
• 48:50
  And it was kind of a protest as well.
• 48:52
  If I'm going to get into this world, I'm going to give them a
• 48:54
  middle finger and say, well, is this what you want people to be
• 48:57
  using to make your food? Because I know you all like
• 49:00
  restaurants. And if you if you diminish their
• 49:02
  ability to do their job by making them used rounded tips
• 49:06
  and rounded heels and lock their knives up in the other, you're
• 49:09
  going to starve because people will not want to do that.
• 49:12
  It'll be like cooking in a prison kitchen and we don't want
• 49:16
  that. How did you even get into knife
• 49:18
  making? Because you, you, you were
• 49:20
  cooking. You were in some great
• 49:21
  restaurants. Yeah, So I went through like
• 49:25
  the, you know, the forum process and got into handmade Japanese
• 49:28
  custom stuff. And that eventually led me into
• 49:31
  finding people that, you know, make knives one of the time,
• 49:35
  like custom knives. And this was back in 2014 or 15
• 49:41
  when my fast casual opened. And I, I got my first like one
• 49:46
  of my first like big fancy knives.
• 49:48
  And I posted, you know, doing some like micro burnois on a
• 49:51
  dirty ass nylon cutting board and like it got picked up by
• 49:55
  like 9 gag and got like millions of views.
• 49:57
  And then I just started like getting the ball rolling.
• 49:59
  I was like, oh Dang, this could this could be a second revenue
• 50:02
  stream or something. The only revenue stream that
• 50:04
  ended up being is I worked with I worked with a Swedish company
• 50:08
  called Damasteel that makes super high tech stainless
• 50:11
  Damascus. And I would go to trade shows
• 50:13
  with them and do like knife demonstrations to show how sharp
• 50:17
  and how much the edge is maintained on these really high
• 50:20
  tech knives. And ended up doing like a knife
• 50:23
  show at my restaurant, which was one of the first chef knife only
• 50:27
  gatherings that was like pay to come and I got paid in knives.
• 50:33
  So I'd started to get all of these things and you know, it
• 50:36
  was always in the back of my head like, well, I'm maintaining
• 50:38
  them and they look brand new. So people are telling me, oh,
• 50:40
  you're really good at that. And it was always kind of in the
• 50:43
  back of my head, like, oh, maybe it's something I could can do.
• 50:45
  And then COVID-19 came along and, you know, being a chef
• 50:49
  didn't feel like an option anymore because I wasn't
• 50:51
  employed as a chef at the time. And then I escaped back to
• 50:55
  Dallas and became an electrician.
• 50:56
  And now that's wearing on my nerves.
• 50:58
  And couple years ago, I was just like, fuck it.
• 51:00
  I'm going to take everything I've learned in construction.
• 51:02
  I'm going to renovate my garage, put in a bunch of plugs, lights,
• 51:06
  vacuum, you know, HEPA filter, dust collection system, buy a
• 51:09
  bunch of tools I don't know how to use, but in what I do know is
• 51:13
  geometry and that's the most important part of the knife.
• 51:17
  So I was just chasing the geometry of the knives that I
• 51:20
  had used and slowly but surely came upon things that can
• 51:24
  actually be called a well performing tool.
• 51:27
  That's wild. I guess this is a question for
• 51:30
  both of you, but in the process of what you do so sharpening or
• 51:34
  knife making, is it therapeutic or is it stressful?
• 51:39
  I mean it from an outsider it sounds like, oh that sounds like
• 51:42
  you're fucking. For me it's like skimming stock
• 51:44
  all day. I like to equate it to if
• 51:47
  anybody plays golf, where it is the most frustrating but also
• 51:50
  very rewarding at times. So sharpening can be very
• 51:54
  stressful if you're hitting snags or you have like a knife
• 51:57
  that's really, really hard to work on.
• 51:59
  There's a lot of damage, whatever, and it can be
• 52:00
  stressful because you want to get it perfect.
• 52:02
  You want to get it better than you.
• 52:03
  That's the goal. I want it to be better than it
• 52:06
  was when you open the box always.
• 52:08
  And so that process can be like tiresome, frustrating.
• 52:11
  It's hot. Like I'm doing it semi workshop
• 52:13
  in my garage. Like summers are hot as hell in
• 52:15
  Texas. But then the same time sitting
• 52:19
  on a whetstone can be very Zen and you got music playing and
• 52:22
  you're very locked in and it's awesome.
• 52:24
  So it's both for me for sure. Yeah, and it depends on the
• 52:27
  process. Grinding on a 2 by 72 inch belt
• 52:33
  grinder, which is like a bulk of the work to take it from just a
• 52:36
  blank into a cutting instrument. It I mean, it's butt puckering
• 52:40
  the entire time because you're not only having to worry about,
• 52:44
  you know, catching the edge and having it thrown out of your
• 52:46
  hands. Maintaining the cool temperature
• 52:51
  of the steel is extremely important because anything over
• 52:54
  250° is going to affect the temper of the steel.
• 52:58
  Which of the tempering is after hardening?
• 53:01
  The steel is like glass tempering.
• 53:03
  It relaxes, it keeps some of the hardness but UPS the toughness
• 53:06
  and the corrosion resistance. And you'd be extremely shocked
• 53:10
  at how fast steel heats up on the grinder even at a lower grit
• 53:14
  like 36 which is the primarily where most the grinding is done.
• 53:19
  If I'm not using like a ice water misting system to keep it
• 53:23
  cool and it will immediately burn my thumb.
• 53:26
  And that's how I know it's like, OK, that's near 250° of it's
• 53:29
  hurting my skin. But and then if you get too hot,
• 53:32
  it'll go blue and that's how you know you've ruined the temper.
• 53:35
  And especially when you start to get really, really thin.
• 53:37
  If I get a blue somewhere in the center of the edge, then I have
• 53:39
  to grind the entire profile up and start again.
• 53:43
  Luckily, the most time where it happens is where it's really
• 53:45
  thin, like at the healer at the tip.
• 53:47
  And what most knife maker say is like, you never fuck up a knife.
• 53:50
  You just make a smaller knife. Yeah, OK, perfect luck.
• 53:54
  Luckily, I've never had to make that many smaller knives.
• 53:56
  Yeah, maybe by a couple of millimeters.
• 53:58
  How many knives do you think you've made-up to this?
• 54:01
  .37. 37. Wow, yeah, I have them all in a
• 54:03
  folder one by one. Well, I mean, I've how many have
• 54:07
  I finished? 37 because I face it off if I've
• 54:09
  taken pictures of it, it was worth taking pictures of.
• 54:12
  OK. And other than that I might have
• 54:13
  like 3 or 4 that are sitting in my drawer like that could be
• 54:17
  finished in the future. But.
• 54:18
  And you know it's better than having a huge stack of messed up
• 54:22
  shit. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm retired
• 54:25
  as a chef. But if I ever go back and open
• 54:28
  up, you know, some, you know, have some hero side quests and
• 54:31
  open up some restaurants, which I mean, it's not that I'm
• 54:33
  opposed to it. I mean, I have restaurants that
• 54:36
  I would like to open in my mind that I ever had the opportunity
• 54:38
  to run. That would be fun.
• 54:41
  It would be like that scene and Kill Bill.
• 54:43
  I'm going to come to you. Like can I get a Hanza sword?
• 54:49
  And hopefully by that point I'll be forging and like, it'll
• 54:51
  actually be like real Honzo style.
• 54:55
  So when we wrap up the show, since you guys are knife makers
• 54:58
  and I know both of you are working in kitchens too, but I
• 55:00
  think people would be more interested in your knife
• 55:02
  opinions right now. I'm going to ask you some, you
• 55:05
  know, some random knife questions for for the for the
• 55:08
  culinary audience that's listening.
• 55:11
  If you had, and I'm curious on both your opinions, by the way,
• 55:14
  each question, if you could buy a branded chef knife out there
• 55:19
  or it doesn't have to be a chef knife, but if you could buy
• 55:24
  branded knives and you're going to direct people to Hey, you
• 55:27
  could you could afford this, Go get it.
• 55:30
  What's the brand? I'm going.
• 55:31
  To say Mac yeah, yeah, Japanese mates where you steal really
• 55:35
  good, really good maker, easy personal price point.
• 55:39
  Coulter, I feel like he's going to say no to that, but.
• 55:41
  I'm having trouble, one that I would recommend.
• 55:44
  But yeah, I think they're really quality knives, great for chefs.
• 55:47
  Yeah, I like Mac, by the way. I have a couple of Macs.
• 55:49
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 55:50
  You ready? Yeah, I'd say.
• 55:54
  I mean, it's gonna be more on the expensive side, but it
• 55:56
  certainly is a factory branded product.
• 55:59
  They have a lot of handmade knives, but Matsumoho Soho 10,
• 56:04
  which you're not gonna have heard of, but they're, you know,
• 56:08
  Western style knives are as close as you're going to get to
• 56:11
  like a high performance Japanese handmade knife and a factory
• 56:14
  product because they are making them hundreds and hundreds at a
• 56:17
  time. And you're going to still pay
• 56:19
  like closer to the $200 mark, maybe 250 for something that's
• 56:23
  like 270mm or, you know, 11 inches.
• 56:27
  But that's probably what I would go with.
• 56:29
  And I definitely have owned a few in my days.
• 56:31
  What's the What's the one knife that you can't part ways with?
• 56:35
  Style. Your personal knife.
• 56:38
  My personal knife, yeah. So one of the knives I got as a
• 56:42
  gift is from a knife maker named Don Lynn.
• 56:47
  And he is by far probably one of the most influential knife
• 56:52
  makers, not only in my life, but a lot because he brought this
• 56:56
  Formula One style to knives that he makes that just like
• 57:00
  completely broke the mold of what everyone else was doing.
• 57:03
  And I got a knife made by him out of dam, a steel.
• 57:06
  So it's a particle metallurgy Swedish Damascus that they make
• 57:09
  by hand in Sweden. It's extremely expensive and it
• 57:13
  has all this carbon fiber and gold dust inlaid into the handle
• 57:16
  and the Saya, the scabbard that it comes with.
• 57:19
  And we called it Hostile Kitchen.
• 57:21
  And it's just like this tall heel that comes into this
• 57:23
  dangerous upswept point. It's got this clip tip on the on
• 57:27
  the spine that looks like a fighting Bowie knife.
• 57:30
  And I think he said that if you were to have to make that again,
• 57:34
  because it was hard, because it was the incredible knife, he
• 57:37
  would probably have to sell for something like $10,000.
• 57:40
  So even though I only own 2 knives from my days of being as
• 57:43
  a collector, because I took some time off and sold them and paid
• 57:45
  for my life that way, that's when I'll probably never ever
• 57:50
  get rid of. The only thing that would
• 57:54
  promote me to get rid of that is I would give it back to him.
• 57:57
  That's cool. What about you?
• 57:59
  I would say I have a have a bunker from Doghouse forge,
• 58:02
  which is based in, I believe is a Georgia, but it was my first
• 58:06
  like big money knife that ever bought.
• 58:08
  And I use my sharpening money because it was just a side
• 58:11
  hustle at the time. And I know what the fuck I was
• 58:12
  going to do with this little business because I was in
• 58:14
  marketing at the time. And so I was just kind of saving
• 58:17
  money that I was getting from sharpening to like upgrade my
• 58:20
  gear from like what's own perspective or whatnot.
• 58:23
  And then I was like, you know, I'm gonna use this money to buy
• 58:25
  a really badass knife. And it was like 353 hundred
• 58:29
  $75.00, but I fucking love it. Beautiful, like burl handle,
• 58:33
  like it's just awesome blade that I use all the time.
• 58:36
  So yeah, Doc House Forest. Really awesome brand.
• 58:39
  And if and if you were gonna give advice to young cooks,
• 58:42
  young chefs out there that you don't want to start collecting
• 58:44
  knives, what what advice would you tell them how to get
• 58:48
  started? Don't collect them.
• 58:53
  OK, what? I'm just kidding.
• 58:56
  I'm kidding. I mean, think about like, I
• 58:57
  think you need to like focus on practicability for like, what
• 59:00
  are you gonna, what knives are you gonna actually use?
• 59:02
  And then maybe have a couple splurge knives if you really
• 59:04
  want to show off, you know what I mean?
• 59:06
  But like you don't need to be spending a ton of money.
• 59:08
  Like focus on the craft 1st and like make sure it's going to be
• 59:11
  a knife that you actually use and kind of upgrade from there.
• 59:14
  And then maybe have a couple. Yeah, the, the knife skills
• 59:17
  sometimes matter more than the knife or for a lot of chefs, you
• 59:21
  know, I, I, I know the customer doesn't care what brand you
• 59:25
  used. They just want to make sure that
• 59:27
  it was cut correctly and correctly.
• 59:28
  And sometimes it's like I, I, I joke around sometimes and you
• 59:31
  never hear the customer say shout out to, to certain certain
• 59:36
  people, but you never hear the customer say like, fuck, if
• 59:39
  their food would probably be better if they had better
• 59:41
  aprons, if their aprons were cooler, they'd probably cook
• 59:45
  better. But no one ever says that.
• 59:47
  And, and it's the same thing that that expensive knife is not
• 59:50
  going to fucking do the cutting for you.
• 59:51
  You still have to have proper knife skills.
• 59:52
  You have to know how to brew water, butcher, whatever the
• 59:54
  case may be. But I'll tell you it does make a
• 59:57
  difference when you have a an excellent knife for some of that
• 59:59
  work, you know, at the one of my chefs.
• 1:00:04
  Had come from La Bernadine. I had Adrian Cheatham on
• 1:00:06
  recently. She was the executive sous chef
• 1:00:08
  at La Bernadine. And this chef that worked for me
• 1:00:12
  said for fish cutting at La Bernadine, they always
• 1:00:15
  recommended a medium sharp knife, not too sharp because if
• 1:00:19
  it's too sharp, and I know I've experienced this, you'll go
• 1:00:21
  right through some spine or you know, or some bones.
• 1:00:25
  But with a medium sharp knife, you'll you'll get a little
• 1:00:27
  resistance that you need to to cut around them, which I thought
• 1:00:31
  was always a very interesting way to frame it.
• 1:00:35
  And it was something that I took with me.
• 1:00:36
  So all my knives were always just medium sharp to dull.
• 1:00:40
  It was on purpose. Yeah, especially.
• 1:00:43
  Especially butchery knives, yeah.
• 1:00:44
  Like. Yeah, I would not, you know,
• 1:00:47
  make myself a boning knife. If I was going to break down a
• 1:00:49
  bunch of tenderloins, I would get a Victorinox.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, but had that off stainless steel.
• 1:00:53
  Get an aggressive hone so I can keep teeth on it and maybe
• 1:00:56
  sharpen it. Yeah, on every couple.
• 1:00:57
  That fucking white handle, yeah. Don't scoff at Dexter in Yeah,
• 1:01:00
  I'll get. Some yeah, the the Dexter.
• 1:01:03
  Yeah, like the Dexter fucking Bony knife.
• 1:01:04
  Is yeah, I mean, that's all you need.
• 1:01:06
  Like, especially with bread knives too.
• 1:01:07
  I'm like don't get a fancy bread knife and stab, you need a
• 1:01:09
  serrated knife. Just stabbed the guy in the
• 1:01:11
  kitchen with a Bony knife once. On purpose.
• 1:01:13
  On accident, on accident. So it was.
• 1:01:15
  It was one of these Bony knives that had been handed down like
• 1:01:18
  from a butcher to a butcher. And it was like the thin.
• 1:01:20
  Oh yeah. Paper thin, yeah, flexible Bony
• 1:01:23
  knife. You know, you could do that.
• 1:01:24
  And I was, I was butchering on my station because I was in the
• 1:01:28
  shits and I was also working the saute station.
• 1:01:30
  So I had to turn around and butcher and turn around and
• 1:01:33
  saute and, and then going back to butcher.
• 1:01:35
  So I had my knife in my hand and I was holding it.
• 1:01:37
  Well, I'm sauteing, I'm holding it behind me and this cook walks
• 1:01:41
  up to me like, oh, what are you cooking?
• 1:01:42
  And he walks right into my knife.
• 1:01:44
  I feel it going to his leg like, you know, I feel like go a
• 1:01:47
  couple of inches into his leg and he's like, oh, and then he
• 1:01:50
  pulls it out and I just remember thinking like, fuck, I'm gonna
• 1:01:53
  get in so much trouble. But I like, I was thinking about
• 1:01:55
  getting in trouble more than I was worried about him.
• 1:01:58
  And and I'll never forget, like this dude was a gangster.
• 1:02:00
  He's like, you know, older Hispanic guy.
• 1:02:03
  He's like all good. He ties it up, fucking goes back
• 1:02:06
  to the station. Like fuck you kept.
• 1:02:08
  Working Did you feel the soul of the knife transferred?
• 1:02:12
  Or did you get his soul? I got, yeah, I took a little bit
• 1:02:15
  of his soul with me and he was like, yeah, it was fucking, it
• 1:02:17
  was bananas. It was, it was fucking wild to
• 1:02:19
  feel a knife going to someone on accident.
• 1:02:21
  And I was. Like it happens a lot easier
• 1:02:23
  than you think. Not, not that I'm not, not that
• 1:02:28
  I'm I have stabbed myself in the thigh, but.
• 1:02:29
  Yeah, it was. This is this is fun.
• 1:02:34
  Where can people find you if they want to, if they want, if
• 1:02:37
  they want to work with you, if they want to buy some knives,
• 1:02:40
  where can people follow along? Study the blade for Instagram
• 1:02:43
  and TikTok and then study theblade.com.
• 1:02:45
  So knife sharpening, knife restoration, pretty much
• 1:02:48
  anything you need. I do mail in service as well if
• 1:02:51
  you're out of Austin and I teach classes also so if you want to
• 1:02:54
  learn basics hit me up. Teach you how to get rolling.
• 1:02:58
  Cool. Livinggoodgrindhouse.com and
• 1:03:02
  Living Good under Score Grindhouse on Instagram and just
• 1:03:05
  DM me if you want something special.
• 1:03:07
  Awesome. These knives are beautiful.
• 1:03:08
  People need to people need to DM you and get that that guitars,
• 1:03:14
  that guitar knife. Yeah, this has been fun.
• 1:03:16
  Thanks gents. Thank you.
• 1:03:17
  Appreciate it. All right, so here's a little
• 1:03:21
  intro sharpening video. 1st and arguably most importantly is
• 1:03:27
  your setup. You don't want to be sharpening
• 1:03:30
  on a prep table that wobbles back and forth, right?
• 1:03:33
  So here we have a nice sturdy table.
• 1:03:36
  Got a plastic hotel pan. Reason the plastics best is
• 1:03:40
  because it's actually flat on the bottom, whereas a lot of
• 1:03:43
  aluminum stainless pans are slightly rounded and you want a
• 1:03:47
  nice firm base so when you're pushing and pulling doesn't
• 1:03:51
  slide back and forth. So let's start with flattening
• 1:03:58
  this sharpening stone because it's extremely important to get
• 1:04:02
  a nice straight, consistent edge.
• 1:04:06
  And I do this every time I sharpen, sometimes after as
• 1:04:10
  well, just to save time the next time I'm here to sharpen.
• 1:04:18
  So just get yourself a nice piece of graphite, pencil, lead,
• 1:04:23
  whatever it is. Some people use Sharpie but I
• 1:04:25
  don't because it soaks in and you're going to have to grind a
• 1:04:28
  lot more of the stone away to get the marks out.
• 1:04:34
  So I have a diamond flattening plate.
• 1:04:39
  Just get it wet, do a few passes, cover every square inch
• 1:04:45
  of the stone and check the work. It's very predictable that most
• 1:04:53
  of your scratches leftover or your your pencil is going to be
• 1:04:57
  somewhere in the center. Just a little bit left here.
• 1:05:40
  Having a nice sponge and your setup is also good too.
• 1:05:46
  Wiping the knife clean, getting a good amount of water up on
• 1:05:50
  your stones. So now all the pencils gone, but
• 1:05:56
  you see we're left with some very sharp edges at the front of
• 1:05:59
  the back. So just at a 45° angle doesn't
• 1:06:03
  have to be perfect, just take those sharp corners off and then
• 1:06:14
  hit each corner as well. Now our stones ready to sharpen.
• 1:06:25
  All right, here I have a big old chef's knife.
• 1:06:27
  First thing I'm going to do is make sure it's dry.
• 1:06:31
  Then I'm going to take a Sharpie and I'm going to sharpie along
• 1:06:39
  the edge about the thickness of the tip of the Sharpie itself.
• 1:06:55
  If you're sharpening and all of this Sharpie is being ground
• 1:07:00
  away by the stone, your angle on the knife is way too acute, so
• 1:07:08
  you're probably below 15°. So the first thing I'm going to
• 1:07:14
  do is I'm going to find somewhere between 15 and 20°,
• 1:07:24
  which if you lay the knife down flat, come up to 45 and then do
• 1:07:29
  that somewhere in the center. That's about where you want to
• 1:07:33
  be. And what I'm going to do is I'm
• 1:07:35
  just going to do 1 nice long stroke a few times.
• 1:07:49
  I'm going to get that water off. As you can see, I have a very
• 1:07:55
  thin band of ground steel, so that's how I know my angles
• 1:08:05
  good. If I was any higher, it'd be a
• 1:08:08
  little bit smaller, but if I was any lower, which is what you
• 1:08:13
  don't want to do, it's the biggest mistake when you're
• 1:08:16
  scratching up the knife all up here when you're trying to
• 1:08:18
  sharpen. If you're trying to thin the
• 1:08:20
  bevel, then scratching, you know, an inch behind that
• 1:08:25
  sharpie mark is OK, but we're talking about finding an apex in
• 1:08:29
  the steel. So this very thin line is what I
• 1:08:33
  want to maintain and I don't want to grind away the rest of
• 1:08:36
  that sharpie mark. Now that I've established my
• 1:08:44
  angle and I know my angles good based off of this nice shiny
• 1:08:48
  primary bevel, what we're doing when we're sharpening is we're
• 1:08:52
  trying to create a Burr. So when I'm sharpening on this
• 1:08:56
  side, this Burr is going to curl up on this side.
• 1:09:03
  So I'm going to try to use as much as the stone as I can.
• 1:09:06
  I'm going to pick that angle using light pressure, especially
• 1:09:10
  on this stone, which is 220 grit.
• 1:09:13
  You do not have to be that aggressive unless you have a
• 1:09:15
  very fat edge knife. I'm just going to go all the way
• 1:09:20
  down and I'm going to start checking for the Burr.
• 1:09:24
  So we were sharpening this way, which means the Burr is coming
• 1:09:27
  up on this side. So when I check, I face that
• 1:09:31
  ground line towards me and I feel like this.
• 1:09:36
  And when you start to feel a Burr, it's going to tug against
• 1:09:39
  your skin. And I can already feel a very
• 1:09:43
  small Burr forming on this side, mostly at the tip, which is
• 1:09:46
  where the steel is usually thinnest.
• 1:09:49
  And down here I know I have some work to do.
• 1:09:51
  But then I start to feel a little bit of grab in my skin up
• 1:09:55
  towards this point. And you see how fast that was.
• 1:09:59
  Well, that's because I have a very thinly ground knife.
• 1:10:03
  This is a very high performance knife.
• 1:10:06
  Your knives, if they're very well used, been sharpened a lot.
• 1:10:08
  You're going to have to grind a lot more to get that Burr, but
• 1:10:11
  as long as your angle is consistent, that's the most
• 1:10:13
  important thing. 15°, twenty degrees, 25°, it doesn't matter
• 1:10:17
  as long as you're consistent. You just need to form an apex
• 1:10:31
  and all the angle is being controlled with my backhand or
• 1:10:35
  my left hand is just providing pressure above that edge, very
• 1:10:39
  light pressure, especially at the lower grit stones.
• 1:10:51
  And after a few passes, I'm going to start feeling for the
• 1:10:53
  bur, start to feel it right about right here.
• 1:10:59
  And I feel it all the way up to the tip.
• 1:11:02
  So I know I just have a little bit of more work to do down
• 1:11:06
  here. Sometimes the grit of the stone
• 1:11:21
  can feel like a Burr, so keeping the knife nice and clean is
• 1:11:28
  important. There we go.
• 1:11:37
  I feel a Burr there all the way up.
• 1:11:41
  It's nice and consistent, not taking off too much steel
• 1:11:46
  because you want to sharpen as little as possible to form the
• 1:11:49
  apex or you're just going to kill the life of your knife.
• 1:11:53
  Now we're going to do the other side.
• 1:11:57
  A lot of times your finger is going to take off the sharpie,
• 1:12:00
  so just keep applying it to make sure you're not sharpening it
• 1:12:04
  too low of an angle. So this is the backside of the
• 1:12:17
  knife, and you can see it's all Sharpie.
• 1:12:24
  Then I'm just going to take my angle and just in one nice fluid
• 1:12:28
  stroke, almost like you do on a honing rod.
• 1:12:33
  And then I'm going to check it just to make sure that I'm only
• 1:12:38
  taking off a little sliver at the edge and I'm not heading
• 1:12:46
  down here. Now it's almost to the end.
• 1:12:59
  There we go. Nice thin grind line.
• 1:13:07
  Now how you do your backside edge, you can do it so many
• 1:13:11
  different ways. I just face the spine directly
• 1:13:14
  towards me. I use my index finger, my thumb
• 1:13:18
  on the spine to keep that angle. And then as I get closer to me,
• 1:13:24
  I point the edge away from me because my pressure is on the
• 1:13:30
  pull stroke, not on the pushing stroke.
• 1:13:32
  I'm like pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, letting off,
• 1:13:35
  pushing, letting off, pushing, letting off.
• 1:13:46
  Making sure I'm not grinding any of that sharpie way.
• 1:13:49
  It's looking very consistent and good since I just did a couple
• 1:13:53
  of passes. Number the Burr forms on the
• 1:13:56
  opposite side your sharpening and on the second side you
• 1:14:01
  should be developing a Burr much quicker.
• 1:14:07
  And I know I have some more work to do up at the tip because the
• 1:14:10
  Burr is pretty pronounced all the way up until about these
• 1:14:15
  front 2 inches. There we go, Burr at the tip,
• 1:14:31
  Burr down, down, down. Good, nice, consistent, and you
• 1:14:39
  can see all my sharpies still there except for that little
• 1:14:42
  hairline grind mark. After you've gotten a Burr on
• 1:14:47
  both sides, we're going to do what's called stropping, which
• 1:14:50
  is just one clean motion at the exact same angle.
• 1:14:53
  You were sharpening at heel to tip.
• 1:14:58
  Tip to heel doesn't really matter, but on this side, I
• 1:15:01
  start at the tip. Nice light pressure, do not have
• 1:15:07
  to. If the knife is flexing under
• 1:15:10
  the force of how you're stropping, then you're using too
• 1:15:12
  much pressure. Do like 4 on that side.
• 1:15:19
  This side I feel like it's more comfortable to go heal the tip
• 1:15:24
  just in one nice motion. Smaller knives you can just do
• 1:15:29
  this one handed, but I usually have a support hand at the tip
• 1:15:34
  for longer knives because this is a pretty big knife.
• 1:15:39
  That was about four. Then we're going to do 3.
• 1:15:45
  Nice light pressure, consistent angle.
• 1:15:51
  What we're doing is we're evening out the grind on the
• 1:15:55
  edge because when you're pushing like this, it's not super
• 1:16:00
  consistent, but it's the most efficient way.
• 1:16:02
  So now we're just smoothing out that bevel by doing clean
• 1:16:07
  strokes 2, 211. We're also doing as we're
• 1:16:24
  working that bur back and forth to make it weaker.
• 1:16:29
  And so since our last stroke was like this, we know that Burr is
• 1:16:33
  up on this side. So we're going to deburr on the
• 1:16:36
  stone on this last one. So we're going to take the exact
• 1:16:39
  same angle as our sharpening is dropping angle, and I'm just
• 1:16:43
  going to trace one thin line. That way I'm pulling the Burr
• 1:16:50
  off the edge. And you can sometimes see the
• 1:16:53
  Burr when you do that, but here it's just dark metal flakes.
• 1:16:58
  So we're going to do that again. Come in this direction.
• 1:17:01
  Nice and light deburr. Nice and light deburr.
• 1:17:16
  Clean and dry everything off, give the stone a little flat and
• 1:17:21
  for next time and we're going to go up and grit right.
• 1:17:30
  So I'm jumping to a very fancy 800 grit diamond stone.
• 1:17:34
  But if you're coming off a 220, you might need to go to a 500
• 1:17:38
  and then to an 800. But since this is diamond
• 1:17:41
  abrasive, it's aggressive enough yet fine enough so that I can
• 1:17:44
  make that big jump. You know, the reason I have this
• 1:17:49
  is because, you know, the amount of time that I'm spending
• 1:17:52
  sharpening should be very short to be efficient.
• 1:17:57
  But you don't need super fancy stones.
• 1:17:59
  You can just get, you know, normal Japanese soaking stones,
• 1:18:04
  I'd say 225 hundred, 800-1200 and that's probably all you need
• 1:18:09
  for culinary applications. Very
• 1:19:14
  slowly strike it down. About the 800 grit, I'm going to
• 1:19:59
  start checking the edge. 800 grit is pretty aggressive.
• 1:20:03
  Few different ways you can check the edge. 1 is on your
• 1:20:06
  thumbnail. And when you pull on the
• 1:20:09
  thumbnail, it should get stuck in your thumbnail.
• 1:20:12
  Obviously do not push very hard. You're just barely pulling on
• 1:20:17
  it. That did not scare the shit out
• 1:20:26
  of me. So we're just pulling to see if
• 1:20:32
  it gets stuck in the nail. Another way is you use these
• 1:20:35
  three pads of your fingers and your skin should not slide on
• 1:20:41
  the edge. Be very gentle.
• 1:20:45
  What you're looking for is the edges grabbing your skin and
• 1:20:51
  it's not easy to slide. And that feels pretty good.
• 1:20:56
  So now we're going to go up and grip.
• 1:21:15
  If you want a good place to sharp for sharpening stones,
• 1:21:20
  that's just Japanese knife imports.com or
• 1:21:25
  sharpeningsupplies.com. sharpeningsupplies.com is going
• 1:21:30
  to have a huge overwhelming selection, but there's a lot of
• 1:21:33
  reviews on there. You can also go on Reddit or
• 1:21:37
  kitchen knife forums to get people's input on what
• 1:21:42
  sharpening stones to get, but at the end of the day you just need
• 1:21:49
  something that has a good review that's not too expensive for
• 1:21:51
  your budget. The
• 1:22:27
  front. Cup.
• 1:24:21
  I'm pretty good. Deeper on the stone.
• 1:25:24
  Now that I'm confident that it's nicely deburred to make sure
• 1:25:28
  that everything's real clean again and I'm going to go real
• 1:25:30
  lightly keeping that same angle, just alternating.
• 1:25:57
  All right, just going to dry this puppy off and I'm going to
• 1:26:10
  take this over to a leather strap.
• 1:26:16
  This has three Micron diamond paste in it, but you can just
• 1:26:19
  use bare leather and you're going to do the same stropping
• 1:26:22
  motion, which will just take off any additional Burr.
• 1:26:41
  And the ultimate test, just a little paper towel.
• 1:26:46
  See if I did a good job. And just cutting, it's not good
• 1:27:08
  enough. When you're cutting paper,
• 1:27:10
  you're cutting paper towel. Like really listen to the edge.
• 1:27:16
  And I can tell it's somewhere here in the middle.
• 1:27:19
  It's being pretty grabby, like right around there.
• 1:27:26
  So I'm just going to continue to Strop really light pressure.
• 1:27:54
  There we go. Feels and sounds a lot better.
• 1:28:00
  No small draped in the kitchen