# Knives



## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Looking for some recommendations for decent Kitchen knives.

I have a set of Global ones, but can't understand why they've deteriorated so badly in the 6 or 7 years I've had them.

Are knives "faked", and could I have ended up with duff ones?


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## TTotal (Aug 12, 2002)

Aw Tim, she really wants diamonds mate 8)


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

TTotal said:


> Aw Tim, she really wants diamonds mate 8)


Nah, John, these are for me. Blokes can cook too, you know... :wink:


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## Sim (Mar 7, 2003)

I was going to say Global :?


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

They need taking care of. Dishwashers turn the edges due to the heat. Improper sharpening with a steel or back of another knive will also blunt them. Cutting on too hard a surface (like granite work tops)will dull them too.

Get your Globals professionally sharpened (I use a local kitchen shop who do a great job for Â£1 a blade), then get a ceramic water-sharpener and do them little and often. Never dish wash them.

Or just get cheaper knives and replace them every couple of years.

Never heard of fake Globals.


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

garyc said:


> They need taking care of. Dishwashers turn the edges due to the heat. Improper sharpening with a steel or back of another knive will also blunt them. Cutting on too hard a surface (like granite work tops)will dull them too.
> 
> Get your Globals professionally sharpened (I use a local kitchen shop who do a great job for Â£1 a blade), then get a ceramic water-sharpener and do them little and often. Never dish wash them.
> 
> ...


I have a shikansen water sharpener, and it does an excellent job on 2 of the 5 - a utility and a big knife I use mainly for carving.

However, my very small veg knife has pits and damage all the way along the blade (its only ever used to cut onto either wooden or plastic board) and my slightly longer knife was broken a couple of years ago (tip sheared off!) by my cleaning lady. The other one I have looks like a small cleaver and sharpens up only "OK", and isn't much good for anything.

Maybe I should just expand my range.

The biggest problem, I get rust spots on them.

Yes, the do go in the dishwasher, and YES I know they shouldn't - but that is a recent thing. They never used to, and still used to get the odd rust spot.

Like I said, maybe I just have the wrong knives for my purpose, because one of them does work a treat, but the blades on the smaller ones haven't lasted the test of time...


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## Rogue (Jun 15, 2003)

From all the cookery programmes I've watched, the best tip seems to be "buy German steel knives".
Sorry I can't give you a make/model to buy Tim, but I too am into my cooking (I do 99% of the cooking in my house) and hate having to use sub-standard blades.

I worked in my uncle's butcher's shop from the age of 11 to 16, and in all that time I still never learned to use a steel properly.
My uncle could sharpen knives in seconds but he also had a six inch scar on his left wrist from "learning" to use the steel.
I had a steel in the house until recently, but it (I) tended to make the blades worse than they were.

I bought a Kenwood electric tin opener the other day for Â£10 from Debenhams, and it has a built in knife sharpener in the back (two slots to run the blade in) and this has put a new lease of life into even the oldest knives I have.

Personally, I think it's all about keeping the knives sharp.
I have one knife I bought for about Â£7 from Ikea which still sharpens well, and does the job admirably.

Rogue


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

I'm not allowed near sharp knives.


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## Kell (May 28, 2002)

jampott said:


> garyc said:
> 
> 
> > They need taking care of. Dishwashers turn the edges due to the heat. Improper sharpening with a steel or back of another knive will also blunt them. Cutting on too hard a surface (like granite work tops)will dull them too.
> ...


I also got the Shinkasen water sharpener, but am undecided on whether it's better or the (cheap) steel I use is. The WS probably gets them sharper, but they dull more quickly.

There's an article in one of the mags I've got in the house about carving knives (either FHM or Esquire) and that has tips about keeping your knives sharp. I'll try and dig it out. Failing that, the Italians that go around all the restaurants have excellent reputations as knife sharpeners - don't know how you go about getting in touch with them though.


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## Hev (Feb 26, 2005)

Global for me too :?

I never put mine in the dishwasher but they still have a few 'spots' on them (they are now 6 year old). Never got around to buying a sharpener but I know I should sooner rather than later 



Lisa. said:


> I'm not allowed near sharp knives.


Good excuse to get someone else to cook for ya! [smiley=skull.gif] :wink:

Hev x


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## Rogue (Jun 15, 2003)

Lisa. said:


> I'm not allowed near sharp knives.


I keep telling the g/f that.
She's so hashy-bashy with the sharp knives that it makes me scared just watching her.
She's cut herself three times since we moved into this house, I've not cut myself yet.

Rogue


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

Rogue said:


> Lisa. said:
> 
> 
> > I'm not allowed near sharp knives.
> ...


God she sounds like me! I know I'm dangerous with them and know blood will result.

Tim says sharp knives are safer, what a load of bollox that is! blunt knives don't cut your finger off!


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## Rogue (Jun 15, 2003)

Lisa. said:


> Rogue said:
> 
> 
> > Lisa. said:
> ...


Yeah, when we bought our most recent new knife, I didn't allow Paula to use it until I'd "broken it in", and even then she manged to slice a bit of her finger nail off with it. :? :wink:

Rogue


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

It doesn't even have to be knives with me, I did this on a cake tin, you can see the big flap of skin I sliced off, I still have the scar. I fainted when I nearly cut my hand off with a stanley knife once. I have scars from chisels, knives, cake tins, stanley knives, screw drivers, scissors... it just has to be shiny and made of metal really.

http://www.********.co.uk/gallery/barely_legal/ouchy.jpg


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## TTotal (Aug 12, 2002)

<faint>


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## Rogue (Jun 15, 2003)

Lisa. said:


> It doesn't even have to be knives with me, I did this on a cake tin, you can see the big flap of skin I sliced off, I still have the scar. I fainted when I nearly cut my hand off with a stanley knife once. I have scars from chisels, knives, cake tins, stanley knives, screw drivers, scissors... it just has to be shiny and made of metal really.
> 
> http://www.********.co.uk/gallery/barely_legal/ouchy.jpg


You and my g/f should have a cooking competition.
The winner is the person with the most fingers left intact 

Rogue


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Blunt knives are dangerous, because the force needed to cut something is excessive, and the cutting is unpredictable, so they're more likely to slip and cut you... :roll:

Hev, if your global knives haven't been in the dishwasher and are STILL showing spots, that's a bit worrying.

The problem is, I really like the look of the Global handles, and they do feel well balanced.

I'm tempted to bin the broken one, buy a new small one plus another smallish utility knife and carry on just using the ones that work well. I don't need 1001 different blades, but cutting meat and veg neatly is so much easier with a "good" sharp knife - and I just want them to either stay sharp, or be easy to sharpen and retain their edge, and not go rusty and be easy to clean. Not much to ask, really!


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

> Blunt knives are dangerous, because the force needed to cut something is excessive, and the cutting is unpredictable, so they're more likely to slip and cut you...


You are so terribly wrong. And I am telling you because my BEng final year project was for forensic medicine and I did prove that blunt knives have a huge difficulty in penetrating human skin.

But take a sharp knife with a sharp edge and it goes through skin very easily.

My wife is also butter fingers like Lisa and since I bought the new knives it is like a blood path in the kitchen, so she prefers using the old ones.


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

vlastan said:


> > Blunt knives are dangerous, because the force needed to cut something is excessive, and the cutting is unpredictable, so they're more likely to slip and cut you...
> 
> 
> You are so terribly wrong. And I am telling you because my BEng final year project was for forensic medicine and I did prove that blunt knives have a huge difficulty in penetrating human skin.
> ...


Oh don't talk bollocks. If a knife won't even cut human skin, its not going to make a dent in your beef, or carrots or anything like that, is it?

So you wouldn't be USING a knife THAT blunt...

Try here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/tv_and_radio/ ... dex2.shtml


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

In fact just search the 4 words: dangerous blunt knives sharp

on google, and you'll hit a load of sites, everything from the Scouts upwards...


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

You are looking at chef web pages here.

I am telling you that this was an engineering project that proved this point. And taking into account that my supervisor was advising police on murder cases and he gave me a distinction for it, you can understand that it was very credible. The point was that you will need excessive force to cut someone with a blunt knife than with a sharp one.

Try to stab your belly with a blunt knife (use force not enough to penetrate the skin) and then apply the same force with a sharp knife and see which one cuts you. :wink:


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

I agree with Nick. I've never cut myself with a blunt or plastic knife.


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## TT Twister (Apr 14, 2004)

These are great. Japanese steel - make me feel like Uma Thurman with a Hattori Hanzo Samurai sword 8)


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

vlastan said:


> You are looking at chef web pages here.
> 
> I am telling you that this was an engineering project that proved this point. And taking into account that my supervisor was advising police on murder cases and he gave me a distinction for it, you can understand that it was very credible. The point was that you will need excessive force to cut someone with a blunt knife than with a sharp one.
> 
> Try to stab your belly with a blunt knife (use force not enough to penetrate the skin) and then apply the same force with a sharp knife and see which one cuts you. :wink:


Lets look at facts and real-life situations, shall we - not engineering theories.

Of course, given the same level of "force", a sharp knife will do more damage.

Of course, if you have a knife as blunt as a block of 2x4, it won't cut the skin.

But if you have blunt kitchen knives, which are still capable of cutting (else you wouldn't be bothering to use them) they ARE inherently more dangerous. Nothing to do with the fact that sharp knives can damage more, and NOTHING to do with thrusting or stabbing or ANY "deliberate" way of cutting...

What I'm talking about is, imagine you are chopping vegetables. A sharp knife will glide through, and even with something like a carrot that has a different consistency part way through, this won't make any difference to the way the blade cuts, and you can slice, slice, slice in a clean motion.

Now imagine chopping the same vegetable with a blunt knife. The force needed to cut all the way through is much higher, so you will put more force into your slicing. Not only does this negate the fact that the previous knife is sharper (and the sharper knife is being used with less force) it makes for a far less consistent cut. Blunt knives have a tendency not to cut all the way through, even something like a carrot, so the user has to reapply force.

You only have to listen to the sound the knife makes when it contacts the chopping block to understand that the exit speed of a blunt knife is greater than that of a sharp knife (because more force must be used to counteract the duller blade) - but the biggest problem is a more inconsistent cut, meaning the knife is more likely to slip.

Of course none of this takes into account general clumsiness. If you put your fingers where you are cutting, you'll do more damage with a sharp knife - but with a blunt knife, the injuries are more likely to occur when the knife bounces off and goes where it shouldn't - which means it'll even cut people who have the common sense to hold the thing they are cutting with their fingers outside the normal arc of the blade... :roll:

Of course a sharp knife will do more damage if you stab someone with it, because you're assuming that the force applied is equal. Any fool can work that one out. My point is, because you use excessive force to cut FOOD with a blunt knife, the blade is more likely to cause YOU harm. Not the object you are cutting.

I've never cut myself with a sharp knife. :roll:


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

TT Twister said:


> These are great. Japanese steel - make me feel like Uma Thurman with a Hattori Hanzo Samurai sword 8)


Yeah, they look lovely 

I wonder if they're stocked at any retailers so I could go and play with them.

Porsche designed, though. At least they look better than the Cayman


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

jampott said:


> vlastan said:
> 
> 
> > You are looking at chef web pages here.
> ...


Tim is correct. The rest of you are talking crap.


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## ronin (Sep 6, 2003)

I Have known of fake Globals for a while now, and it seems im not the only one.....

http://forums.hexus.net/archive/index.php/t-12872.html


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

garyc said:


> jampott said:
> 
> 
> > vlastan said:
> ...


You're both talking bollox, I'm the living proof.

Are you Tim's new bitch?


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Lisa. said:


> garyc said:
> 
> 
> > jampott said:
> ...


You're clumsy, that's all. That's different from the dangers I'm talking about. If you insist on leaving your fingers in the path of the blade, you will cut yourself - sharp OR blunt. 8)  :roll: :-*


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

When you use more force witha blunt knife you are more careful. You have time to react as you cut and cause a lot less damage.

On a very sharp knife, even touching your skin will cause a cut.

Also your skin can resist puncture from a blunt knife, even if more force is applied to it, compared to the sharp one. Having said that, by the time you get through the skin, the rest of the tissue will cut very easily with any type of knife.

We have real examples here Lisa and my wife are cutting themselves a lot easier with a sharp knife than with a blunt one. Isn't this enough to prove the point? Your thinking may be correct and logical but still doesn't apply to the real world.


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## Kell (May 28, 2002)

I don't think Lisa's example is proof at all.

As Tim says, she may just be clumsy. The fact that she did so much damage to her finger with a cake tin would seem to be a good illustration of that.

Its not that blunt knives are more dangerous than sharp ones in a situation where you deliberately want to hurt someone - ie stab them - because they're not.

You'd do more damage as a surgeon with a blunt scalpel than with a sharp one too. You need to exert a certain amount of pressure on the skin to penetrate it. With a blunt blade you need to exert more force as it's spread over a greater area - the same reason that rescuers sometines put ladders on frozen lakes to spread their weight and not go through the ice too, or why drawing pins work.

So you put in more force and then when the blade does go through you suddenly find that your hand is moving and it takes longer to stop - doing more damage. With a sharp blade, you need less pressure and therefore can be more precise and stop your hand travellign further than it was meant to.

It's the lack of precision that causes the potential for damage in the home too. I nearly took the end of my thumb off with a blunt saw as I needed to exert too much force and when it kicked out of the cut, it jumped up, landed on my thumbnail and then I put the full force onto it. Through the nail and down to the bone. I have scars all over my fingers from being in the scouts and using a knife that wasn't as sharp as it should have been while whittling...

In conclusion, it's blatently obvious that in the same situation, with the same amount of force, a sharp knife will cause more damage, but its the fact thay you're more likely to be in that situation with a blunt knife because of the excess force you have to apply to use it.

I'm on Tim's and Gary's side.


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## Kell (May 28, 2002)

Mind you, that didn't answer the original question.

I couldn't find that article in FHM, so it must be in Esquire. And the water spotting or rust spots can be caused because you should never let a knife dry naturally - once it's washed, you should dry it.

I also find that my smaller knives aren't as sharp - the one that holds its edge the longest is the carving knife. Mind you I don't like using the smaller knives anyway as they don't suit my particular style of chopping. Whereas I have two identical general Chef's knives (one I bought and one came as part of a set) which I like using because of the shape of the blade, but don't stay as sharp as the carving one.


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Kell said:


> I don't think Lisa's example is proof at all.
> 
> As Tim says, she may just be clumsy. The fact that she did so much damage to her finger with a cake tin would seem to be a good illustration of that.
> 
> ...


Spot on... 

And, for Kell to agree with Gary, he must have put some thought into it :wink:


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## Lisa. (May 7, 2002)

Pah!

It's just a bloke thing, fastest, loudest, sharpest...

I bet you all had Swiss Army Knives as kids.


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

Vlastan - for your next dissertation, how about proving that a bullet fired from a gun is more likely to injure someone than a bullet thrown by hand? :lol: :roll:

That shoud get you a Masters, if you have the same guy doing the course.


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

jampott said:


> Kell said:
> 
> 
> > I don't think Lisa's example is proof at all.
> ...


Hmmm. Agreeing with both Kell and Tim. I may have to change tack at this point. :-*

When I was 15 I was fishing for conger at the bottom of a cliff in Brixham. I had spent an hour the evening before sharpening my fishing knife. It was Finnish Rapala fillet knife and very sharp (it still is as I still have it)

I was cutting the head off a fish for bait, with the fish in my left palm, head towards thumb. Chating to my mates I noticed that the mackerel was bleeding quite a lot more than I would normally have expected. Taking the fish away I then saw that I had not only cut through the fish but both the tendons in the third and forth fingers in my left hand, so I promptly fainted.   

Two operations for tendon grafts and some 56 (you tend to count 'em at that age) stiches later and some impressive scars on my left arm and hand, normal service was resumed and my lesson learned.

Moral was that you can cut yourself very badly with a sharp knife simply through not concentrating when using one - carelessness. Generally one concentrates more when using a sharp kife. Accidents - the knife slipping or jerking away from where you are cutting and doing damage elsewhere - are far more likely to happen with a blunt knife as one will invariably be applying more pressure, when blade 'spins out'.

I subsequently spent a few years at sea as a trawlerman: disembowelling fish on a moving deck in rough seas for a living. I very seldom cut myself with a sharp knife beacause of the economy of movement and ease of blade pressure deployed. People were often cutting themselves with blunt knives....

Separately, I have noticed that women tend not to have sharp knives in there kitchens...but if they do, they like to store them at the bottom of a half filled washing up bowl half filled with gungy water in order to catch out the unwary. :roll:


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

Lisa. said:


> Pah!
> 
> It's just a bloke thing, fastest, loudest, sharpest...
> 
> I bet you all had Swiss Army Knives as kids.


Nope:


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## Kell (May 28, 2002)

Also Nope...

Classic Opinel with a locking blade. Something I got after having normal folding knives which catch you out when the blade collapses and folds back on your fingers.


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## NaughTTy (Jul 9, 2003)

Kell said:


> Also Nope...
> 
> Classic Opinel with a locking blade. Something I got after having normal folding knives which catch out the unwary when using a folding blade....


Snap - got one of those too.

....but my wife did buy me a Vitorinox for my birthday last year


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

jampott said:


> Vlastan - for your next dissertation, how about proving that a bullet fired from a gun is more likely to injure someone than a bullet thrown by hand? :lol: :roll:
> 
> That shoud get you a Masters, if you have the same guy doing the course.


Thanks for your suggestion but this won't work. You cannot make the bullet explode and leave the casing by throwing it with your hand. You need a gun to do this. :lol:

And I have a Masters in Telecoms. :wink: :-*


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

Right knives donw, can we move onto salt/pepper grinders?

I have had a few - from expensive cast iron, machined alloy, to current wooden Peugeot (yes that Peugeot company) item.

They always start off life well - big chunks when you need them, little grounds when appropriate. Trouble is that their efficiency always seems to wane after a while. I dont know if this is due to metal grinding parts wearing out, moisture ingress or whatever. Yet to find a really good one that lasts.

Never really tempted by leccy ones, but fancy a new one (or two if I get a salt grinder too.

Ideas?


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

garyc said:


> Right knives donw, can we move onto salt/pepper grinders?
> 
> I have had a few - from expensive cast iron, machined alloy, to current wooden Peugeot (yes that Peugeot company) item.
> 
> ...


 [smiley=stop.gif] You are going off topic now Mister. Please start a new thread and lets carry on playing with knives here. :wink:


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

If that is indeed you Nick nice to see you back etc, now kindly fck off. :wink:

Topic has now morphed into kitchen apparel. :-*


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## vlastan (May 6, 2002)

garyc said:


> If that is indeed you Nick nice to see you back etc, now kindly fck off. :wink:
> 
> Topic has now morphed into kitchen apparel. :-*


 :lol: :lol: :lol:

Ok lets stick to the kitchen them then. Have you ever had sex in your kitchen?


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## jampott (Sep 6, 2003)

garyc said:


> Right knives donw, can we move onto salt/pepper grinders?
> 
> I have had a few - from expensive cast iron, machined alloy, to current wooden Peugeot (yes that Peugeot company) item.
> 
> ...


I have leccy ones...


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## QuackingPlums (Mar 10, 2004)

I get through a pair of grinders about once year or so, but mainly because I have one pair for cooking and another for the table. 
I like the Cole & Mason single-handed ones for cooking with, but I tend to be a bit rough with them so the handles snap off pretty quickly. They're so cheap though, so I tend to buy several at a time for "stock" :lol:

Can't beat a ridiculously big wooden one for table use... if anything just because it always gets a laugh... 

PS - am I too late to participate in the knife discussion? I have small ceramic knives for the ultimate cutting power and heavier German sabatier cooking knives for general use. Although the Globals are well balanced and look awesome, they're too light for my style of cooking.


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## Kell (May 28, 2002)

QuackingPlums said:


> I get through a pair of grinders about once year or so, but mainly because I have one pair for cooking and another for the table.
> I like the Cole & Mason single-handed ones for cooking with, but I tend to be a bit rough with them so the handles snap off pretty quickly. They're so cheap though, so I tend to buy several at a time for "stock" :lol:
> 
> Can't beat a ridiculously big wooden one for table use... if anything just because it always gets a laugh...
> ...


Do you only ever have suckling pigs and whole roast Oxen then?

I've got a cleaver I bought for jointing and boning, but never had to use it.


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## QuackingPlums (Mar 10, 2004)

Hee, suckling pigs, yes. Haven't tried an Ox yet, but I don't think it'll fit in my oven.

If you compare the Rockwell ratings of the Global knives to the German ones, they're not actually that hard - I do a lot of "bone" work, and like to use a heavy 10" or 12" for it, rather than a cleaver, though I do tend to use the cleaver for a lot of other general stuff - kinda like you see those chefs in China town do... 

It would definitely be a toss-up between the Global and my ceramics for fine filleting work tho


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## jdn (Aug 26, 2002)

garyc said:


> Right knives donw, can we move onto salt/pepper grinders?
> 
> I have had a few - from expensive cast iron, machined alloy, to current wooden Peugeot (yes that Peugeot company) item.
> 
> ...


As luck would have it the Sunday Times maagzine reviewed 'six great' salt and pepper sets. No comment on build quality but here goes:

Click the picture for more info.

I quite like these old French style mills:



Not cheap though..

Here is a Danish model:



Look pretty sturdy, 25 year guarantee on the separate mechanism. Again, not cheap.

They also do this:



Thumb operated rasp action apparently.

I recall you like the Alessi kettle - here is their version:



Or, if minimalism is your thang, how about some hand pounding action...



Not much to break...

These are crap:



Hope that helps.


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## jdn (Aug 26, 2002)

Which ones did you go for in the end?


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

...none yet. But I like the old style French ones. What make were they?

Thanks for info.

John Lewis beckons...


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## jdn (Aug 26, 2002)

Divertimenti.

Click the relevant pic for a link.


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