Talk:Kitchen knife

Page Re-write

Reading through this article it seems to need some major improvements. Mostly it feels unmaintained and a little behind Wikipedia's current quality (I should note many, many articles are in the same boat). Some areas for improvement would be:

• Article structure
• Refreshed, less casual tone.
• Sections containing comprehensive explanations rather than focusing on the most common types/names/uses (too subjective as to 'common')
• Surveying expert methods of classification and providing definitions and explanations based thereupon. This ties into the following.
• Clarifying the difference between a knife's name and its usage classification. Example: a 'Chef's Knife' is often used in general preparation (meat, vegetables) by both professional and household cooks, whereas a Cleaver is used for meat prep. but is not the only knife that can be used to chop meat and is far less commonly used in the home.
• Either on this page or in other appropriate locations a history of the knife type.
• Off-loading certain sections like grinds, material (and subsequent compositions), specialty types onto existing or new articles where reasonable. Most of these subjects exist as their own article but may need cleanup as well. Also, listing things like accessories rather than summarizing them, then linking to an article would reduce bloat.

Related to above, removing redundancy between kitchen knife and chef's knife. In its current state the chef's knife article is unclear whether it is discussing the blade type of a French chef's knife or general purpose knives used by chefs.

There is generally a rough categorization of knives into common and specialty applications (usually professional or at least skilled). I am not wholly convinced that it is necessary for two distinct articles to exist. I'd forward the notion that the intention is to distinguish between common 'household' equipment and the often more specialized & expensive commercial kitchen equipment. Here are some thoughts on how to resolve this problem/distinction:

• Give exhaustive list of knife types in it's own article (ie 'Types of cooking/kitchen knives'). Then recompose the current articles to discuss usage and general concepts while pointing to the more detailed sections on the Types page.
• Develop some sort of definition or 'test' to determine whether a particular kind of knife is considered specific to household/common usage, professional usage or both.

Zengrain (talk) 08:58, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Lots of changes in a short time

Man! I've been cleaning up an old directory with various articles I had started to draft; I come back a couple hours later and—Ka-pow!—a dozen edits. (Jengod, that — was especially for you. :-) )

I'd like to have a discussion on the change in name to the page. There are (as noted in the intro section) many different kinds of knifes involved in cooking. I'm not sure I think a single article can usefully handle everything from cleavers to butter knives. Many people (I'm an example) think that chef's knives are especially important; I don't know about whole books, but certainly entire chapters in books have been devoted to chef's knives. Brings out the fanatic in people. Imagine Niles Crane hyper-ventilating.

Many of the words about materials and manufacturing frankly don't apply to other knives—you wouldn't hot-forge your table knife, and bread knives are a whole different animal. I'd like to restore the Chef's knife page as a separate entity, and revise Kitchen knife to be a kind of disambiguation page. As in: "There are many kinds of kitchen knives, here are the links to each kind".

Thoughts?

DanielVonEhren 02:53, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Works for me. I was just happy to see a Chef's knife article, but when I got in there, it had already become Kitchen knives or whatever, and I was just trying to have it make sense. Kitchen knife as disambig is fine by me! :) jengod 22:51, Feb 23, 2005 (UTC)

And a :-) right back at 'cha. Now I just have a bunch of work to do on the article.

DanielVonEhren 23:40, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I'm Planning Some Changes Here

I think this article on kitchen knives is way too small. I disagree that this should be a disambiguation page. Most kitchen knives share many properties that are worth discussing on one page. For example, why are the explainations of stamped vs forged or handle materials on the Chef's knife article and not Boning knife or Santoku? While I agree that not all topics apply to all knives, I do not think the material should be duplicated to multiple knife entries. Additionally, I do not think that most knives really lend themselves to an article that is any longer than the Boning knife article. At this length, why not just include the information here (since there is already a short description) and replace the subpages with redirects? Also, a butter knife is really a table knife; I think we should qualify that a "kitchen knife", for the sake of this article, is any knife likely to come in a block. At any rate, I am already working on changes to this article. I decided to open this up for discussion, however, after I found that this had already been pondered a year ago. You can see my progress at User:Ctdunstan/Kitchen knife (but please do not edit it yet--not to be possessive, it would just be easier to discuss changes at this point, and open it for editing when I make it public in a few days). Let me know what you all think. -- Chris 02:55, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

New Page!

I have finally moved over my new version of the page. I think the article is an improvement over the previous version. It is, however, a very bold edit, so I open this up for discussion. -- Chris 03:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm new to this article, but couldn't we improve it by inserting specific images of each type of knife throughout the page, as they're cited? There must be generic (non-copyrighted) images we could use. Artwholeflaffer (talk) 02:06, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

Composition

The article says that kitchen knives made from high carbon steel are 20 % carbon and 80 % iron. I strongly suspect someone dropped a digit or added a zero. Steels max out at about 4% carbon. More carbon than that and you get something like cast iron frying pan. -- Geo Swan 02:05, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Good eye; that does look fishy, doesn't it? I think I got it out of Alton Brown's Gear, but I don't have to book in front of me right now.

DanielVonEhren 03:02, 23 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I went back to the Alton Brown book, and sure enough it says 80% iron and 20% carbon (page 68). Geo, do you have better number (I'm not sure where to look it up); I'm still agreeing that 80/20 sounds wrong.

BTW, the Chef's knife page got re-instated, so your correction (or replies) should go over there.

This PDF document explains the phase change diagrams of iron and carbon... probably in more detail than you would prefer. Here is the 25 word version. Molten alloys are like slush. As they cool crystals precipitate out. Carbon is not very soluble in Iron. Much above 4 % Carbon and you get "cast iron" with little inclusions of pure carbon in it. The carbon content of "high Carbon steel" maxes out at 1.7%.

I don't know where the information in the paragraphs that distinguish between carbon steel, high carbon steel, and stainless steel come from. But I believe it is pretty inaccurate. When the word "steel" is used, without being prefaced with the adjective "stainless", then it is refering to an alloy of Iron and Carbon.

I am not a chemist. I did a project on metallurgy, in high school, a long time ago. So I don't know trust my recollection that "carbon steel" and "high carbon steel" are synonyms. But I am sure that what the article calls "high carbon steel" is some form of stainless steel. -- Geo Swan 22:32, 2005 Feb 28 (UTC)

DanielVonEhren 00:39, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

subsubsect. titles

very nice article. I suggest that the sub-subsection titles like Carving should be changed into ==== ... ==== style, since it would allow better redirection (e.g. carving knife : kitchen knife#carving).

I don't do it immediately because it might make the "floating" of the pictures less nice (adding many [ edit ] links), but I nevertheless strongly advocate for this change.

If some competent person agrees, please do make the change (maybe a guru can easily automatize(?) it). — MFH:Talk 17:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Well, I've changed over the headings to ==== style, and I now remember why I didn't do that... the TOC is quite long. I think you are right that those headings are best, so perhaps we could find a way to fix the TOC? I think the [edit] links are OK, but it would be nice to remove them from the lvl 4 headings. I tried to do this with __NOEDITSECTION__, but I didn't realize that it effects the whole page. Any thoughts? -- Chris 23:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, so I floated the TOC on the right since it is so long and narrow... but that created some problems with the images that were using {{clear}}, so I switched the "materials" and "types" sections. Overall, I think it looks pretty good. It would be nice to get rid of some of those [edit] links, though. Thanks for the work on Category:Images of kitchen knives, by the way... it looks good. -- Chris 11:04, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Other knives

Since this article starts, A kitchen knife is any knife that is used in a kitchen, it would seem to include table (or butter) knives. As such, the following topics should be included:

• Silver as material
• Butter knife and case knife

However, I don't want to just annoy people. Would others support such a change? -Harmil 06:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean, but I think that a butter knife is more like a table knife. I guess a steak knife is too, but they at least come in cutlery blocks. Either way I think the first paragraph should be rewritten (I was never very happy with it), but we could still include a butter knife somewhere if that is what's best. I think including silver as a material might confuse people a bit though, as it doesn't really make a good knife (just silverware). Certainly we would say in the butter knife description what they are made out of, but I fear if we add silver in the materials section we would have to add a whole host of bizzare composite materials used for cheap flatware, none of which make a good blade. Do you know what I mean? What do people think about this? -- Chris 19:03, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Steak knife

The joke about steak knives is that they have points, in case the cow isn't dead yet. Or maybe for if you don't have a fork. I suppose the aggressive look makes them look sharper, but I cannot imagine the point ever being used. David R. Ingham 20:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Images

I don't believe that we have a strong claim to use the images from the Wusthof website, so I have listed them at Wikipedia:Fair use review. Comments are welcome there. FreplySpang (talk) 05:30, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

I have sent them an email, advising them to release their images under a creative commons license. After all, this is free product placement. I'll update you if they respond. 84.81.35.156, 13:15 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Save yourself the effort in the future. Major companies almost never freely license their work, as they like to control where the images are used. ed g2s • talk 19:57, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

"... particularly useful for killing people."

As this seems like an irreverant way to bring up the popular image of the chef/butcher knife in the hands of crazed killers in many forms of media, I'm deleting it. Because this article serves as an over-view of kitchen knives, I feel that it should focus only on a knife's roll in food preperation, and the factors that affect that (materials, etc). It's history of portrayal and function as a weapon (eg; shower scene in the movie Psycho, Bobbit incident) should probably be confined to the specific chef knife article.

68.167.249.171 04:34, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Added comments: Steel

I've added comments about the use of a steel to maintain knives. Trumpy 05:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

---

San Mai and Damascus are two similar but completely different processes. "Damascus steal" was never a term for San Mai. it refers to a process of folding steel that creates a very distinct and unique pattern, not Japanese steal folding techniques.

Table

I removed all the redlinked, unlinked entries from the table (unless it had a wikipage, in which case I added the link). Rather than having a spam-attracting list, let's keep the table to notable entries that have their own wikipages. Otherwise it'll keep growing and growing, and basically end up a pile of external links with no real order or reason. WLU(talk) 21:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Response: I seriously disagree with your deletion of KAI from the the list of prominent brand/companies. Just because a brand, or a company does not have a website, it doesn't mean that it isn't valubale information to the reader. I did link to the KAI USA webpage but I thought it would be misleading to link to it as the official site for the entire company. Due to the popularity and prominence of the Shun line of kitchen knives, as well as their high-profile endorsement by Alton Brown, I think that it's important to list them there despite their lack of a Wikipedia article (which Kershaw Knives does have, by the way). --Mistsrider (talk) 19:34, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to create the page if you think it's notable, see WP:CORP for further guidance. I delete entries without their own wikipage because otherwise the table will be filled with every single knife manufacturer that has an internet hookup. My objection is the lack of a wikipedia page, not a global page. WLU (talk) 19:42, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

It's edits like this that I'm trying to avoid having placed on the page. I'll put Kershaw on the table. WLU (talk) 19:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. WLU (talk) 19:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Awesome! I hope you don't mind if I go back and format / add information to that section sometime in the future. --Mistsrider (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

"Cutting (Food)" article?

First of all, congrats to everyone who worked on this terrific article.

I've seen the stubs Butterflying and Accordion cut, and it occurs to me that the entire subject of knifework in cooking could be cranked up, or templated, including primal (butchery) and kitchen cutting named-techniques (but not a how-to, violation of Wiki something or other policy).

It seemed to me that you are the people to bounce this off of.

Best regards, --Shlishke (talk) 06:22, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Titanium?

The article says this: "Titanium is lighter, more wear resistant, and more flexible than steel, but also less hard and it will not take as sharp an edge. But carbides in the titanium alloy allow them to be heat-treated to a sufficient hardness. Titanium does not impart any flavor to food. It is typically expensive."

To my understanding, Titanium is harder, lighter, and more brittle than most mild steels, and I wouldn't characterize it as particularly "flexible." Furthermore, Titanium carbide is very, very brittle and is used primarily for cutting steel and other metals on mills and lathes (a Titanium carbide cutting bit will shatter or chip if dropped on tile, but is very hard along certain axes).

However, I'm not an expert on knives so I'm reluctant to change this part of the article. I'm going to mark it as unsourced for now until someone who knows more checks it out. 74.197.36.137 (talk) 20:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

left-right symmetry

Frustrating for me when purchasing a knife is knowing whether the blade looks the same on both sides. Will it tend to cut straight lines or in circles? Is there an adjective to describe this aspect of a knife? On-line vendors should show pictures of both sides of the knife! Box-store vendors should use packaging that shows both sides. --Jclaer (talk) 20:58, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Bevel as applied to generic machining work

.

That would be the bevel symmetry. I've added mention to the nomenclature section in this article, and we also have an entire other article. If you search throughout the Kitchen knife article, you will find this terminology used throughout, describing many different blade types, including some which are nonsymmetric. Nimur (talk) 23:26, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Delete notable brands?

I'd suggest deleting the notable brands section. There are very few brands notable specifically for their knives (I'd say Sabatier, Victorinox, maybe Henckel, Global? I'd add Mora, but that's very my POV!) As knives are easily made by any company or artisan and don't require proprietary technologies, brands are pretty pointless and mostly not notable. Pol098 (talk) 19:09, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Before was the rule, brands without their own wikipedia site should be deleted, what makes sense to me —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.45.33.23 (talk) 03:29, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

As a weapon

I regret bringing up an uncomfortable subject, but perhaps the article should have a brief section acknowledging that the kitchen knife is occasionally used as a weapon, such as in a household attack. I was just about to put a link to this article from George Harrison#Knife Attack which unfortunately describes an example of this. —Prhartcom (talk) 17:43, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Bread knives

Bread knives are usually between 15 cm and 25 cm (6 and 10 inches). And see here one of the european definitions : Een broodmes is een 20-30 cm lang blablablibla.

That doesn't mix, doesn't it ?

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Kitchen knife/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Good but needs more on specialty knives -- Warfreak 00:11, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Last edited at 00:11, 23 June 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 21:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)