Ultrasonic Chef's Knife(seattleultrasonics.com) |
Ultrasonic Chef's Knife(seattleultrasonics.com) |
Although not a pro, or even a good cook, I do like quality knives — but, like most people who develop a casual nice-knife affinity, I then bought a few quality knives, a couple of junk knives to try restoring with a whetstone, a hand-made Japanese knife with my name on it, and... then I had enough kitchen knives to last the rest of my life, and there was no reason to buy any more.
This is the first one I have considered in years. Not because I need it, or because it's necessarily better at cutting must things than the workhorse Sekimagoroku nakiri I use[1] but because it's fucking neat and radiates nerdium waves.
This knife should be celebrated for what it is: basically an epic nerd project. That can also cut at least a few kinds of fruit more easily (or at least more enjoyably).
[1]: KAI model AE5206 (which seems very much like a Shun knife, made by the same company, but cost me only $53)
a knife is for detail work like stripping meat. on bulk/speed/uniformity you cannot beat a slicer with a knife.
You obviously don't apply flat pressure on a tomato until it breaks, you slice it by sliding the blade forward as you push down. It's unclear to me that this blade offers any improvement over proper technique, and feels disingenuous to even offer that comparison.
Probably (and precisely) because you can only achieve this with a knife that cuts very well.
And then for most any other situation of knife usage it isn't necessary at all, as knives are mostly used for chopping. The one (1) thing I can see this being useful for is a shrunken down version for paring, but whether or not that is mechanically feasible, I don't know. The curve and the handle are more important than this vibro-verbing.
Nice dialogue, btw. "Help chefs feel great about themselves in the kitchen", "access to sous vide". <Kitchen Woke> ?
Um, no.
I mean I get that you spent some R&D money on developing this thing, but selling something direct to consumers at 10X the BoM cost is abhorrent.
TL;DR it's really freaking cool, though the blades do seem to get dull fairly quickly. That said, they are made of a radically different grade of steel.
If the tech in the NeoBlade has been adapted successfully to the chef's knife, then all of the haters are going to sound like all of the early "you don't need an air fryer" pundits who totally missed the point and were clearly wrong.
Also, all of the "why would I care if I can aerosolize citrus" commenters have clearly never worked in a cocktail bar. Which isn't a knock; this is Hacker News, after all. Just know that there are people who make fancy drinks who would pay a lot to be able to do this easily. If you are the sort of person who spends time thinking about clear ice, you don't need this explained to you.
Also, portable air fryers make such small servings that they're useless for people with families. What the hell I going to do with three chicken wings?
I also simply don't have a convention oven. I rent my place, and it's not like I can just swap out the white goods.
Yes, the smallest ones are limited in capacity, but that's not the whole category. Larger models handle whole chickens.
The proof is in the market: people buy them in droves because they make food hot/crispy really quickly. A conventional oven can do the same thing, but it's like saying a desktop computer makes laptops "stupid". Technically true, but it ignores convenience, size, and efficiency, which are the reasons air fryers took off.
Anecdotally, most air fryers are owned by people who used to believe that they didn't need an air fryer. Have you actually had one in your life?
Air fryers are convection ovens, just with higher capacity fans relative to their own size compared to typical convection ovens (large convection ovens are sometimes coming with "air fryer" modes that replicate this, now.)
OTOH, aside from the utiltiy of having an additional smaller oven—which is not negligible, for many people’s cooking patterns—plenty of existing ranges include conventional rather than convection ovens, and adding an air fryer is a lot cheaper than replacing the range.
> Also, portable air fryers make such small servings that they're useless for people with families.
I have a family, and a countertop (I assume that’s what you mean by “portable”) air fryer/toaster oven, and I don't find that to be the case. We get a lot of use out of it.
Get a good steel knife, learn how to sharpen it properly, and you're set for life.
Also I'd not use a soaking whetsone {anymore} (my spouse resents them for being that messy).
Like holy shit, I'm just going to pay someone a few dollars to do it because I don't want to bother sorting out all of the contradictory advice!
My wife cooks sausages in the oven but I think that is just plain wrong. That is however her singular usage of our oven.
Fwiw we don't cook much western food, and we eat almost no prepackaged food. An air fryer would serve us 0 use.
We do however use our instapot all the time!
I would however suggest that this makes you poorly qualified to deem an entirely category of popular tools "stupid" just because you don't happen to use them.
I'm trying to think of a place for this in any kitchen, home or professional, and cannot see it being safe or all that useful...especially for $400.
It's a cool idea and really makes wanna go watch The Bad Batch again, BX Battle Droids carry vibroblades, but other than pure novelty it aint cuttin it for me.
Bonus for the buy-curious: Getchu a hydrodynamic spatula…jk. Get a nice 160mm - 200mm carbon steel gyuto, Tojiro makes pretty good entry level knives; a paring knife, and a Mercer white handle offset bread knife (a classic) and that’s all you need. For sharpening, a medium grit, muddy synthetic whetstone, I’m a huge fan of Aoto 2-4k, and you don’t really need much else for getting started, but in a way that even the serious pros will know you’re doing the right things. Maybe you need a strop, maybe. Chromium Oxide on leather or cork. Oh, and a SOFT wood cutting board. Hinoki wood is the undisputed king of cutting boards, or you could go with a no-trax self healing synth rubber if you have the $$. Put a wet kitchen towel/papertowel under your cutting boards so they don’t move around when you’re using them. Haste makes waste, and a wet towel is a hot towel.
Leave the money on the dresser.
I have decent knives but have probably never sharpened them properly. If there are more reviews, I'd pick this up.
https://www.etsy.com/ca/listing/1245797052/vintage-60s-phili...
I was just curious about two things - seems there might be some knife aficionados or experts here!
1. Sharpening - As a home cook, who doesn't know a lot about knives/sharpening - how hard would this be to maintain? Would it be plausible to get some basic home sharpening gear, and maintain this myself? Or should I take it to a professional knife sharpener - and if so, how do I even know if they're a good one, and won't damage the blade, or perhaps are good, but somehow get the blade out of "tune" etc?
2. Safety wise - is there anything at all to be concerned about with ultrasonic 40Khz blades? Should I be wearing any hearing protection when using this? (Context - I have hearing loss in both ears, and wear hearing aids - keen to preserve my remaining hearing, and am understandably cautious about this kind of thing for my family and me).
A few YT knife channels have done deep dives showing why they stop working soon after purchase, the details escape me but I have to agree with the end result....
I'm highly doubtful it's useful in the kitchen. Sharp knives would seem to do the trick.
No tang whatsoever, so the knife has no strength. It's probably unbalanced, which makes it awkward to use with finesse and speed. A year of heavy use and the "haft" will degrade to the point that it's dangerous.
Buy a proper carbon steel knife. You can keep it sharp forever with 5 minutes on youtube and $20 worth of kit from Amazon. Plus, it will never go flat.
They show the knife being touched from the side but of course that's safe
Just computers, no? IIRC they use knives because the shields stop fast-moving objects like bullets, so you need a slow-moving object like a knife.
the guy mentions cutting self occurs mostly due to excessive force applied by the (amateur/inexperienced) user and i kind of agree.
other part is that the inattentiveness and distraction, maybe trying to be fast... although if i were able to cut through (pun intended) things that easily, i would be steadier hand...
Just don't use a sharpener with the carbide v-blades that shave off slivers of metal or you'll get a knife with a concave edge that doesn't meet the board along the whole length and that really is a pain to fix (related note on that, a kitchen knife edge up in a vice is quite a disconcerting thing!).
Sharpening knives is quite the therapeutic process, at least it was for me when I learned to do them. Now I can sharpen knives at the bottom of a tea cup or even a brick.
They are really not that hard, especially if they come with the bit with the right angle.
That’s quite rude and unnecessary.
To answer the question, there is an infinite number of things I can do with my time. Learning that particular manual skill, especially when there is a very simple alternative, just doesn’t seem worthwhile to me.
Most people don't maintain their knives well and they get really ineffective over time. Others who do, probably won't buy this...
This guy did a 6 year multidisciplinary grind to produce a stunning consumer product. Exemplary
BTW I think the focus on knife sharpness is overrated for most kitchen tasks. At least for home cooks. Your knives should just have the necessary sharpness. More than that is a negative in my opinion.
Scott in the video makes the argument that sharp knives are safer, because you don't have to use as much force. But the only time I've ever cut myself with a knife in the kitchen have been with very sharp knives, eg one time handling it while washing the blade.
At the same time, I've been using a $5 chef knife for almost a decade and just giving it a few passes against a honing steel every few weeks. It gets plenty sharp after that, to the point where I don't feel I'm missing anything. Then again, I'm just a home cook who's super into kitchen knives so I acknowledge I'm not in the target market.
All of my knives have sticking issues, potato slices are the worst culprits. When doing a lot of prep work on veggies in a cramped area it's a pain and this seems like it could actually fix things?
OTOH, I'm not a huge fan of the design, I don't mind spending good money on a knife but between the blade profile and the chonky handle, it looks like an hybrid between an 8" fibrox and an electric turkey cutter.
If there was a premium release with a fancier handle (could wood work?) and a nicer blade profile (something like a gyuto or a french sabatier) I would be interested and I think it would reduce sticker shock (looks premium, expect premium price). I love the design of the charging tile though!
All you need is a sharpening steel and use it once or twice after every usage. Even a cheap knife will last for years while remaining reasonable sharp. Mine was €6 or thereabouts at Tesco two years ago and is more than sharp enough.
Of course more expensive knifes (ultrasonic or not) are better and can hold an edge longer. You can spend more time, effort, and money on making them sharper than just a quick use of a cheap sharpening steel. If you want to spend the extra money: go for it! But for a normal home cook: you can go a long way with consistent use of a €10 sharpening steel.
Also would be nice if it can be fitted to existing blades as handle retrofit, but I understand that might not be possible to properly tune the vibrations.
Also: I'd be curious how this feels in the hand due to the button and the extra weight.
If this knife works as well as the pitchman says, that's amazing. Just don't touch the edge.
I've gotten into the habit of using one of those slatted knife sharpeners before every use of my knife. It works well enough.
The shot of the scale showing force as they cut through a tomato was more compelling. I notice after the initial breach, when the knife is about halfway through, the forces are equal again. I assume that's due (at least in part) to friction between the inside of the tomato and the wide, side of the blade. Do they make a skinnier vibro-blade, or something like an ultrasonic cheese cutting wire?
I do wonder if a tuning fork or 'mass on a stick' hidden in the tang could provide enough vibration to help with the sticking. You'd probably have to smack it with every cut but it's so rarely a problem that would be fine.
When you say ugly/clunky - I'm guessing you mean it's a bit heavier, or the weight will be off compared to a good high-end chef's knife? (I don't have anything like that, haha).
I did note on their FAQ they say to never activate the blade whilst sharpening:
https://seattleultrasonics-ceizljlxnpt.gorgias.help/en-US/ho...
> Do not activate the ultrasonics during sharpening - this can damage both the blade and your sharpening stones, as the ultrasonic movement is too aggressive and not evenly distributed across the entire cutting edge. Also, reshaping the blade to a different belly curvature or tip shape can cause it to fall out of tune, so avoid removing more material than you would during normal sharpening.
The only thing you really need to keep kitchen knives sharp is the habit of sharpening them. That said I've been using this recently for utility sharpening - https://worksharptools.com/products/precision-adjust-knife-s...
It's a bit clunky but I tend to obsess over the angle of the grind, and something that physically constrains that is going to allow me to enjoy the process. For general purpose sharpening you don't need much more than a coarse stone (320 grit) and a honing steel. The coarse stone will bring the edge back (learn how to feel for the burr) and regular use of the steel will keep it in good cutting shape until it wears down. You might not get hair-popping razor sharpness, but that's a fairly short-lived state with kitchen knives unless you do a lot of maintenance.
Probably not great, otherwise they would have shown it, but being able to cut frozen food properly would be a game changer. The only things I found working are saws, and they are messy.
For instance, I flatten ground meat into 1lb "patties" and don't freeze it as a roll. I can literally snap the patty in half if I want half a pound, and the increase in surface area means rapid thawing if I place it, still in its storage bad (ziplock usually, but vacuum seal sometimes), into room temp water.
Way outside the price range I'd consider personally but I look forward to having one in 5 years at a hopefully lower price point
Maybe if the home chef who needs a leg up sees this it would prevent them from spending that much or more on more expensive knives and maintenance products. For those of us who know our way around the kitchen I’m not sure how much benefit I would get out of it.
Also did anyone think some of the cutting segments, particularly the radish, seemed sped up? The movement of the blade and hand looked a bit unnatural.
I never knew if this was the summum of how sharp my knives could be, or where I bring them on a "sharpness" scale of 1 to 5 for a given knife.
I was also wondering if this depends on the knife - with some knives being better for such electrical sharpener and some worse.
These things are now so sharp they can bring an edge profile back to a knife in five strokes without even needing lubrication (which is nice as water is a PITA when it causes corrosion between the steel bed and the plating.)
Every knife in your kitchen can be razor sharp in seconds and kept razor sharp whenever you need them to be. IMHO, far more useful than a single digi-vibro-knife.
Example product: Trend 300/1000 diamond sharpening kit.
Also, while it's true that dull knives are in some ways more dangerous than properly maintained ones, that doesn't mean safety increases monotonically with sharpness. I sharpen my kitchen knives every weekend and I'm perfectly capable of achieving an edge I could comfortably shave with, but I deliberately don't (I skip the highest-grit step and leather stropping needed for that) because it's not optimal for the vast majority of cooking tasks. The only thing that happens regularly in my kitchen that needs razor sharpness is scoring the top of a sourdough loaf, and my wife uses actual razor blades for that.
This strikes me as more of a competitor to electric carving knives than something I'd want to replace a standard chef's knife with. It looks like it needs to be used with very great care.
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/27/1031732394/springfree-trampol...
To me it has immediate appeal to make cutting easier. It's also really not that expensive. I suppose this is the same site that is crazy about AI and thought Dropbox would flop. This thing has more utility than AI to me. I suppose being a software person can warp your perception of the real world.
Lightsaber would be different because doesn’t have a blade to guide.
If you’re pushing down with hard force, it basically doesn’t matter if the knife is sharp anymore, it’ll just chop your finger off. However, with an extremely fine cut, it will be much easier to reattach, as the edges will match up well. With a dull knife, you’re not slicing, you’re more tearing your way through something.
People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives, of course there's a viable market for sharper kitchen knives. And for e-waste, you are never going to make meaningful progress by telling consumers to feel bad for buying fun things. The problem is so much bigger than that, the energy is better spent in a different place.
This is a cool and novel tool, at least as far as its genuine utility can be verified. It doesn't seem harmful to let people get excited about it.
>People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives...
Keeping knives sharp is just obscure enough of a skill to elude most home cooks. Videos that tell you to judge the angle for sharpening a knife unaided don't help.
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You can sharpen (really, burnish) steel knives on a stainless steel sink edge! Stainless steel kitchen sinks are very common in USA.
Gently press the knife blade almost flat against the sink edge and pull the knife handle toward you while moving it to the right (or to the left if you're left-handed). Hold the knife at the angle desired for the blade edge (endless discussions of angle are possible). Of course don't cut yourself.
The motion is similar to that when using a sharpening steel.
Do several times on both sides. Wash and wipe the blade clean. Voila!
A co-worker taught me this trick after I asked how she kept her knife so sharp. I haven't bought or used a knife sharpener since.
I'm not saying it's not a good idea to sharpen knives, but a lot of people make it sound like you're a dangerous monster if you don't. And that just doesn't seem to be the case.
She never said anything, I didn't know it. Why?
Because she is just "used" to it and to her these knives were just fine. So she never thought about sharpening knives in the first place.
I will take those knives to a pro and he will sharpen them for me, as in a rental I stay in, I don't have the tools to do that and as I said in another comment - I don't have a pain free process to do that as I don't do it often.
Such knife seems like a disaster waiting to happen, I can't see the benefit honestly.
With a mass market electric sharpener and a reasonable knife I spend maybe 15 minutes/yr on sharpening and the knife + sharpener costs less than half this product
The marketing video seems to try to head people like me off, but it also seems to wildly overstate the level of commitment required to have sharp knives
(I do think the tech is cool tho. I just wouldn’t pay $400 for an 8 inch chef’s knife no matter how good it is)
The tool enthusiast has beautiful Japanese steel knives treated as family heirlooms; the knives are sent out for professional sharpening once or twice a year.
The food enthusiast has a pile of fibrox knives and a chef's choice electric sharpener. The knives go through the sharpener once a month and the dishwasher daily; the knives get replaced every decade or two.
The tool enthusiast's knives are pretty, but the food enthusiast's knives always pass the paper test.
Nobody has ever complemented me "wow, this meal was prepared with such pretty knives!"
I am ashamed to admit it, but I have been happily using this 5,99 EUR IKEA knife sharpener for nearly 10 years know:
https://www.ikea.com/de/en/p/aspekt-knife-sharpener-black-57...
I use it 1-2 times a month for 30 seconds on the 2 knives I use in the kitchen. They pass the paper test. Previously, I used the bottom of a coffee mug.
That being said, thinks like [0] do exist and people seem to buy them.
also, no test on power armor, I don't think they have identified their core market.
I think it's a worthwhile message to tell folks that we, collectively, should be mindful about the resources we consume and the waste we produce. For such razor-thin (lol) gains in QoL, I think it's worth reminding people to consider whether it is worth the huge increase in waste. Knives are metal and wood/plastic... awfully efficient tools for the work they get done.
EDIT: And to balance the negativity, I _love_ the Seattle Ultrasonics logo.
If this turns into a significant market, I'm sure the cost will plummet.
* https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-puzzle-of-the-all-...
It's "slashdot talks about the iPod announcement" all over again.
Unfortunately, communities tend to devolve other time into empty cynicism and negativity, and it's hard to stop, since obviously you don't want to ban 100% of cynical or negative comments.
Probably would be a net positive if we did.
First, on sharpness, it takes me about 15 minutes once a week to sharpen my cleaver, two chef's knives, paring knife and breadknife. I could spend another half an hour or so and get them to razor sharpness, but I don't because I don't need or want that level of sharpness for kitchen work. Therefore, while something that eliminates that 15 minute task could be of value to me (though personally I rather enjoy the process), something that provides a sharper edge is not.
Secondly, even if I were to use razor-sharp knives, there's a limit to the damage they will do to my hands in a typical accident. In particular, even a razor sharp knife will usually stop at the bone. I don't know if this knife will because this advert didn't address safety at all, but given ultrasonic knives are used for cleanly cutting through bones in surgery [1] it's reasonable to suspect it might not. Adding to my chef's knives the ability to smoothly pass all the way through my finger would not be an upgrade in my view [2].
Lastly, to raise questions about a product's safety is not "moralising". If I were to say that you shouldn't use this knife because of safety concerns, that could be viewed as a moral position, but I don't care about that at all. You can use chainsaws and flamethrowers in your kitchen for all I care. When I say I would be unlikely to buy this thing without some information on what it will do to my hand in the event of a kitchen accident, that's just a choice I am free to make as a consumer.
[1] https://www.cheersonic.com/portfolio-items/ultrasonic-bone-c...
[2] As it is, I have what seems to be permanent scarring and some loss of sensation on my left thumb from cutting it to the bone with my breadknife a year ago, and my mind replays the trauma every time I pick that knife up. (No, the knife was not blunt. It was brand new at the time, and I've since maintained it to the same level of sharpness it had then, using a ceramic sharpening rod and a whetstone for the tip. The accident was due to me being distracted and positioning my hand incorrectly. And yes, better technique would have prevented it, but I'm not and never will be a trained chef. Had I used this ultrasonic knife I expect I would have taken the end of my thumb off.)
"People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives,"
The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer.
The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what?
I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzmann staring at knife edges with an SEM, but even if i did it completely by hand with shaptons, it takes like 15 minutes, max, to sharpen 10 knives, through an entire insane grit progression (which i do for plane blades when i need to cleanly slice end grain without going to a super high-angle plane or something. For knives, i was just trying to get a comparison point, i use electric sharpeners in practice).
Or approximately 2 minutes with an electric knife sharpener.
While sure, there is a difference when i put them under my digital inspection microscope, either can slice paper towel cleanly and easily (slicing paper is easy, slicing paper towel ends to be hard because any burr catches really easily)
Are there really even semi-normal people out there spending hours to sharpen knives?
If so, like, why?
(Obviously, again, if they need to be reground because you knicked it really badly, sure that takes a bit, but beyond that)
None of these steels are tough enough to require all that many strokes (it's pretty easy to test it with a marker and see when you remove the marking), and if you are using super custom steels (RIP Crucible :(), carbide, or ceramics, you need CBN or diamond anyway, but the same is still true - given the correct abrasive material, sharpening knives is just not that slow.
I actually travel with an electric knife sharpener if we are going to be staying in an airbnb somewhere for >1 week and are cooking most nights. It's the most consistent thing about airbnb - no matter what level of luxury, etc, they always have many knives, and all of them are dangerously dull. It still doesn't take more than a few minutes to sharpen them all.
I also dont like the blades ruined through automatic sharpeners - the knifes are made of good quality steel, were made to order in Jp, and have sentimental value. I also sharpen the cheap knifes this way, tho - I like manual work.
I got a single decent knife: https://wusthof.com/products/wusthof-classic-8-cooks-knife-1...
But I’m worried about ruining it, and the “care instructions” seem to mention using a whetstone.
So far, I mostly sharpen my knives on the back of a plate. So definitely could be doing more :)
I don't have time in my schedule at the moment, which says "sharpen the knifes". So for me - it would be amazing if someone solved this problem in a radical way.
Sporadically I would sharpen the knives and since I don't have it in my "skills" section of the brain, I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.
How would this make my life much better?
To that observation I'd add (h/t my Slack friends) this interesting site Seattle Ultrasonics stood up:
https://seattleultrasonics.com/pages/knife-database
One thing I notice here is that Japanese knives (and my trusty MAC) fare really well on the BESS and CATRA scale, but relatively poorly on the "Food Cutting Rank", which is based on an ad-hoc seeming performance scale of how well their robot fared with a bunch of cutting tests that included stuff like bread and cheese (h/t again Slack friends) --- which nobody uses a chef's knife to cut.
That's a weird scale to plot chef's knives across --- unless the purpose of building that scale was to showcase an electronic knife that does well on tasks people don't normally use chef's knives for, but maybe not as well on chef knife daily driver tasks.
The knife is amazing and exactly as shown in the video. Rand Fishkin has a nice short on LinkedIn trying out the knife too. I think he shows one his (sharp) kitchen knives slicing through a lemon, then the Ultrasonic. It's astounding.
Disclaimer: I am a (tiny) angel investor in Seattle Ultrasonics.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7374472...
Disclaimer: I've enjoyed many delicious meals at Rand's table
Even the best tend to struggle with consistency and can only go so thin due to all the friction. An ultrasonic mandoline that can overcome all that would probably fly off the shelves and better match the original industrial intent.
FTFY
Clearly, this product is not intended for the mass market, and may find purchase with people who have tennis elbow and who can afford it, etc. <insert other critiques about practicality and applicability here>. But still, when was the last time someone tried to re-invent something as basic as a knife?
HOZO NeoBlade Wireless Ultrasonic Cutter
It's from a kickstarter.
A year ago? This one is designed for woodworkers.
https://www.bourbonmoth.com/shop/p/the-bourbon-blade-origina...
This one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gqi2cNCKQY
Debunking: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtU3bYyCtA
This video makes me like Scott and Seattle Ultrasonics. I feel I can trust Scott's expertise. His backstory fits what I imagine I would do if I were obsessed with a project like this. This makes me compelled to learn more and to maybe become a customer? Why? Because I want to see Scott succeed and would feel proud to be a part of that. Even if this knife didn't end up performing to my expectations or if I didn't really need a knife like this, I want to see Scott make more things. He has a very well-proven record of delivering and I would bet he could do it again.
Funny, that! Whatever type of marketing this is, it works on me.
It's expensive (but not really, only compared to knives - a $500 GPU isn't expensive). It's probably mostly good in certain niches and using a $10 knife that's sharpened properly is probably 95% as good in almost every application, and using a $10 knife that is only reasonably well sharpened is probably 90% as good. Slicing stuff for hotpot or yakiniku or Korean BBQ is what I thought of when I saw the ad, while for a lot of things it's probably not worth it. But a lot of stuff is like that - good in a niche, OK elsewhere, and there's always a cheaper option that's more flexible and almost as good even in the niche.
I feel like hn is upset by the lack of marketing. This looks like a direct sales ad that you'd get on Facebook, rather than the hype research marketing that mostly targets the b2b types who mostly dwell here? The marketing isn't the kind of marketing they normally get targeted by, so they notice it's marketing?
I notice this on other forums. If marketing isn't slick and well targeted, people get upset and suspicious because it's marketing. But functionally, they're not upset because it's marketing (almost everything is), they're upset because it's not enough marketing, and functionally they want more marketing that targets them better.
It's a cool idea, and I hope it is commercially successful, but not for me.
Those who are interested in knives would be able to get a more impressive knife for $399. And they are usually the type of people that enjoy sharpening a knife until it cuts better than this ultrasonic knife ever will.
This is a product which is targeted at people who don't really know a lot about knives and prep their meals with a dull blade.
That one use would be anything but dull though
Time until vibroswords, vibroaxes, vorpal blades, ect...
Wha? I tapped the little diagonal expandy-arrows in the top corner and it went full screen.
Thin slicing frozen meat for instance, carving pumpkins, cutting bones etc.
I’m a nerd, but Ive found that once I’ve mastered a hobby I eventually gravitate towards convenience, optimizing my time over absolute performance. I’ve built five PCs in my life, and now I only own a macbook. I spent loads of time optimizing my hifi setup, and now most of my apartment is sonos. And I have probably 1k worth of nice japanese knives + whetstones, that I would happily replace with a single knife that needs little to no upkeep.
Most people don't sharpen their knives enough and therefore they have to expend a lot of effort to sharpen them.
If your knife is only slightly dull it takes 10 seconds to resharpen it, unlike if you've gotten the edge all folded over and such.
Still won't buy one but still.
Signed, a guy living nearby the home of QVC in a decidedly non-tech area of the US.
Ps. don’t buy future e-waste kitchen ware unless you have accessibility reasons. You can get a good-enough victoronix 8” chef knife for $65 (I paid $36 a long time ago) and a world class chef knife for less than $250.
To 99% of people, “just sharpen your knife regularly” is about as realistic as “just set up a Linux FTP server with rsync and…”
Otoh: this is NOT how a person cuts with a knife! Kills credibility of the whole complicated measurement with the robot. Just ask a chef to cut on a scale. You will be surprised. People can cut with semi-dull knife by pulling the knife towards their body not pushing down towards the cutting surface.
If the thing proves somehow useful, mass adoption and mass production slashes the cost 2-3 orders of magnitude, and the thing becomes mundane.
Otherwise it becomes forgotten as a weird gimmick.
Let's wait another 15 years.
That said, they come with two big caveats. First, if you push them into any harder material, the edge is destroyed almost immediately because of the micro-scale "jackhammer" action. So, hit that avocado pit and the knife is probably cooked.
Second, the constant motion heats up the blade, to the point of melting thermoplastics or causing the edge to lose temper if you're pushing a bit too hard, cutting the wrong material, etc.
It's your money, but I suspect this knife is more of a hassle, and requires more care, than a regular kitchen knife. And let's face it, the coolness factor aside, how often do you struggle to cut chicken, tomatoes, or bread? If you do, it's probably because your knife is dull, and this knife will get dull too.
Could this improve the texture and flavor of certain foods? Like make garlic taste even more garlicky? Or could it cause an apple slice to brown faster? Can it be used to slice cooked fish as if it were sashimi? Etc.
If a site like SeriousEats does a product review I hope they focus on qualitative taste, and possibilities for enhancing cooking techniques, not merely saving time/effort to do something.
if you used a knife to actually slice the tomato instead of chopping it, you'd get a much different force result.
not to say there's no benefit here, but def feels intentionally exaggerated.
also, i wonder how fast this blade will wear if you ever accidentally pressed the edge into the cutting block. my guess is that it will wear much faster.
I definitely did notice that the video didn't show any bulk prep work: a clean cut through a single product is not nearly as interesting to me as how cleanly and quickly I can work through a couple onions.
I’d still never get one because I love my knives (and zen out hard when sharpening for an hour or two), but the push is literally the goal here.
i was just saying they compare it to normal knives being used incorrectly.
Independent. Reviews. People with knife skills. Some degree of communications ability would be nice, too.
To use Scott's words it is very cool to see such a tech translation from industry to home use. I would still be cautious about the lifetime of these devices (namely how it will deal with water ingress over time) but the fact that they will come out of a factory is already quite a HW startup feat.
I'll cut bread with my chef's knife (amazon shun knockoff) when I want to make less of a mess. One interesting thing I noticed is that when Scott was cutting bread in the video he was cutting a croissant and no crumbs fell.
It will be interesting to see the knife in the hands of real chefs. Two things I'm curious about are whether the ergonomics of the button are good, and whether the ultrasonic action atomizes foods as they're being cut, changing the experience of cooking in some way.
Not really? I feel like this is for the other people, the folks who don't have the training to use a chefs knife super well. I'd rather see a decent home cook compare it to their knife in general prep.
"The best tools shouldn't only be accessible to the pros" but his knife costs more than every knife in that database.
The weight is listed in their help articles as 330g. I also think that handle is chunkier than a typical high end chef's knife. It may be easier to cut things with it, but I think your hand and arm are going to get tired of using it more quickly than with a regular knife at ~100g less.
And I realize these fare worse than the high end japanese and german knives, but it's hard to get excited about a $400 knife you can't put in the dishwasher when you can get a perfectly credible fibrox knife for about a tenth of that, which doesn't require charging and can tolerate 'careless home cook' levels of abuse.
Though: do. not. put. your. $300. knife. in. the. dishwasher.
“This has all the hallmarks of a product that’s going to be disappointing but I’m so optimistic it won’t be.”
I’m seriously hopefuls it works because vibroblades (I mean, “progressive knives” and “high frequency blade”) are awesome and the timelines of Neon Genesis Evangelion and Metal Gear are getting closer. Which may, or may not be a good thing.
My question is: would there still be an improvement if they used a slicing action?
As an example are tons of people pushing Feather or Astra or similar ultra sharp shaving razors. I bought a ton of sample packs the ones I liked the most were Kai, which are considered relatively dull, but have properties which make the overall experience better (I recall reading they’re thicker and vibrate less during cutting).
To me that makes this knife cutting benchmark more attractive than sharpness or retention, but I still have questions about technique used in the benchmarks, and how that affects knife performance (e.g. I would never try to cut bread by just pressing down as this move does).
This is mostly just a remark on the fact that BESS is probably just measuring the factory edge… which only matters until it has dulled the first time?
All of the Japanese brands I recognized were in the top 10 (out of 21) with the MAC being exactly in the middle.
Hi, originally-trained Oriental cook here. Yes, we do use chefs knives to cut cheese. Also cleavers. Also wires.
- a chopping knive, 9-12" depending on one's hand
- a utility knife for slicing, about 6"
- a paring knife, a cheaper ordinary one is fine
(Amusingly, butter is one of the demos in this video.)
Ditto for bread knives.
A sharpened piece of metal has been reliable for thousands of years and will continue to remain so. For new tech, I am also a fan of the ceramic knives out there for vegetables, as they hold a razors edge much longer than metal (albeit are far more brittle - I use them for veggies only, no meat).
One can buy a decent steel chef's knife, a ceramic one, lose them both, buy them again, buy a sharpening stone and a strop for the price of one of these. On one hand, the sci-fi emergence of the vibroblade or something in the kitchen would be cool. On the other, it could be a $500 vibrating slapchop[1].
O.o
No, it's really expensive. $400 is nearly a week's pay for an hourly worker in much of the US. For many on this site it might be less than a day's labor but that's not the general case.
The lack of trust is probably because knives seem to be a favorite product of shysters. Selling expensive knives that promise the moon and wow the audience with cool knife tricks just reeks of fast talking late-night infomercial salesman trying to get over on grandma. The tech looks cool, but the presentation is off-putting.
"Sure, people claim the kitchen knife has been a solved problem for hundreds of years, but what if there was a kitchen knife that had a battery inside and cost $500?"
And if this version of the knife doesn't connect to the cloud, the next one will.
It all seems quite gimmicky.
Everything has pros and cons. You haven't said a single pro. You haven't added any real cons to what I said, and made up hypothetical ones.
It's a sales pitch so you're saying why you wouldn't buy it. I'm not ordering one either, 500 is a bit steep for me. If he just showed off the technology, I suspect people here would be more enthusiastic about it, even if you wouldn't bother to buy it yourself.
I'm not saying you're wrong (at the price point), but that the framing of whether we're going to buy it is a result of the marketing.
That's just ugly cynicism. And I'm willing to bet a good amount of money the "next one" from this company won't. But it doesn't matter because this one doesn't and we're talking about this one, not some hypothetical that may never arrive.
There's something about this sort of product that feels inherently gimmicky. I can't quite explain why, maybe because it's too good to be true, maybe because it's a kitchen appliance, maybe it has something to do with the vibrations.
For instance, my girlfriend has this eye cream applicator(?) that vibrates... for some reason. Is it a gimmick? I don't really know, but there isn't a research paper in the world that would convince me it isn't.
Anyways, this video had me hooked, and I would 100% try this out if I could. But I would never buy it without trying first.
For me, I get extra upset and suspicious if marketing is well targeted. Add a plus one if it is particularly slick.
Just something off-putting in someone trying to draw on my strings, which I see all too well myself, thank you.
I think the value proposition is in the idea that you don't have to sharpen this knife as often as with a normal knife, and that the performance is consistent.
The non stickiness is also a huge value proposition, because that is an annoying and time consuming aspect of any cutting.
I think we all had very similar thoughts to yours, but just came to the opposite conclusion.
We don't like "buzz" and "hype"... if it's truly a great technology we can buy one a year from now. Not trusting a commercial to be honest isn't undue skepticism.
Well said.
First - ~all food illness causing bacteria is denser than air. about 1000x denser. On its own, it won't float.
Second - almost all cutting motions are still going to throw it around. So you are already doing this when you cut or chop food. You are slicing cell walls, etc, releasing pathogens that exist inside. But it doesn't like aerosolize in the sense of floating around, because it's denser than air[1]. How far it goes depends on the cutting motion, etc.
Third - does ultrasonic make it better or worse - well, again, it doesn't overall float, so it's really a question of does it do anything to make go farther/less far, and does it do anything to destroy or the opposite?
44khz (used here) is a common ultrasonic frequency in cleaning[2] and leak detection.
In fact, it's also used to remove bacterial cells from surfaces at higher intensities (and detect them at lower intensities). It's actually one of the major ways non-heat pasteurization is done.
While it's not 100% at removing individual bacterial cells, even at super high intensity, ultrasonic frequencies are both detrimental to cell growth, and as used here, will cause lots and lots of bacterial death because of everything from cavitation to pressure changes to instantaneous heat to you name it.
Does it fling pathogens any further? Maybe? I'm sure there are some situations in which it will. But they don't seem normal. Like if you are just slicing raw meat or chicken, it's hard to see how it could do that.
Overall, it probably helps more than it hurts. As far as i can tell, it's not even a close question.
[1] It is possible to get the bacteria to float in air anyway due to brownian motion and other mechanisms, but it still seems overblown - the percent of food borne illness caused by inhaling bacteria vs eating underprepared food it is so small they don't even bother to track it. This knife is not going to change that.
[2] If you google it, you will also discover it's emitted by fearful rats. I don't know if the knife also scares rats away.
Why is it a good point?
Do you get disease at a rate we care about from smelling a fart? Or smelling raw chicken? Or cooking chicken and the aerosolize particles off that?
The tool seems to melt going off similar tech - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNwHDWlA7gE
Why does you brain think it's a good point other than you want to be negative? Because nihilism is cooler than thinking?
Dentists do ultrasonic scaling, which a ultrasonic water spray and are not dropping like flies.
What is the good point here, tell us more, love to hear it.
You are going to have about as much aerosolized raw chicken meat water (ARCMW) whether you use an ultrasonic knife or not.
The ARCMW touched by the ultrasonic knife will probably have significantly less alive bacteria than the stuff touched by the regular knife.
Ultrasonic knives are historically large footprint devices used in commercial/industrial food prep. The innovation here is making ultrasonic hardware compact enough to fit in the knife handle.
I was using ultrasonic scalpels back in 2002. They were smaller than this knife.
My first job was at a knife shop so I’ve seen everything from stamped steel fantasy nonsense to traditional style hand forged items. There’s a lot that goes into making a good knife and you don’t need to spend a lot to get one. Similarly you can spend a lot of money for marginal to no benefit.
In general a hard edge with a softer back is necessary for a strong knife that will cut well. This is a function of heat treatment. A knife that is tempered the same the whole blade is fine for smaller knives but it’s possible to break the tips or edges off larger knives. From there metallurgy affects the edge retention and how easy it is to sharpen. Plain 440C will make a fine enough knife if heat treated properly but can also make blades that can’t be made particularly sharp and can’t easily be sharpened. These knives will be very stainless so this is why poor quality and good quality knives will be made in 440C. The next tier of knives beyond singular steel forging will be a very hard edge steel wrapped around a softer core steel. The sky is the limit from there in terms of metallurgy. The highest end knives will use powdered steel where precisely composed steel bars are made using uniform grains of steel and other attractive metals and doping materials as part of the forging process.
Once it gets home a good edge has to be maintained.
People do all sorts of things to dull perfectly good cutlery (I cringe when I see people use glass or marble serving/cheese boards as a cutting board). A off hand toss of a knife into a sink can roll the edge.
The worst offense is when I see someone at a farmers market with the grinding wheel “sharpening” a knife by crudely removing the hardened steel edge of a knife. Good luck cutting much with the softer core steel or softer tempered back steel.
While having an Evangelion style ultrasonic knife is cool, it’s certainly not necessary and I expect it can be ruined in many of the same ways a $400 traditional knife can be.
At home I have Henkels for the holidays and some forged food service knife’s for general use. When visitors throw the food service knives into the sink I just take out the sharpening stones and don’t cry all that much.
I'd try one out of professional/academic curiosity (I'm a chef), but am highly skeptical of this product. It looks like absolute trash.
All the people saying this knife does anything remarkable clearly have no experience in maintaining a decent knife blade. I've got knives that I've had for over 20 years that perform as well as this thing appears to (in the slick prepared advertisement).
Having said all that, you won't find an accurate takedown of a product that isn't on the market yet. Still, I can't help but wonder if the person behind this had dedicated that effort towards helping mitigate the water crisis, deforestation, or any number of other inarguably nobler pursuits.
(and yes the Japanese steel dulls too. No cheating physics.)
Higher HRC would retain the sharp edge for longer, of course - but again much harder (literally) to sharp them.
Is he lying? He shows images of the prototypes. Did he create fake prototypes?
But if you do this will be excellent tech for melee weapons.
i think they slapped seattle on it because of the Seattle Supersonics, their old NBA team that still has a cult following
I tried a compatible strop that clicks in but it's not worth it imo; just use a normal strop.
When it does come time to sharpen, I constantly see places offering knife sharpening services, and they’re usually cheap enough. Or you could get a gizmo that does a mediocre job (and shaves away far too much material) if you just want to get it done. Or you could learn to do it yourself which isn’t that hard or time-consuming but is somewhat of a labor of love.
Learning to sharpen the (correct) knife (for the task) will do as much or more for the chef who struggles here.
Prepping 1000 lemons? An ultrasonic knife is not your answer.
Like, how about that _planned obsolescence_ of a vast majority of consumer electronics hardware? (If that ain't the case, would be happen to learn otherwise from someone with better knowledge.)
And with families getting smaller and takeout more popular - the prep work in the kitchen has reduced substantially.
Find a local restaurant supply store and pay like $15 to get it professionally done.
https://www.amazon.com/ChefsChoice-EdgeSelect-Professional-S...
But you have to let go of the "ruining it" fear. Sharpening a knife does ruin it, you're taking off a tiny amount of material each time. Since your knife is full bolster, you'll eventually notice a small difference in height of the blade at the bolster.
Yes you will ruin the knife over decades of sharpening. In the mean time you have a wicked sharp knife that's a joy to use (not just look at). It's a tool not an art piece.
Carbide size maybe? But mostly I think it changes toothiness (so slicing, not push cutting). Also, I think that affects how hard or easy it is to get a given edge, but not how good the edge (as measured by BESS) can actually be.
First, you are not actually correct on the question.
Here, let me quote the question:
"Honest question, does it aerosolize pathogens that cause food-borne illness?"
That is literally not "does it aerosolize fluids", which is what you claim the question is.
My first sentence: "Interesting question, short answer - almost certainly not any more or less than you are already, and to the degree it does, it almost certainly is making things better and not worse"
How is that not a literal answer?
Again, the question was about aerosolizing pathogens that cause foodborne illness, not just random fluids. So i explained why ultrasonic knives are not going to do that more than normal knife would, and assuming we only care about pathogens cause foodborne illness, will do so much less.
Sure, it can aerosolize lime juice. Lime juice is not a pathogen that causes food borne illness?
If your answer is atually meant to claim it aerosolizes pathogens much more than a normal knife, please cite data or studies or some other form of science. I can give you citations to literally every claim i made. I wrote most of the science reasons. The video does not show anything related to pathogens.
Otherwise, i think it is you who is not answering the question asked, which was not about fluids?
Don't forget the follow up
Dentists wear masks, and the human mouth doesn't tend to contain Salmonella
"I don't think this is something I would use." or "I think the price point is too high for what you get." aren't particularly negative to me.
"Nobody should buy this, it's dumb." or "Who even needs something like this, just learn to sharpen knives!" are.
The quality of the job is vastly different, though. This video shows great examples:
The cheap ikea one is fine, it will not wear out your blade. 2-3 pulls at very light pressure, no need to learn how to use a whetstone properly, perfect UX for those who don’t typically sharpen knives.
“Recycling” as mentioned by the US press is a scam because we had humans walking over our trash in India manually recycling in such a dangerous way they banned our recycling.
Anything can be ground into dust and sent through a series of physiochemical processes to reconstitute.
The recycling you’re talking about is a science fiction trope, and utterly irrelevant here, because we don’t have a way of expending that much energy, let alone generate economically (or ecologically).
Even more interesting alternative is to have some quick blade switching machinery to switch on-the-fly between the actual blade edge and the shaped charge array and to add some feeding machinery of shaped charges into the array (and to have some stretch-shaped charges instead of the rounded ones)
Also, surprisingly, tomatoes. Lots of people suggest small serrated knives (if you have them) for tomatoes.
I'm not saying this knife doesn't work just that I'm noticing that none of the videos show it working.
Seriously, it is only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that the entire job of a chef's knife is to quickly process an onion. What's especially weird is that even an inert knife with its factory edge will show well in an onion dice video!
100% confirmed meme product.
My knives get noticeably suboptimal in a couple of weeks without sharpening, so if I left it 6 months they'd be blunt pretty much all the time.
I also have a ceramic sharpening rod, which I use to sharpen my breadknife. That's very effective, but different as it actually removes steel. I give my straight-edged knives a few strokes on each side on a 3000 grit whetstone every weekend, which seems to keep them nicely sharp. That will slowly wear them down but it hasn't done so noticeably yet so I expect the knives to last many years.
The people I worry about are the ones stropping a single knife 6000 times because they think it truly matters to cutting tomatoes
Uh, really? I haven't been following him for a while, so I don't absolutely know if you're wrong, but I absolutely can see him joking about it and maybe even taking it too far.
Unsharp knives cut well enough, and I would assume that people's knife skills and/or cooking skills may not notice the difference.
Do you follow a mise en place approach to cooking?
[citation needed]
It's more that sharpening a knife - like many other skills - takes practice.
i would recommend anyone sending their knives to a professional for sharpening -- you will feel much more confident cutting, and everything will be safer.
Anyway that's three kinds of people: two kinds of foodies, and everyone else.
I'm pretty sure we didn't have "professional sharpening services" either, when I was growing up in Greece. I think I've seen men with whetstones on their backs in old movies, or paintings, but I've never seen anyone like that live. Nor do I remember any shop that did that sort of work.
Why is it so hard to believe that housewives rarely sharpen knives? It even rhymes.
I'm not hyping the product. I keep a knife set up to easily slice tomatoes, and if I don't want to clean it carefully afterwards I just use a good thin serrated bread knife. I'm still not really sure what this knife is "for". But I'm also not ruling out that it is "for" something interesting.
I know the handle itself is integral to the ultrasonic function, but it reminds me of a cheap kitchen thermometer.
For comparison, 'analog' knives are much nicer looking for sometimes far cheaper.
Here's a $309 knife by Miyabi (which is owned by Zwilling): https://cutleryandmore.com/products/miyabi-birchwood-chefs-k...
You can even find down-market knives by the same company that have the similar steel with different finishing:
https://cutleryandmore.com/products/miyabi-mizu-sg2-chefs-kn...
https://cutleryandmore.com/products/miyabi-kaizen-ii-chefs-k...
https://cutleryandmore.com/products/miyabi-evolution-chefs-k...
I’m a decent home cook with decent knife skills and i take my knives to a sharpener from time to time, I have tech job salary, I preordered. Seems neat.
I don't think there's anything interesting about my onion dice. You'd be seeing a video of a banged up MAC, scraped up from all the times I've casually sharpened it in a hurry, doing the standard one-cross-cut Jacques Pepin onion dice. You know, an onion dice.
(The "Slack friend" thing was just that I felt bad about sharing a link I'd gotten just a few minutes while pretending as if I'd known about it myself. I have no idea their level of expertise! Probably better than mine though.)
Aside from that, in my opinion dicing an onion is a much more simple task for a knife than taking a very thin slice of a tomato. And in both cases it is likely more about the technique/handling and the sharpening than the actual knife material or technology. But the average person does not care about those things, so this knife could at least in principle be something useful for them. Not for someone who is willing to invest some time in the aforementioned things though, like you (and me too, for that matter).
HOZO NeoBlade Wireless Ultrasonic Cutter
It’s easy — just heat it above the tempering temperature of the steel in question. You can achieve this in an ordinary oven for most steels, and you can also achieve it (locally) with a motorized sharpener that isn’t cooled. Don’t take a knife you care about to be professionally sharpened by a person who uses a non-water-cooled power tool.
Sadly not impossible, I've 'lost' (they're still in the back of a drawer) two good knives to idiots attempting to pry apart frozen chops and steaks .. each case snapped a good inch from the tip.
Not damage from a dishwasher and not damage the edge I realize, but worth mention as a tale of caution.
Dishwasher detergent is caustic and corrosive to steel, so over time it can pit the metal and dull the finish. Handles will swell and become loose or deteriorate, either because of wood repeatedly being waterlogged and dried or just from the heat cycling. A loose handle can be unsanitary, unsightly, dangerous, or all three.
You'll often read that knives in the dishwasher will bang around and that will damage the edge. And that it's more likely you will hurt yourself pulling a knife out of the dishwasher vs. cleaning them properly.
Then you also have the action of the dishwasher water jets bouncing the knife around, dulling and destroying the edge.
Only the shittiest cheapest plastic-handled knives I own touch the dishwasher. Everything else gets cleaned and wiped by hand and put straight to the knife block or its respective scabbard.
Have you spent any serious time in the kitchen? Sharp blades are incredibly important for… cutting.
For trained chefs, the sharper blade means things stay in place as expected, because the weight and motion of the blade are cutting, and not force exerted.
Related: I watch chefs use a mandolin, no freaking way I'd use it the way they do. I just do not have the skills necessary to free hand it. I will use a safety glove and/or a guard.
This is akin to the already established very expensive powdered steel knives. Do you need this to have a sharp knife? Nope. Is anyone wrong for wanting it? No.
It's about a knife that is ~equivalently sharp to begin with, but slices with less force and less sticking, and can therefore slice things more exactly/easily than otherwise.
Of course you don't need it, but it's fundamentally different from existing knives, which you seem to not be acknowledging. When you say this is akin to "powdered steel knives", no it isn't. Powdered steel is about hardness. Nothing to do with ease of slicing or lack of sticking.
So you're talking about things that have nothing to do with this particular technology.
For me, this works better than increasing the amount of hand dishes I have to do.
I think my other points matter more. I think people who are invested in the experience as you suggest care about more than just the edge and finish, they care about the weight and balance and feel as well. I think this knife is probably worse on those qualities.
I don't mean to say this knife sucks or that this guy is dumb. It's a cool knife, and he's clearly not dumb. I just think this is more a passion project curiosity kind of thing than a useful product addressing a large market need. Maybe a future mass market version (cheaper steel, stamped, more contoured handle) would change my mind.
Indeed, and they won't buy the knife at this price anyway. My point is that not being dishwasher-safe does not matter for ~everyone. If they care, they won't do it; if they don't, they won't buy it.
Expensive steels are, by and large, incremental progress over cheaper knife steels, provided it got an appropriate heat treatment and has good edge geometry. In almost no applications will an end consumer notice the difference.
I've been using the same thrift store knife I picked up 15 years ago. It gets sharpened maybe once a year, honed every so often. It was like $20 i think? Most chefs I know have a similar story with their knife/knives, something cheap that does the job.
Spending more on knives is just status symbol nonsense, which unfortunately has infected absolutely everything. It's like spending $300 on a spanner wrench. Who in the hell spends that much on a wrench? Why would you spend that much on a knife? lol. It's what you do with it that matters.
While I don't agree with externalising the manufacture/disposal costs with that sort of disposable consumption, I do see the economically-rational decision making behind it.
If you're running a restaurant in Australia, your lowest paid kitchen staff get $24 an hour during weekdays, 30-35 and hour on weekends, and as much as $55 an hour on public holidays. And if they work more than 8 hours in a day it's 1.5 times those rates for the first 2 hours of overtime, and double those rates for anything more than 2 hours overtime. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/find-help-for/fast-food-restaura...
While spending 15 or 20 seconds honing the edge with a sharpening steel during use makes sense (and I'll bet he does that just out of reflex), once the edge gets damaged enough to need more that what a steel can fix and you start needing a whetstone, it's probably not cost effective to have kitchen staff spend time doing that.
I suppose someone less handsomely paid collects these disposed knives, sharpens them, and resells them on the side.
I've seen victorinox fibrox knives in Michelin Star kitchens, they get the job done and are very reasonably priced ($60 for a chef's knife).
Admittedly the knives I have at home are significantly more expensive largely because the knives I have at home are on display so I want something that looks good and I actually enjoy using them.
On one level it's a little silly but then on another level people spend thousands on art/sculptures which has no useful purpose.
Victorinox knives rank very well in just about any real-use ranking I’ve ever seen and are extremely affordable. If you just want good knives that will serve you well, won’t break the bank, and you won’t feel bad using them, that’s what I would do. There are other good recommendations in the thread as well.
As for custom steels - outside of currently very expensive processes (powdered metallurgy, etc), it is basically “maximum sharpness”, “edge retention”, “ease of sharpening”, pick maybe two. Edge retention here is shorthand for both brittleness (chipping) and abrasion resistance (regular wear), even though they differ for some things.
High grade carbide, for example, is extremely tough and resists edge abrasion. But because of the large grain size it is ~impossible to get it as sharp as carbon steel by hand. Additionally, the same abrasion resistance also means you need something hard enough to sharpen it.
If you remember those little scratch kits you may have played with once in science class as a child where you tried to see which rocks scratches other rocks, this is the practical application of that.
Even in metalworking people will often make or use hss cutters when they need something really really sharp or custom. Or just cheap. And use carbide ones when they don’t. Because you really can’t get carbide as sharp as HSS and sometimes it matters. I can also easily make a really good HSS cuttter, but making a really good carbide one would take significantly more expensive tooling and time.
This is one example.
Ceramic knives[1] tend to have very high edge retention, but are very brittle and fracture easily. So it's very easy to nick them. This makes them last forever if you are slicing but not if you are chopping. They are also ~impossible to sharpen without diamonds.
In the end - we can construct steels and other things with very nice properties at high cost, and it's cool and fun to explore the limits there, but it’s not going to make you a better chef, or make your prep 10x faster or whatever. This isn't to say it's completely impossible to make somethign that is awesome at everything, but we use what we use because we can make them without nudging atoms into a matrix one by one :)
So while it's possible to get 5x the edge life out of an impossible to sharpen knife (for example), for most people, it's not worth it. They don't even notice once the novelty wears off.
[1] Tungsten carbide is really a ceramic but people often mistake it for a metal/steel, when in reality it's often just alloyed/glued/etc to metals, etc. Assume i'm not talking about tungsten here.
Now, sharpening is a bit of a different story but also totally achievable with a little investment (money for some stone(s) and time for practice). But you're right, if you cannot be bothered to do that yourself, it's definitely better to have your knives sharpened professionally than to use dull knives in the kitchen.
On hard material and when overloaded, they will chip in large, unfixable chunks.
On softer material, they continuously sharpen their edges at a microscopic scale, fracturing away tiny chips as they're worn, to new glassy ceramic molecular edges. A well used ceramic blade becomes micro-serrated.
This sounds fantastic until you think about what is happening to the shards of hard glassy ceramic which briefly become part of your food before becoming part of your gastrointestinal tract.
This is neither. These are long dagger shapes, significantly larger than a diatom, very hard, sharpened to a fine edge.
Sorry, what? Could you perhaps elaborate on this a bit?
Running a steel knife through an electric sharpener once a month (a 2-minute operation) keeps it feeling consistently like new.
It's cheaper than an electric sharpener and doesn't carry the risk of taking off too much material from a blade due to overenthusiastic use.
I am 100% certain that there are multiple people on this thread that could tell me I'm getting less optimal results than their tools and/or method. I don't care. I'm getting results that work when I cook. I don't trust myself to get the angle right with a diamond stone.
https://www.amazon.com/ChefsChoice-EdgeSelect-Professional-S...
I have one, I use it on my knives every 1-2 months. My knives will last decades rather than "lifetime" but I don't care... they're always sharp and I don't have to work at it. I can buy new knives.
My parents are the same and honestly the sharpness is fine for how they use their knives. I don’t know for yours but theirs don’t cut just fine at all. They barely cut. It’s ok if you actually have to think and push through each cuts but a complete no go for any serious cutting.
It’s a huge waste of time because it prevents any kind of fast work but they don’t know how to safely work with a knife anyway so they don’t notice. My father immediately cut himself the only time I actually sharpened so I stopped trying.
Anyway an ultrasonic knife seems like a cool idea. The technology is common in industrial setting for cutting. I think it’s cool to bring it to a kitchen knife even if it always remains a gimmick.
As I understand it, that's technically stropping, not sharpening, but it should be sufficient to keep an already-sharp blade sharp over the long term as long as the blade doesn't see extremely heavy use.
That said, most people don't strip their blades any more than they sharpen them.
I don’t know, what do you call a previously perfectly fine knife which now is unable to perform any knife like action?
Dull knives are more likely to slip on whatever you're cutting (and cut you instead).
They're also more likely to need more force when cutting which means less control.
But - if the knife slips and a large force is applied at the same time - then you will get a large cut.
If the knife slips and a small force is applied, you will get a smaller cut.
If the probability of slipping is the same for sharp and dull knifes, then due to the forces applied, the cuts you get with a sharp knife are less dangerous.
It sounds like she literally has no idea how to use a knife.
Is she doesn’t want a knife which can cut things, Butter ‘knives’ are probably more her speed?
What was she even using the ‘knife’ for before if it couldn’t even cut her? Spreading jelly? Slicing cakes?
Not to be snarky, but it’s possible a couples class which covers things like how to use a knife safely might be a fun and enjoyable way out of this.
Have you tried that or are you speaking in principle only?
The blade quality doesn’t look great but I think any decent cook that knows how to hone will do just fine with it.
I’m not sure I’d spend the money and replace my expensive knives for a relatively rare edge case but it’s a neat innovation that might catch on elsewhere, or maybe they’ll make premium lines.
I don't think the parent was bragging about the salary thing - a lot of the other comments here are mentioning the price (which to be fair, is definitely in the expensive gadgets/toys bucket...) so he/she (s/g) is saying - he's just a home cook, he's got semi-decent knife skills, and he's in a position that he can afford this.
And let's be honest, tech geeks are basically the target demographic for this sort of thing - as are half the gadgets on Kickstarter. Yes - we can talk all we want about carbon credits, and eWaste, and doing things the old fashioned homestead way when men were men, took cholera and dysentry on the chin, and knew how to use a whetstone, or to whistle (I can do one of those things...)...
I am sorely tempted, and I'm an amateur cook at best...if even that. And truthfully, this probably won't make my food better than a $15 IKEA knife (assuming I just replace those regularly). But it may make the process more enjoyable. And the tech is cool...
Is this issue possibly that amateur knives are too "polished"?
This doesn't seem to be a "professional chef" problem yet seems to be a significant "amateur chef" problem.
Is this simply the case that a knife with professional use takes enough dings and scratches that foods won't vacuum seal to the face of the knife?
I would say, if this idea becomes popular, knife producers can create their own versions in the new models, or retrofit old knives at the shop.
If this was a small 40$ attachment you could put on the dull edge of any knife, this would be great.
Also works for helping with fluid containment.
The other weird thing about this is that neither a potato nor a cucumber demands an ultra-sharp knife.
Why? The force applied isn't in a uniform downward direction like you would with a knife.
Dont have time in your schedule...jeeze. Sounds like learned helplessness to me. That or spoiled rotten. The comments in this thread help me understand the general animosity towards the tech industry from much of the population.
It works reasonably well and is definitely quick. But its not even close to "95% as sharp) as when I spend 10 mins with my Lansky sharpening kit (which is really just a small set of graduated whetstones with a jig to keep the angle right while using it).
Would I recommend everybody spend $70 or so for a bottom end Lansky kit or similar? No. Not even close. But if cook a lot, and you're going to buy "nice" knives that you intend to keep for decades, and you notice and care about the difference between sharp and dull knives - then I'd suggest you at least consider it.
Admittedly I have not made a comparison but I've seem some youtube vids where they compete various sharpening gadgets vs the pro way. They all seem to do very well even at bottom barrel prices. I'm sure defects are higher though.
That lansky looks awesome I think I'll pick it up. I think the crowd on here will see this basic life skill as too much "work".... so thats why I recommend the cheap drag through's. Safer than a dull knife at least... Weird how so many people here have no issue churning thorough another JS framework but spending 10 min to learn a life skill is too hard.
Get the Worksharp fixed angle sharpener for about $70 (about the price of 2 decent stones). If you're really interested, get the leather strop add on for about $10. Get on with sharpening your kitchen knives. Put it in your closet until next year.
Is it "great"? No. If you want to be a knife nerd, it's not for you.
If you have a couple of kitchen knives you need to sharpen once a year, it's absolutely fine. And you don't have to "get the feel" of sharpening again before you can get sharp kinves.
Even with the stones and equipment I have, it is way more mindless and a lot less messy to simply use a fixed-angle sharpener. Sure, you won't get "The Ultimate Hair Whittling Edge(tm)", but your knives will quite readily Julienne your vegetables.
I have the ruixin version and it works fine. I like that I can use the stones without the system.
In addition, for the moment, the stones used in the system I recommended are reliably decent and have been analyzed by a bunch of the YouTube knife nerds. The other fixed angle systems can be hit or miss with the stones.
If someone is sufficiently interested that they want to use the stones without the system, they've started down the path to being a knife nerd and have outgrown my recommendation.
> I've got knives that I've had for over 20 years that perform as well as this thing appears to (in the slick prepared advertisement).
You have knives that can not have potatoes stick without scallops in the blade? Or that can atomize lemon drops? Or that can cut through bread easily without a serrated edge? What I’m seeing in the video is a lot more versatile. But I can see needing a smaller utility knife still.
It isn't the knife.
Yes. Absolutely. IME a quality sharpened chefs' knife is far better at cutting bread cleanly than a serrated knife, which by contrast will leave a rough edge and loads of crumbs.
If you try to cut through a croissant, the amount of pressure needed will often crush the croissant before slicing through (though it depends on the type of croissant).
Meanwhile, while you can use a chef's knife to cut through a crusty baguette, as it's strong enough not to collapse, you need to apply so much pressure that it's not as safe -- the blade can slip to either side over the hard irregular surface. A serrated knife requires vastly less pressure and is therefore much safer.
Yes a serrated knife can leave a rough edge and crumbs, but that's better than smooshing something entirely or cutting your hand because the knife slipped.
The one I have seems to cut just as cleanly as a chef's knife once within a material, but has better ability to bite into material at the start of a cut, when a chef's knife would be slipping off. (Think: a freshly-baked loaf of high-sugar bread, where the outside is relatively stiff, but the inside is so soft that the outside tries to "squish away" from a non-serrated slice.)
I would never use it for dicing, but it's oddly goot at e.g. slicing watermelon.
I remain skeptical in spite of your weird defensive reaction. I'm speaking about how a product appears to me as a professional. Not attcking you personally (unless it's your product... then I think you should do something good for society with your time)
Yes? I mean, that's one of the main points of the gadget, as said in the advertisement.
I think basically the whole thread is acknowledging that this looks like a gadget!
As for the sticking, this is solved by vertical fluting already.
Ultrasonic vibration is a complicated solution for a problem that has already been solved by the simple solution of just sharpening your knives. And you don't need to get expensive either. A Sharpal diamond stone, leather strop and a good workhorse knife like a Victorinox Santoku will get you there :)
But most chef-knife cutting isn't thin tomato slices, and you can always do that cut with a good thin serrated bread knife, too. I want to see it dice an onion. Seems like a small ask.
The only downside is that you can’t really hone or sharpen it yourself so you have to baby it. I’ve had mine about 15 years and have sent it in one time for their free sharpening at about the 11 year mark. At least Shun blades hold their edge a really long time.
[0]: https://shun.kaiusa.com/classic-serrated-utility-6.html?srsl...
This is absolutely NOT "solved." I have such knifes and potatoes stick nearly as bad. To the point I have wondered if they make it worse.
Zero chance of cutting meat, or 90% of vegetables.
If the knife we’re discussing was sub $100 I’d have no issue with AUS-10/440C, but we’re talking about a $400 knife.
Some steels might work better with ultrasonics than others.
I would like to see a ceramic version.
Those are just two examples of premium steels that would be superior to AUS-10 in every way. Additionally, as I already mentioned, you'd expect a knife that is $400 to be beautiful too. It really feels like the design element was left out of this knife. I'm sure the handle has many practical elements, but there has to be something that could be done to make it look more visually appealing.
A knife's edge is closer to that than you'd think. At the scales of sharpness of a good knife, it's impossible to keep the edge straight for very long. A honing rod quickly brings these back in line. I hone knives after maybe a week of use; it only takes a few seconds.
And this is a comically easy property to test. Use a "dull" knife then hone it and try again. It will cut drastically better.
Also, I don’t know what all the food safety and dishwasher vendors are telling their customers, but that nice residual chlorine has a tasty and odor that is not appetizing at all. But you can also legally disinfect your dishes and such with sufficiently hot water, and you can buy a commercial dishwasher that does that instead of using chlorine.
In a home context, what’s wrong with dish soap and a sponge or brush? In a commercial kitchen that really wants to be compliant could use dish soap followed by a (very) hot rinse. The average household instant hot water tap is plenty hot for this, too, although demonstrably hitting those HACCP targets might be tricky.
Powdered metallurgy, to parry your point, is not about hardness but about having the most precise composition of a metal. I.e you can have better wearing 440C, better machinable 440C, etc. most of this was intended for manufacturing high end industrial equipment. For kitchen knives it’s unnecessary even if it’s cool. It’s incrementally better but like this product it’s not necessary.
Similarly this isn’t “new technology” aside from the packaging of industrial technology into a chefs knife. You can get X-Acto knife sized versions of this already. Ceramic blades came from industrial alumina production. Cool, not necessary, but nothing wrong if it’s your jam.
The classic “QVC knife” is the Ginsu knife which has a lot of the same claims/qualities from a far. It’s an implementation of pattern welded steel and when you use a microscope you’ll see its thousands of serrated edges. Their ad shows the user cutting a can and then thinly slicing a tomato. Works fine until the edge gets rolled and since it’s cheaply processed steel (lacking the points of good construction I mentioned above), that’s usually what happens. I’d expect the company this whole discussion is about doing a lot better here since they’re not trying to sell a three knife set for $29.95 with free shipping.
My point about things being easily damaged with mishandling is that most people simply don’t handle knives well enough to see a benefit from high end knives, not that they aren’t nice/better/valid/different/etc. All of that can be true and the knife no longer cut because the edge is damaged. A Ferrari is a technologically complex car but not a very good car if the tires are all flat. If this thing doesn’t have an edge it isn’t going to cut well.
This is a point they make on their own site:
> Is the knife dishwasher safe?
> Updated 13 days ago
>
> No, but neither is any sharp knife. Dishwasher detergents contain micro-abrasives that dull and chip away at knife edges. If you enjoy using sharp knives, never put them in the dishwasher!
This is actually a more strict take than I have on edge retention, but I wouldn’t complain if my cutlery were treated this way.
Like I said a few posts up, I have knives that cost several hundred dollars. I keep the cheap ones out so I don’t cry when they get lobbed into a sink with the dirty dishes. When sharp they all cut very well. The expensive ones are better at edge retention and can be made a little sharper. After a friend helps clean or cuts some cheese on the cheese board the knife that was used is dull and not a great tool, be it the $30 food service knife or the $400 Henkels knife. You just can’t cheat physics.
I still don't know what you're saying about this knife. All you say is:
> Similarly this isn’t “new technology” aside from the packaging of industrial technology into a chefs knife.
Which, yes that's the new part. That's not a trivial thing. It's a significant engineering achievement that took them years to figure out.
More likely waited for patent to expire, as the ultrasonic scalpel has been around since at least 2002.
At that point, isn’t it more of a prop?
Beautiful plumage, ain't it?
I really like my Lansky kit. In retrospect I might have shelled out the extra for the set with the diamond sharpening stones - but I doubt I'll ever come close to wearing down the regular stones with my use patterns.
The knives I consider dull will absolutely cut me if I do something dumb, and I'm much less likely to do something dumb when the blade goes straight through what I'm cutting without having to use any force.
I guess it also depends how and what you're cutting. I sure wouldn't try to julienne carrots with a knife that doesn't easily slice through the carrot.
I think trying to make an ultrasonic vibration add-on for regular knives would be even harder to make into a useful product than an integrated knife/transducer.
If the handle is rigidly fixed to the blade, there would be very little vibration. So it seems like the only way to make an add-on would be as a sleeve over the regular handle. That would make for a bulky handle, and it seems like it would need a counterbalancing weight at the back. So the result would be very unwieldy, like one of those electric turkey-carving knives that are basically kitchen hedge-trimmers.
I'm waiting to see what skilled chefs think of this knife. The idea of an ultrasonic vibroblade has always seemed like a neat one to me, and I'd be happy to hear that someone managed to make one that was genuinely useful.
[1] https://www.beneaththewaves.net/Projects/SonicCarereg_Lock_P...
The premise is obviously sound, though it's possible this particular product doesn't work very well.
There’s also a magic trick where people eat sugar that’s very clear and looks like glass, but that’s a different thing.
Which means if you’re worried about consuming 1/100,000th as much it’s clearly not a big deal.
You're right that's a hobby. But the hobby's definition of "proper maintenance" and what it "requires" is basically just people nerding out about things that don't matter the slightest in the real world.
To maintain a kitchen knife so that it cuts a tomato without squishing it, you don't need a book on knife science. Further, that nerdery is probably actively harmful, because instead of simple solutions, people are told they need an inspection microscope and a variety of jigs and other implements. So they buy an objectively bad electric sharpener and move on.
Properly maintaining a knife does. Most people don't need to properly maintain a knife. You can do it good enough with a honing steel and some crappy automatic sharpener.
I enjoy cooking good food for my family and myself, but cooking is not a hobby of mine. So if my knife can slice a tomato without crushing it, then that's good enough for me. I don't need to shave a tomato so thin that the slice is transparent.
Does the crappy automatic sharpener work? Well the knife cuts better after I use it, so yes, it does.
I can attest to this as I have improved knifes day one of trying despite my lack of any sort of skill
Because that is just general maintenance to me.
If you don't put your good knives in the dishwasher and wash/dry them right after usage, they'll last a long time.
This is enough to get your knives to be sharp enough to shave hair.
Time investment is more individual. It took me about 3 hours to get good enough.
minor pain to clean, but MUCH faster than a knife, totally safe (pusher keeps fingers away from the blade) and you get precise thickness cuts every time, which means they cook precisely too.
Especially good for vegetables like potatoes, onion, eggplant, etc.
Home cook deli slicers are the most slept on, underrated pantry upgrade.
here's a closer look at it with a microscope. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4ReQ83CZOQ
With that all you need to do is pretty much go back and forth. Note that the whetstone eventually wears them out too.
Something to grab while you're at it, is a truing stone to take care of the whetstone as it _will_ wear out unevenly making the sharpening a pain.
Biggest advantages is that you don't need to pre-soak them and diamond stones don't develop a valley / have to be flattened.
if you plan on getting into sharpening I would just start with a coarse, fine, and extra fine diamond stone and a leather strop w/ stropping compound.
For anything other than ideally firm things, the cleanup can be a nightmare
People get way too caught up in buying into systems and being told how to do things because it alleviates some anxiety of trying something new. Sharpening knives hasn't really changed much in the last few centuries. Watch a few guides and learn to do it. There's no substitute for experience here. It's also a very transferable skill so it's one that used to be taught in schools but no longer is.
This 100% should be taught in school, it would have been one of the most useful things I could have learned.
Just get a cheap knife sharpener (not a whetstone) with good reviews and sharpen them a bit once every few weeks, it takes a minute, gets good results, and you can work with her on how sharp they should be.
Most of the time knives that are too sharp are much more dangerous than knives that are too blunt. The people worrying about your knife slipping into your finger have never actually used a knife imo. If it's dull enough to be slipping you'll get a welt before you get cut.
With a sharp knife, you cut through food very easily so you use very little force. You also use techniques that prevent you from getting hurt, such as the claw ( https://www.thekitchn.com/knife-skills-the-claw-75998 ).
But if someone has used a dull knife for most of their life, they may not have cultivated these skills and may hold their knife in an unsafe way and or use a lot of force when cutting.
For someone like that, a sharp knife could be a lot more dangerous, but if they're trained/using it properly, a sharp knife is a lot more safe as it reduces effort and chance of the knife slipping.
I've been in this position and my partner at the time decided to use a separate set of knives from me, as my sharp knives made her focus on the danger and pulled her out of her zoned out cooking-with-a-glass-of-wine mood.
Fair enough, how she approaches tools isn't my decision.
How do you not use knives? Do you use some other cutting instrument, that has the same problem as knives (cutting edge needs sharpening at times), do you only purchase pre-sliced food, do you only order take out, or only eat food that never needs cutting, or do you eat food that many or most people would cut in some way (oranges, apples, celery, etc.) by refusing to cut but using your teeth to separate out parts.
Do you not use butter knives or have you removed those from the category knives as their purpose is not really cutting (although I use butter knives to cut cherry tomatoes and garlic as they have no problem with that task)
I'm not trying to harass here, I am just incredibly interested by this statement as I don't think I've ever seen a kitchen without knives (excepting apartments that did not have any residents at the time)
Do you also replace your elderly relatives' Windows XP with linux distros, because linux is a better OS?
The moment you return the sharpened knives to your partner and she starts using them, she'll cut herself, with a small probability for a serious cut that will leave permanent damage to her hand.
Think carefully.
It's strange how two relatively similar cultures can have such oddball differences.
This is while living in California's Central Valley, where a third of the world's tomatoes are grown, so it's not like tomatoes aren't a major part of the culture here.
I wonder if it's because most of California's settlement was within the last 200 years, with modern metallurgy making it common for knifes to hold their edge long enough to easily cut tomatoes with only occasional sharpening, negating the need for a special knife just for tomatoes.
Nationwide advertisements for knives show people using straight-bladed knives for cutting cucumbers and tomatoes, despite stated stake knives being extremely common, so tomato knives are likely rare throughout the country, not that much of the country is any older than California.
She cooks, she enjoys it, she does it with a medium sharp knife that doesn't slip because that's not a real thing, and isn't scaring her because it's just medium sharp.
Easy as