avinash.vora ★

I’m obviously enamored by awesome stuff like blade-making, and this is a brilliant and insightful look into the lives of a bunch of fellows that make what is pretty much the greatest kitchen knife in the world. Don’t buy it?

Japanese kitchen knives cost more than a camera, they can’t be washed in a machine, are subject to rusting and boy, they are so sharp that if you slip you’ll lose a finger or two before you can say banzai. There is no doubt that these are the best knives in the world. Nothing comes close to them in terms of sharpness. With one of these knives, you could slice fish so thin you could read a whole chapter of La Physiologie du Goût through the slices.

How expensive? Try €400. The forging and grinding processes in particular are intriguing:

Most kitchen knives today are stamped out of large sheets of metal. They are never as sharp as those made in Sakai. Master Ebuchi has been forging knives for the past 40 years, but he still breaks one knife for each three he tries to make. This is delicate work […] Hell, these are not stainless steel knives from Ikea, but a shorter version of a Samurai sword, which still need to be coated with a drop of camelia oil from time to time to prevent any rust at all.

It’s an amazingly insightful look into a tradition I am sure hasn’t changed in decades, if not centuries (in the case of samurai swords).