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knifemaster 9 hours ago

For reference it would be also nice to see your (and your Slack friends) knife handling skills.

tptacek 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Wh...why? I'm not selling anything. I'm just saying dicing an onion is a better test of a chef's knife than taking a single thin slice of a tomato. Seems like that's an argument you can just take on directly.

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.)

knifemaster 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I was getting the impression that you are "selling" the fact that the performance of this knife is based on false advertising, and using personal anecodes and some anonymous people as a supporting argument. That's basically the only issue.

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).

tptacek 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No I genuinely don't know if this is a useful product or not. I think it would be a more interesting world if it was, so I guess I'm rooting for it. But I've got those two indications that I should be wary: nobody really used the knife in the video, and he did that weird knife ranking that happens (in a weird way) to probably favor his new electronic knife.

jorvi 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, I can't speak to "false advertising", but the thin slice he did with the tomato and the grape you can just achieve with a well-sharpened knife. Both sides of a whetstone and then a strop will get you there.

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 :)

tptacek 7 hours ago | parent [-]

He acknowledges you can do that with a well-sharpened knife. Of course you can do it with a well-sharpened knife. It's exactly the demo every single sharp knife does! His claim is that the ultrasonic knife will always do that cut, whether or not you assiduously keep it sharp, which is what I have to do with my MAC and Yuki to make it cut tomatoes like that.

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.

mckn1ght 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep, I have a Shun with micro serrations ([0]) that will slice a tomato so finely you basically feel no resistance.

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...