jamesmunns

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Be nice, work hard. Build tools, tell stories. Start five year fights. Kein Ort für Nazis.


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corhocysen
@corhocysen

i just found my nice knife again after it went AWOL weeks ago!! this is a major W, i've been sorely missing it doing random pruning type stuff around the yard

if you have a nice knife too, please show me. that's what Nice Knife Friday is all about


jamesmunns
@jamesmunns

This is a Kiwi chefs knife. They are like $5-$10 each (not exaggerating), and are made out of very boring stamped steel (stock photo because lazy).

That being said, they are INCREDIBLY thin and light. The don't keep an edge forever, but it only takes a couple swipes on a honing steel (not even a whetstone or sharpening stone!) to make them razor sharp again.

Because they cost $5, you never feel bad using them. Because they are so thin and sharp (seriously like a razor blade) it is so easy to slice things as fine as you want. Wreck it? Who cares. Get 5 and have backups. Get 50 for less than some fancy knives. That being said, I've had mine for about a decade, with no issue.

I dunno if I'd break down a larger whole cuts of meat (with bones, etc.) with it, or smash a ton of garlic with it, but I use this knife for 95%+ of the stuff I do.

I have one of the opinel knives that OP has (though his handle seems better oiled/cared for!), which is my favorite paring knife, and I have a Victorinox chefs knife that I use for heavier stuff. I also have the "vegetable cleaver" version of the kiwi knife. But if I could only keep one of all of those? I'd be the $5 chefs knife every time.


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in reply to @corhocysen's post:

Yesss. The Knife That Comes Back.

I always cary a #8 in my pocket and have for... probably a decade now??
One time I lost one and I eventually gave it up for Gone and bought a new one. a year or two later our friends found it in The Depths of their couch!! These knives Come Back and they're just,,, Good.

i'm not really a "carry a knife everywhere" sort of guy but i use mine in the garden a lot! my mom found it in a sweater pocket that i know for a fact i checked thoroughly... i have no idea what happened to make it rematerialize

yep this is the normal no.8 (well technically it's the "luxury" with the stainless blade and walnut handle). this is my more general purpose gardening knife. if i need to do something finicky i have a little titanium fold up knife that takes scalpel blades that i like

yeah, I've used my normal no. 8 as a root/weed knife in the garden and it holds up fine. The pointed tip would probably help with me not being able to see it, but it's Fine.

the brushes on the mushroom knife look cheap, I'd probably buy one if they weren't there :\ it's a nice shape.

only other thing i'm really looking for in the garden now tbh is a billhook. i want something big so when e.g. the lemon balm gets too big again i can cut all of it down at once instead of having to take my little 8.5cm knife and do it in parts

they're expensive and kinda rare new though (silky makes one and that seems to be about it). probably need to find one second hand somewhere

I unfortunately don't know where it went, but when I was a teen, I got this like, rainbow/titanium coated pivot knife that I liked a lot. Got it bc I was trying to get into whittling, although I'm not sure it was really good for that. Prolly considered tacky/cheap/whatever by people who're into knives, but I liked it bc it was mine.

What do you use the knife for in the garden? I use nice secateurs (Felco 9) all the time, and use scissors to cut herbs, but don’t really find much need for a knife.

i cut my herbs with this one generally; just cut some cibol (welsh onion) for lunch in fact :)

same for pruning herbaceous plants, root pruning when i get some root bound mess at a discount from the garden centre, etc.

in reply to @jamesmunns's post: