Brett H wrote:
Make sure you try the plastic fantastics because there is a good reason they are the mainstay of many industrial kitchens.
This is the most under-rated comment in this thread. Having tried the Pro-M series, I thought they were 'an orrific' knife. Chef's Armoury used to sell them (I've noticed they don't any more), and despite being fairly sharp and made of good steel, they were pretty 'plasticky' in balance. They are compelling if you love the balance of Global knives but not the blade flexibility, though they've got about half the flex of the Global range, which is too much for my liking. One thing in their favour is that they're much better finished than a lot of the 'artisan' knives - many Japanese knives are sold with grind marks and a fairly rough edge on the basis that anyone who buys one will be able and willing to put an edge on themselves. This is especially true of the high carbon knives, which need oiling and sharpening regularly, rather than once every few months (or once a year if you're lazy). If you're buying your first knife, a good bit of advice on most forums is that it should be made of VG10, a stainless steel designed in Japan specifically for chefs and the cutlery industry. If a Wusthof holds a 1/10 sharpness edge (Initial Cutting Performance) for 7/10 time (total card cut), VG10 might hold a 7-8/10 edge for 9/10 time, while blue/white high carbon steels like R2 will hold a 8-10/10 edge for 5/10 time. As the charts @ http://www.minosharp.jp/catra/index.html show, sharpening a knife to a really nice edge actually increases the amount of time it stays sharp - contrary to the popular belief that if you 'sharpen a knife too much' it ' goes really blunt faster'. VG10 is low maintenance (hard to rust), while high carbon needs working to get a nice patina on the knife (if you care), needs sharpening more regularly and oiling more regularly, and is the kind of thing you can chip or rust if you don't know what you're doing - actually it's hard to create a nice even edge on high carbon steel if you don't know what you're doing, so it'll have 'blunt patches' compared to a less skillful job of a VG10 edge.
