Hello and welcome to cooking issues. This is Dave another host of cooking shows coming to you live from newsstands studios around the Miller center joined as usual with Joe Hayes in the engineering the booth. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you? We got Jackie molecules out there in California. Doing great. Yeah, good. Yeah, yeah, I just made it before the rain. I was biking like a demon. So it feels like it's rained on me because I'm sweating so hard. And for those of you that pay for the Patreon video, like you'll be able to see that I'm dressed like a picnic table. Right Joe? And just like a picnic table. Yeah. So Nastasia forgot all of you know, during the pandemic, what it's like to try to drive in in New York City. Like at any time of day, it's a crapshoot. So she is going to be here in a couple of minutes because she got caught in the never ending nightmare of traffic that is I 95 the worst corridor in the East my wrong about this anyone? Anyone gonna defend it? No way. No, no defense for an offense even down in South Florida. It's the whole thing is trash. Like it's like Eisenhower's rolling over in his grave. This is what we this is what we ended up with, you know, like, God forbid, we do have some sort of like, domestic emergency that requires moving a boatload of stuff up and down the coast. And what we have is I 95 You know, I'm saying not only it's not just that it's a bad road. I'm sorry, it's the last I'm gonna say about because we have a lot to get to today. It's not just that it's a crappy road, but like literally, like you feel pumped by it. They're like strip a lane off for no reason so that the traffic gets clogged and then added again, like literally 100 yards down the road. You don't I'm saying? It's just garbage filth. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. And by the way, if you are listening live, you're a Patreon member listening in live call on your questions. 2917410 1507 That's 917-410-1507 Before this, we are now by the way on the iTunes what are the other things jack that people get their podcast from?

Spotify, iTunes, Google Play, basically anywhere you can find podcasts.

Right? So if you're new there, you need to re subscribe to us on the new RSS. Don't ask why. Don't ask why. Here's why. Right? Someone got on my on the Twitter I was like Hey Dave, can you go on the old feed and just make like a 22nd podcast and say to join the new feed so that the old people can get it and I was like dude, I wish I wish I could do that. I can't I don't want to talk about it just showing the new feed Joe it's like pushing one button I do it yeah, if you

for everybody that is has already subscribed, you know put a rating on their rate review subscribe as they say

it because our old our old ratings are old ratings. They don't propagate. I can't We can't get 11 years of work and we can't propagate the reviews. Am I wrong about this check.

We cannot transfer the reviews but we can get new reviews. We can

get new reviews. So if you like us leave a review. Forget you know I'm saying if you like us leave a good review now. Maybe you can say Okay, so today we have live from Pittsburgh special guests first time on the show. The reason is Dr. Lehren Thomas How you doing? Good. How are you guys feeling well so first of all Pittsburgh Do you have any what's uh, I've only been to Pittsburgh once and also to outside to the steel area we were talking about steel Braddock once love the Joe mashreq sculpture. Do you like that? Sculpture? Yeah, big steel bending. Do you know you're familiar? You're familiar with Joe mashreq. Legend, right?

No, really? No. Okay,

so I'll me so I don't ask what again, don't ask why. But like, you know, years ago, I went through kind of an American folklore rabbit hole. And there's all of these. In the, after the industrialization of America. There was a series of legends like John Henry being the most famous of kind of humans versus machines, right. So like kind of the, like the human spirit as it goes through industrialization. But Joe mashreq, which is typically built around, you know, an Eastern European, most accurately probably Hungarian kind of a model of a kind of like hard working immigrant in the steel mills is kind of the opposite of John Henry like they're going to I think the legend goes, they're going to shut down the steel plant, and they're doing one last melt. And Joe Mazur actions like the strongest steel man, you know, anywhere jumps into the melt and becomes part of the steel. And that is the greatest melt that had ever, ever been produced up to that time made the best Steel. And so like that was the steel that made like that, like, I guess that plant or that whatever great. And so Joe mashreq is like the human that's literally part of the steel. So it's basically saying, you know, steel work workers are literally part of this, like incredibly strong material that built the country. So it's kind of the, it's turning the human versus machine kind of it's on on its head. It's like human as part of the machines kind of cool. And that's why that giant, there's that giant, dude bending that girder in the out there and Braddock so now

I don't know if that's a happy story or not. Humans are, are carbon based. And we need carbon for steel. Yeah, I guess that was his contribution.

Well, you know, it's also like, we all gotta go, right? We all gotta go. Like, you know, when I'm done. I'm done. Joe mashreq. You know, he's part of whatever, whatever the coolest steel thing at the time. Well, anyway. So what caught my eye? The reason you're on the show, and I mentioned this is I was writing my own book, not on knives on cooking. And I thought, Okay, well, you know, everyone who writes a cookbook has to say something about knives. Right. And so, you know, I hadn't researched the topic in years, years, you know, maybe a decade or better. And I was like, Well, let me see what the current state of knowledge of knives is thinking that it would be a little more than I had looked up, like, you know, 1012 years ago. And it turns out that much like coffee, or baking bread, or any one of these other kind of, you know, things that seems relatively simple, you know, if you're not inside the thing, a lot has happened, a lot of knowledge has been gained. And a lot of people have been studying it quite furiously. And so long story short, it turns out, I didn't know a damn thing about it. And then I came across your blog and your book knife engineering, which by the way, I know you sell primarily on Amazon, but you should think about putting it in this one store called Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York that cooks go to now your book is not for cooks, it's for literally knife engineers or anyone who cares about how a knife works. So like have you had a lot of cooks coming to you and asking you questions or not?

Well, my dad, Devin Thomas, he makes custom kitchen knives so I mean, at the very least I talk to him almost every day. But I also go to a forum called Kitchen Knife forums which has a bunch of super geeked out kitchen knife guys that love buying expensive knives and cooking things with them sharpening them you know, so I'm familiar with with those groups. When I first started getting into knives as a teenager through my dad those were some of the first places I went where there's an old dead forum called knife or in the kitchen on knife forums.com which completely doesn't exist and then some of those people went to kitchen knife forum so I've been in that that group for a while and sometimes I pay more attention than other times I mean, there's so many new brands and and things but yeah, I've heard from a lot of those guys kitchen knife makers and the guys that buy too many expensive kitchen knives

what's interesting question so um, for those that don't know you say your dad is a well regarded maker of pattern welded Damascus knives, right. And so And you're also like, a PhD metallurgist by trade so you're not just like another internet Joker.

Yeah, well, I am but I also have a PhD and

so, right but you're you're an automotive metallurgist, right?

Yeah, I work for US Steel research and I develop new sheet Steel's for cars and so there's a lot of competition there like aluminum is looming looming as an alternative and those kinds of things and there's constant desires for higher gas mileage, better safety and things and so the the automotive companies are really big on stronger materials more ductile materials more far with more materials and they want it to still be weldable in the same way which is difficult or impossible to achieve. So it's an exciting area for development

Well, aluminum what's old is new again. For those of you that you know all the old like hand a lot of the old handcrafted like old roses and stuff were all aluminum back in the in the 30s and 20s. Right.

But in this context, I think we can all agree that aluminum is a terrible material for a knife.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. But we were just to go back to your automotive because I can't because I'm curious sorry about this but like, is it coming back just because of computerized TIG welding that it like that they don't need to worry about not being able to well, it will anymore or theirs was welding so much easier for them now that they can bring aluminum back

I believe that in the Ford F 150. So its outer body is aluminum, not the not the like the inner structure of the car that handles crashes and things. But I believe that is epoxy. So they basically just glue it all together. But the current automotive infrastructure is all designed for spot welding. So that that is a big advantage for the current steel industry. But the desire to use aluminum is because of its density advantage. And we can use thinner steel for lighter weight. And we do that by making the steel stronger. So the the challenge is making the steel stronger, but still be able to form it into complex shapes while being very strong, because those two things contradict each other. So I think we can stay ahead of aluminum plus aluminum requires a lot of energy to produce and to recycle. And so with the full lifecycle of a vehicle feel is comparable or in some cases a little bit better. But I think steel is here to stay, or at least that's what that's what my CEO tells me.

Right? That's what US Steel says that's such a surprise. Yeah. Hey, look. In terms of knives, I guess we can all agree well, that's actually not the not everyone doesn't agree someone asked. Someone asked. In fact, Capri Sun one of our longtime listeners said, what makes one nice deal easier to sharpen, we'll get to that later, but are ceramic knives a better choice for a non enthusiast home cook? Well, the

advantage of ceramic is that is extremely wear resistant. And so when it comes to wearing a knife edge, it will last a really long time. On the flip side, it's very brittle. And so it's prone to chipping, it's very difficult to sharpen effectively, you need at least diamond abrasives. And even with those, it's difficult to get a sharp edge on it, it does not like to be sharpened. And that's not just removing material, but just getting it to take a fine edge because it's so brittle. So my take on ceramic is don't buy them generally, steel is much more durable. And you can have knives that last a long time in between sharpenings with steel. And I think where of the edge is not even the dominant mechanism all the time of dulling your edge. So I think going just for more where resistance is not the direction I would go, I think a more balanced set of properties is more desirable. So I would prefer steel,

right? I know a lot of people who go for really that like this new generation of really cheap ceramics and then just went in there when they're done pitching, which is not necessarily a sustainable way to live, but I don't know. Yeah. So. And when you put when you obviously I think we all know or maybe we don't that the harder something is typically it's it's more brittle. But the ceramics aren't on the same curve as steel, right? So are they even more brittle for their specific hardness than steel is or no.

ceramics are almost always very high in hardness, usually a bit beyond where we typically take steel to. I mean, we could go harder on steel than what we do now. But we don't, you know, for several reasons, among them, it being too brittle. But ceramics is very hard, very wear resistant, and very brittle. So I mean, I think some enterprising ceramic companies that have made some ceramic knives that have done well, but I still think steel is the preferred material.

Now let's, let's talk about steel for a minute. Maybe go through like that, cuz we don't want to get too into the weeds because our average listener a while they like a lot of technical information isn't specifically a steel person. So we want to just go through, you know, kind of the different phases of steel and you know, how they relate to the knife, like the one minute pitch of how you know, nice steel is done, like what a carbide is, etc.

Yeah, I don't know exactly how in depth, we should go. Uh, you were talking to me about austenite. Before the show. austenite is a phase of steel. That's nonmagnetic. So austenitic stainless steel is more common in like cookware, pots and pans and sinks and thing,

right? So that's your 304 your 316 like all this stuff that we're accustomed to have all of our pans be made out of right?

Yeah, so knives are almost always a phase called Martin sites, which is the hardest phase of steel generally. So when they when they heat it up hot, it actually transforms to austenite first at high temperature, and then they quench it in oil. If you've seen that show forest and fire you've seen them quench knives and oil and that that is to lock in carbon. And when you lock in the carbon into the steel, it becomes very hard and it's a phase called martensite. Right then carbides are If you've heard carbide before probably like with tooling and things, which is just a hard particle form between carbon and another element in steel, a lot of times it's carbon or you can form vanadium carbides, if you have vanadium to the steel, for example. And so those are hard particles in the steel and they give you higher wear resistance, but also decrease your toughness. So in a lot of fields, we try to with knives anyway, you want the right proportion of carbide and the right type of carbide to get the right balance of toughness, which is resistance to chipping and wear resistance, so resistance to wear. So I mean, we can be much more specific on the hardness and the level of wear resistance and things than we could with a ceramic for example.

Right, right. So you go through this, you go through the whole process, I think pretty simply explained it pretty well in the book. So I mean, see whether this is right for the listener, because I think it's helpful to think about how the knife works, right. So, the important thing in jet for most like you know, lower normal Steel's right, current carbon, right is not soluble in this, you know, to a high extent in the steel normally, right? So you heat it up, it all becomes what's the how do you pronounce it again? Austin? austenite. Austin type Austin, I'd say it again. Yeah, it becomes austenite because as you heat it, right, the crystal structure of the of the iron itself changes such that the iron that carbon can go into solution, right. So now you have this thing right now in a 304. They add crap to it or 316 like kitchen, stainless steel nonmagnetic. They add stuff to it so that even after it cools down, it stays in that Austin Austin, say it again. I can't can't get it right. My mind won't. I think, Steve, I think Steve Austin a $6 million. Man. I can't think of anything else. Austin. Yeah, we,

we can say Austin or Austin, Texas. And then you just add height, or idea.

There you go. So night, so like the add a bunch of stuff so that when it cools, it stays in that form. And that's why it's non magnetic. But that stuff also is not hard. Right? Right. That's correct. Right. So like, That's why if it's not magnetic, it's not going to make a good knife. Right? For steel. If it's not magnetic. Like it, just because it's it is magnetic doesn't mean it's going to be good. But you know that if it's not magnetic, it's not going to be a good knife steel, right?

Yeah, I mean, maybe we could make some funky steel that would be non magnetic and still be good or knife. I'm not aware of any. Most knives are not non magnetic anyway, I mean, the non magnetic fields like the three or four and 316, they have to add a bunch of nickel to them. Some of them have molybdenum, so it's more expensive. It's cheaper for them not to use those Steel's anyway,

right? All right, so you have this hot steel, the in austenite with all of the carbon in it, then you quench it real fast. And it forms this like weird thing. martensite, which is hard as hell, right? But even harder still, the excess elements and carbon form these things called carbides. Right? And then that's the super hard stuff that forms the little almost sand grains inside of these matrix of steel grains. Is it pretty much accurate?

Yeah, yeah, you've got a bunch of little like spherical particles in the steel called carbides. And those resist were like you said, they're so like, if we have soft steel, it's relatively then we've got these hard particles than they help to resist the wear of the edge.

And a coat with carbide is what exactly it's it's a metal complex with carbon.

Yeah, so the most basic is an iron carbide also called cementite. So in a simple carbon steel, you'd have cementite particles in there, and it's just the composition is Fe three C three iron atoms for every carbon atoms. So just you put iron and carbon together. And it makes an iron carbide.

And that's the softest of all of the carbides right.

Yeah, yeah. At least for for carbides that you normally find in in steel. The hardest would be like a vanadium carbide or a tungsten carbide. So some of the, the really high wear resistance Steel's will have high percentages of vanadium added to them.

Okay, so now we were talking about just carbon steels where it's just cementite which is the iron carbide and martensite is that that's what is that my like my 1950s like Forestar Saba, ta, is that what that stuff is?

Yeah, exactly. And even some, some kitchen knives in carbon steels today are using something similar, or like the Japanese Kitchen Knives made in white number one, or Shirakami number one, that's just a high carbon, simple steel.

All right, now, I happen to love those knives is that like, what do you think in the kitchen? I love them because they're so easy to sharpen. And you know, I touch them up every time I every time I use them, I touch them up. And so you You know, my carbon steel Yanagi makes real fast work of fish and my you know, my Saba TA is when I'm slicing steak I always go for my sub IGA Is that am I making a mistake there? Or is that a decent? Like, what am I giving up there?

So you're talking about the broader question of just carbon versus stainless and a lot of the information out there is not that useful because the category of carbon steel is a really big wide open set of steels, and so is stainless. And so you can have non stainless steels that behave very similarly to a stainless steel apart from they will rust pretty easily. And you can have stainless steels that have some of the characteristics of those simple carbon steels. So, when we talk about the very general differences, if you read an article saying carbon versus stainless steel, it'll talk about carbon steels with low wear resistance that are easy to sharpen. They might say that it's higher in hardness, versus a stainless steel, which has a coarser structure, it's more difficult to sharpen to a really fine edge, but it's stain resistant. But there are a series of stainless steels, sometimes called like a stainless, or a stainless razor blade steel, or Swedish stainless steel that can have very fine microstructure with characteristics that are pretty similar to a simple carbon steel, with a little bit higher wear resistance just because it's chromium carbide instead of iron carbide, but then carbon steel is too generic of a term. So I use non stainless instead. Because a carbon steel refers to something specific and we use it generally, low carbon steel is just iron carbon. And some traits like manganese, silicon, non stainless encompasses everything that we call like carbon, steel, and some of those with high like vanadium contents, chromium contents and things. They behave like those stainless steels that some people like and some don't. So yeah, try not to get too in the weeds. But you can have stainless steels that are like carbon steels and carbon seals that are like stainless steels. And so talking about one versus the other doesn't always make sense, right? With the simple carbon steels, if they're, they're perfectly fine, there's nothing wrong with them. If you enjoy sharpening them, then that's great. But I would also recommend trying some of those very fine microstructure stainless steels and get the benefits of stain resistance at the same time,

that are there just as easy to sharp sharpen.

Yeah, just as easy to sharpen, they take just as good of an edge and they resist rust.

So let me let me we'll get back into specific Steel's in a second. So here we have, if it's just carbon in it, it drops out. But if you have other like, alloying elements in there, the carbides precipitate out with that's the correct term as whatever they are, like you said, vanadium, tungsten, chromium, all of all of these other things, right. So what I thought was really interesting, and I think our crew might find interesting is in your book, there's a whole boatload of micrographs that you paid to get shot of different Steel's.

Oh, no, not paid to get I took all of them. Oh, really? Oh, Paul, I polished all of the steel, I asked it all and acid and I image them all under a microscope.

even fancier. Yeah, nice. Anyway,

I should have paid someone to do it, it was a lot of work. It looks like a lot, it looks like

a lot of work. But something that I think I hadn't considered before because something if you read about Steel's, like, you hear about powder, steel powder, steel, versus, you know, you know, older style, Steel's and I didn't realize what a difference it makes in terms of what's happening, where the cutting is happening, what like size of the carbide and the distribution of the carbide, what a big kind of deal that can be in terms of how strong that when I say strong and how resistant to being effed up that that knife edge is. And like how like the bigger carbides can literally tear out of the of the edge of the of the of the blade or prevent you from sharpening down to a sharp edge in the first place. You want to talk about that?

Yeah, well, if you imagine your your knife edge, you know, it's coming down into tiny triangle at the end, we'll call it the tip of your edge, the radius of that tip is going to be about a micron in diameter. So if you think about a little tiny circle at the tip of your triangle, it's dull, that's going to be very rounded, and if it's sharp, that's going to be very triangular. And it can get down to a micron or even finer. And so a lot of Steel's have have carbides that are much larger than a micron and so that makes it more difficult to sharpen them and they'll tend to wear down to kind of the average size of the car died pretty quickly. And so your maximum

your maximum sharpness then is limited by the carbide size.

Yeah, to some extent. So, with sharpening skill you Get most any steel sharp, it'll just be more difficult because you kind of have to get those carbide out of the edge to get it really sharp. But, so powder metallurgy is made to keep the carbide size small. Now, a carbon steel is pretty easy to keep the carbide small because they will dissolve at relatively low temperature. So you dissolve them while you're forging and then get them to re precipitate at a lower temperature, you did use that term correctly earlier. And if we precipitate them at a lower temperature, then they're nice and small, just because the diffusion rate is lower. But as we're getting into higher alloy Steel's, like adding in vanadium, or chromium, for a stainless steel or a highly wear resistant steel, those carbides will form in the liquid and they grow to be quite large, and then you can't really break them up very effectively during forging. So in a normal steel production, they've got the liquid steel and they pour it into a mold and then it just cools very slowly, you know a multi ton ingot of steel and with it cooling so slowly, those carbides can grow and get really large and undesirably large. But with powder metallurgy they pass liquid steel through a nozzle that gets sprayed by nitrogen gas. And as it gets sprayed by the gas, it solidifies little droplets of the steel, so it becomes a powder of steel. So each of those droplets gets instantly solidified. Kind of like each one is a tiny little ingot, and then they put the powder in a Can they call it and they hit it hot, isostatic pressing to get it all to solidify together. Now they don't melt it, it's just a high temperature where they bond to each other. And then it becomes a solid ingot of steel. And so that gives you a combination of the high alloying for high wear resistance and other things that we want, but also with the fine microstructure that we want for high toughness resistance to chipping and fine edges in knives,

right? Because the ability to stay tough at much higher hardness is looking at your charts radically better for some of these powder steels, right?

Yeah, it's greatly controlled by the carbide structure if you've got a lot of carbide, large carbide, those are all bad for toughness because if you got up this hard fertile particle, it's easy to initiate a crack and steel so they really will want to start a chip there because it's just the stress required to to crack it is much lower than if we've got this fine distribution of little carbide centers first and steel.

Now are there any of these powder steel powder Steel's that are actually readily readily available in kitchen knives? I mean, what are people pushing now that is in this kind of range? You know what I mean? Like you hear the word of the common kitchen nice stuff, VG 10. The AU S series eight and 10. The and then a US What 440 C is comedies aren't powder, right? Ernie those powder?

No, those are all conventionally produced steel. Some of the more common powder metallurgy Steel's are SG two also called Super gold two also sold as our two those are in Japan.

Sean uses common. Sorry, who son uses those, don't they? I think some of the shunts Yeah, commercially available knives. I haven't used one.

Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure and a lot of the a lot of other higher end Japanese produce kitchen knives. So some that aren't inordinately expensive, at least compared to how expensive they can get a little bit less common in Japan or steals DDP. 189 and cow reacts in the US we have f 35 VPN.

You love that right? That shows up well in your ratings.

Yeah, it does though. It's been beaten out by another steel I designed that is not readily available and kitchen knives. Yeah. Oh,

hold up, hold up. Wait, what's this new steel.

The new steel is CPM magnet cut. So that's the steel that I designed. And the the big thing that it does is with stainless steels, even powder metallurgy ones they have a coarser structure than non stainless powder metallurgy Steel's because the chromium carbides tend to be larger, even with powder metallurgy. And so the best Steel's in terms of toughness and wear resistance edge retention are non stainless powder metallurgy steel. But what I did is I took a new approach where we balanced the chromium and carbon correctly where we removed the Chromium carbide from the the structure and only have the hard small carbides that we want for the best combination of properties. So the magnet cut after it

was powdered you removed it.

Know so there's still there's still chromium in the steel, but you can dissolve all the Chromium carbide and keep the Chromium in solution it's called so that it only is can tributing to corrosion resistance and not to carbide

because chromium carbide sucks, right? It's like, it's the isn't it? Like, it's not a it's not a hard carbide, right, you don't want chromium carbide Correct?

Well, it's harder than iron carbide. But for for the very best combination of properties, you want a small volume of really hard carbide as opposed to more of softer carbide. Because if you have more soft carbide, they're still very brittle and make the steel brittle. Where if you have a small amount of very hard carbide, it gives you the wear resistance just from the hardness of the carbide, but they're small, and you have a small amount of them. So the steel still has high toughness and resistance at shipping.

So do you think this CPM magnet code is going to be inexpensive enough for a kitchen knife or no,

it will show up in kitchen knives, but it will show up in in American custom made kitchen knives it will show up in higher end production kitchen knives. So some of these are made in the United States. But they're they're usually more in like the three $400 range. So not not the $100 stuff that you'll find at your kitchen supply store? Well, so it will definitely be in those knives.

Right? So what are you getting, like from a practical standpoint, because a lot of people are gonna wonder, just from a practical standpoint, like what like, what am I getting between, let's say, you know, a $65 it let's we'll talk about geometry of blades in a minute. But like a $65, German made, whether it's made in traditional German style with the fat bolster and all that whatever, but like a German style knife. Like, you know, Mercer was tough Henkel like, from the low to the higher price to like, you know, I think a lot of our crew is probably paying, like the 100 and change dollar for like, decent and Japanese Western knives, right? And then the next jump up, maybe like the higher end, kind of Japanese chef knives, and then like custom Americans, or, I would say, because I would say like, our average listener probably is buying like misono, you UX, 10s or max, or think things like this. So like, if that's the kind of quality that they're used to, right? Like, what are they gonna get by moving to a super steal from a custom knife? Obviously, they're gonna get the fact that it's custom, the fact that it's awesome that a human being made it that it's, you know, it's got all that tactile niceness of being made by a human. But what are they going to get in terms of making like it more fun to slice a tomato?

Yeah, well, that you've covered a lot of ground and your question will try to hit some of those things. So one is that traditionally, the German made kitchen knives have been considered high end or the best if you read and article in these old magazines or books about how to pick out a knife, they'll talk about the Forge bolster and the full tang and other things that don't actually matter at all. And then a lot of those German knives have very thick edges on them, and they just don't cut well. So the the number one factor for how well a knife cuts is just it being thin. And of course, you've got to keep it sharp. So the the old European Made Knives are simply too thick to cut things. And you'll see that some of them are trying to make thinner knives, and that's good, I'm glad we're pushing them in that direction, they also will use relatively low end stainless steel that is not very hard. And when steel is soft, it's hard to sharpen because it's kind of mushy, and it doesn't hold an edge very well. Then we have the wave of Japanese Kitchen Knives, which have become much more popular over the past 2030 years. And like you said, they can be more in the 100, maybe $200 range, and they're usually thinner, with harder steel, and they will typically cut much better and cut longer than those European Made Knives. And so that's probably the sweet spot for a lot of people in terms of cost. Now, why would you go to anything higher end? I mean, that's always hard to say there's always a you're getting less for your dollar, the higher you go up in price, you know, when you're getting a $2,000 kitchen knife, it's not going to cut $1,800 better than your $200 knife.

But will it cut $100 Better for an extra $1,000? That's the question.

Yeah, yeah. And it won't, it won't do that. Now there are some knives and in between, like even higher end Japanese made kitchen knives or what are sometimes called mid tech knives in the US or just where it's kind of a semi custom product where instead of, you know making the handle slabs and then gluing them to the steel where there's always going to be like some gap or it's, it's not exactly perfect. You know what I mean? Instead, they they glue on the handles and then they then they shape it all together. So that's perfectly cool. Wash with the Tang, they round the spine they they round the toil of the of the knife so that everything is smooth and and nicer and better. And so some of those are, are more in the 300 to $500 range. So in terms of pure performance No, there's not much reason to go even higher than that. But I am friends and family with a lot of custom knife makers, so I can't I can't make them too angry.

Yeah, well, I guess my thing is also, let's look at and by the way Anastasia is, has joined us. And so Jack, so And Jack, since I don't like I don't have the on my list of questions at the Patreon people wrote in I don't have their names, maybe you should read them so we can get their their their names. But your Why don't you read some of those ahead? Well, you will go through the Patreon first and then I'll because I could ask questions forever. Sure.

So let's go with Monty who asks any experimentation with cryogenic hardening, they do it with wood plane blades, but I'm not sure if it would be applicable to knives, kitchen knives.

Yeah, cryogenic processing is definitely done on knives, especially in mid range higher end knives. It usually advertised if they're doing it, though not always, I don't know if I can give a really short explanation for what happens. But we talked about quenching the steel to transform it to the hard martensite. The conversion to martensite is controlled by temperature. So if you get below a certain temperature that it has fully transformed, if it does not fully transform, like we stopped the quenching at some temperature like 300 degrees, then it would be martensite plus the soft austenite that we don't want. When we add other alloying elements to steel, the temperature of that transformation goes down just like in the austenitic stainless pots and pans where they they alloy it up so that that transformation is so low that we never get to it at room temperature. The same thing can happen with knife steels. When we add high carbon or high chromium, the transformation is shifted down where it's not complete at room temperature. And so if we go into dry ice or liquid nitrogen or some other Freeze treatment, then we can more completely transform that to make sure that it's nice hard structure and doesn't have any of that soft, undesirable austenite in it. Now, it gets bigger than that, because there's a cryogenic industry that wants to tell you that they double, triple quadruple the wear resistance just by using cryogenic processing. In my experiments that I've done, I've never seen that it it affects it in conversion to martensite. And that's what it does. So it is useful in certain scenarios. If they're advertising, it means that they're doing an extra step which cost them money, which means they are trying to make a better product. But it's not going to take it from good steel to ultra steel.

Yeah, my old bass strings. They used to advertise that they crowds and why would they do that on a on a bass guitar string?

Yeah, it probably doesn't do anything useful.

Sounded good, though. When I was like 19. I was like, oh, yeah, cryo. Yeah.

I mean, cryo.

Yeah, what? Right? You know, like when you're like slapping your bass, and they're like, it's brighter. It's cryo, you're like, yeah, and the package is blue. You know what I mean? It's like,

we have like, tube amps that people go nuts over. You know, doesn't matter what the tube is. We're sorry.

Listen listener. Jack. Listen. i It's true. I hate I do. I detest any sort of loving something just for the sake of loving it if it's garbage, right. And I used to poopoo it right because my you know, my dad was one of the last like generations of double E to to like learn totally analog, but become a totally digital guy. So like, I grew up in kind of like, a world that under you know, where my you know, my dad was always about analog and tubes and like solid state, and he's like, solid state amplifiers are fantastic. You know what I mean? And then once I plugged into like, an amazing Aguilar tube amp, and I just hit my bass once, not with cryogenic strings, now with crunch engineers, and it was like bomb and it blew my chest in and I was like, Damn, that is the best ever. So it just so happens that my favorite bass amp of all time is a tube amp. Not that it couldn't have been solid state because I love it a solid state technology. I'm just saying. Alright, back to food back to food. So let's, let's take it like a little opportunity here. On when we're talking about temperature and about marketing stuff. Two things. One interesting point you bring up a lot of people, if they sharpen with power equipment, even if they don't think they're heating their edge up. The edge is so small that they could actually be heating their edge up and ruining the temper on their blade. True. That's one of the things I got out of your book.

Yeah, that could definitely happen. I'm not a proponent in general and power sharpening. Now if you're afraid of learning to sharpen by hand, I mean there are guys I did systems, things like the edge Pro, or the Spyderco, sharp maker. And those can help certain people. Now what those do best is just to hold the angle for you so that you don't have to worry about that part of it. But some people think if you buy one of those guidance systems that hold the angle for you that then the learning curve is gone. But you need to embrace the learning curve because the learning curve isn't removed by a guidance system, it's just different. You're learning different aspects of how to sharpen. So I think the best thing to do is just embrace it. You know, use a less expensive knife, if you're afraid of scuffing it up and just just practice. Sometimes local kitchen knife stores will have little classes that you can take where they'll say, oh, no, don't hold it like that, you know, hold it like this. Or you're, you're going off angle at the tip here. Let me show you how to how to do that. So you know, a little practice makes perfect. If you're afraid of sharpening, you're never going to be be good at you're always going to be cutting everything with a dull knife. So just learn how to sharpen.

And where do people where do people's sharpening skills typically show up the worst at the tip?

They mostly show up and people not sharpening, I would say, if you're bothering to try to sharpen at all, it's going to be a lot sharper than the 1000s of housewives with dull knives that have never been sharp. So I mean, don't be afraid of having a tip that's a little bit dull. But yeah, the tip is a tricky part, you've got 90% of a blade that is kind of one shape to it. And then the tip is a little bit different than the rest. So Oh, yeah, probably.

Yeah, I spent the last. I don't know, like, you know, basically forever hand hand doing my knives. And I've used it, I've used a 10 inch, interrupted DMT diamond stone for about, you know, 12 years some, and it's stayed flat that whole time. So it makes it very easy for me to touch the knife, touch my knives up, right. And so consequently, I do I touch them up all the time. But in preparation for this show, I pulled out because I have an edge Pro I pulled it out and re sharpened all of my knives to a you know a more exact not hand done. bevel. And it's amazing how much better you can see the bevel when it's exactly one angle all across it. But does that mean it's necessarily better or No? It doesn't feel doesn't feel like it's holding on sharpness better I feels like look like, based on the book, I was like, Alright, I'm going to take everything and when you when you specify your sharpness, you specify angle per side, because everyone's confusing, right? Some people give you the total included angle of the blade, ie both sides. But you you draw a line of symmetry down the middle of the knife and give the angle on both sides as the angle you're talking about right can be clicked clear on

yeah, that's, that's useful when you're talking to sharpening people because when you're sharpening, you're not setting it to 30 degrees total, you're picking an angle on each side of your knife, you're sharpening one side at an angle of 15 degrees, and then you flip it over and you sharpen the other side of 15 degrees. So that's usually how you talk about things, right when you're sharpening. And when you're sharpening at home, you the biggest effect you can have on the performance of the knife is that angle. So if you go shallow, you know like 10 1215 degrees beside, it will cut very well but you're going to reach some point where it's too shallow where it will it will chip or roll easily. If you go more obtuse like 20 degrees per side, then it's now very strong and durable. But it doesn't cut as well and it doesn't cut as long. And so for for home sharpening that's really your your biggest difference, not necessarily how high in Polish you go.

Right? So you don't you're not a big believer in that micro serration or it doesn't really what's the what's the finest grit you think is useful for a home kitchen or for even a professional kitchen.