"David Hare-Scott" wrote in message
u...


I know this is getting somewhat off topic but I am interested to know
why we have this difference of view, this is not just to be
argumentative, I am trying to understand your position as I am in the
market for some new tools (spades and knives) of my own. According to
the manufacturers' web sites

http://www.wuesthof.de/EN/default2.htm

http://www.zwilling.com/tg/usa/index.html

the knives that you mention are "The Steel: X 50 Cr Mo 15 Select alloy
of high carbon no-stain steel" and "Blades made from stainless, special
recipe steel" respectively.

Isn't that stainless steel? It sure sounds like it to me. Whether you
want to call these knives "stainless steel" or not the manufacturers
seem to be trying to produce (and advertise as such) products that hold
an edge well (ie they are hard steel). They also sell "steels" (both
traditional steel and ceramic) to maintain these edges, why would they
do that if using one was ineffective?

To me having a blade that is made deliberately soft so to allow quick
sharpening is rather self defeating as you will need to sharpen it much
more often. The side effect is that your blade will not last well as it
will also require more trips to the sharpening stone.

They make two types of knives for two different types of users. Home users
may need the kind of sharpness or precision that chefs need, but they won't
need that sort of quality 300 times in 4 hours on a busy night. If they need
to spend 10 minutes restoring the edge, it's not a big deal. A busy chef
hasn't got the time to screw around with stainless.

What I'm saying here is based on having spent time (frustrating time trying
to learn tricks, but interesting nonetheless) with a half dozen friends who
are graduates of the Culinary Institute, and two of their teachers. None of
them use stainless.

This is an interesting link, in terms of understanding different types of
metal. Click on "technical information", and then look down at the link
"About Stainless Steel".

http://www.bssa.org.uk/nsindex.htm



In the case of a spade (getting back on topic for a second) you would
want avoid brittle alloys that would break or get gaps through hitting
stones etc as the ability to hold an edge is useless if the edge is
gapped or the blade breaks. Having said that I have no idea if the
alloy used in stainless steel spades would be brittle or not. Do you
have any information on the sort of SS used in spades?


Let's not discuss extremes. The fact that a metal is "not that hard" doesn't
mean it's as soft as a lead fishing sinker. I've been using Bulldog spade &
fork for 20-ish years. These used to be sold by Smith & Hawken before it
became a fashion vendor for yuppies. I've hit plenty of rocks with the
spade. I've never actually dented the tool, but it clearly becomes dull
after a while. If I'm re-edging an existing bed, the dullness isn't
noticable or important, at least not in my soil. For other jobs, it is. And,
in some peoples' soil, it might be important.

When the sun's going down, your wife's telling to to get ready for Aunt
Nellie's barbeque (which you really don't want to attend anyway), your
spade's dull and you really want to finish what you're doing before heading
for the shower, the last thing you'll want is to fool around with a blade
that's too hard to sharpen quickly.

The web site I provided makes it clear that there's a wide range of formulae
for "stainless", and I'm not a metallurgist. I can only base my opinions on
experience, and experience indicates that stainless steel is harder to
sharpen than other metals. And, I have not found rust to be an issue at all
for some reason.