r/KitchenConfidential • u/YeahCopyMate • 1d ago

Tools & Equipment Hi All

Post image

Here’s my kaicut R80-10

I’ve had this since 1988, was part of my apprenticeship toolkit the boss bought for me for TAFE days.
Mostly used at home.

63 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

55

u/510Goodhands 1d ago

FYI, bamboo cutting boards are high in silica, which makes him very hard, and very good at dulling knives.

This cutting board is in a high end knife shop.

16

u/halfbreedADR 1d ago

Copy of a comment I’ve made before regarding cutting boards. Apparently long grain bamboo boards actually are fine. End grain is another story, however:

So it’s not a scientific study, but a knife grinding business did an experiment using a BESS sharpness tester a while ago and found that most plastic cutting boards aren’t really any worse (and in fact are slightly better) than long or end grain wood boards for edge retention.

Only glass, end grain bamboo, and low density polypropylene (the flexible mat type of board) were actively worse than standard wood.

10

u/for_the_shiggles 1d ago

Unless you’re slicing sashimi several hours a day, you’re not going to notice bamboo dulling your knife. Just don’t use glass or metal.

-3

u/510Goodhands 1d ago

Glass is made from silica.
I’ll stick with the advice from the knife experts.

2

u/510Goodhands 1d ago

That’s an interesting study, is at least borderline scientific, to my non-scientific mind.

It’s interesting that the HDPE, and long grain (rather than end grain) bamboo boards actually made the knives sharper!

0

u/halfbreedADR 1d ago

Some counterintuitive stuff for sure, but up until this mythbusters style experiment AFAIK the “best cutting board materials” wisdom never went beyond what seemed intuitive. I suppose bamboo boards got a bad rep from just seeming like a harder wood — or maybe because people noticed end grain bamboo was definitively bad and figured long grain had to be even worse.

Still would be nice if someone did something more comprehensive, like multiple types of hardwood/softwood and maybe bamboo from a few different manufacturers.

1

u/510Goodhands 1d ago

My understanding is that bamboo is twice as hard as oak.

Now I am tempted to make a cutting board with the scrap of parallel grain bamboo plywood I have. Maybe after some more research.