# Dimples/hollow ground



## capsaicin (Jan 16, 2011)

You know... Those indentations in the blade that have become popular enough to be put on full sized chefs now.

Do they do anything for you?

Just wondering since I tried a few knives and to me they really didn't make much difference at all. Maybe they do to you pro types who cut a lot more veggies than I do.

Also, as someone who grinds his knives new edges quite often, I wonder about what grinding the blade to where the dimples are will do to the blade.

This guy:






...has ground his dimpled chef halfway through the dimples and it doesn't seem to bother him. But I wanted to know what you guys thought.


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## gareth (Feb 3, 2011)

I have 2 dimpled knives and they are great. I don't live and breath knives so my opinion is probably not worth squat, but the way things seem to work is this. The force needed for cutting is roughly the same. The cutting edge of the knife is shorter but the drag or suction of the food onto the knife is reduced as the blade deposits air pockets onto whatever is being cut, it therefore leaves a cleaner product that is less likely to stick to the side of my knife.

Two weeks ago I skinned 400kg of pineapple and I was using my normal vege knife, I swapped and all it did was make the last piece of skin from each pineapple less likely to stick to the side of the knife. There's lots of juice (lubricant) in a pineapple but if I were doing pumpkin, cheese or roasted meat I would have definitely used the dimpled knife. 

I didn't look at the link but if he has ground it that far down it would be a bugger to use and he's just to tight to get another knife. The edge would be staggered, really short (almost point to point cutting) so all that says to me is if you get some of the knife pretty sharp it still does the job!


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## petemccracken (Sep 18, 2008)

I've used a dimpled blade chef's knife for, um, close to 11 years and I sharpen it regularly and I'm nowhere near the "dimples", as you call them.

TTBOMK, no one "grinds" a chef knife to sharpen it, oh wait, maybe some services, but then, they don't normally supply dimpled knives.

IMHO, "grinding" is only necessary for reprofiling or repairing a badly damaged knife, otherwise, I tend to categorize "grinding" as "knife abuse"!


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## foodpump (Oct 10, 2005)

It's called "Kuellenschliff" or a "Granton" edge.  Been used for close to a hundred years now on knives made especially for smoked salmon, ham, roast beef, and cheese.

The principle for this design is that as you draw a knife through a piece of moist sticky food, the "dimples" contain a pocket of air which allows the blade to move cleanly through without any food sticking to it.

Don't see a need for it on "Chef's" knives, although it works well for smoked salmon slicers and for ham/roast beef slicers .


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