# Knife Design for Evaluation



## Infillion (Nov 20, 2017)

Hello everybody,
I am an industrial design student and I did a project with kitchen knife concept design. 
Because there are a bunch of knife enthusiasts and even real professionals on this forum I would wish to receive your feedback for the models I made. Since many of you have experience with many kinds of knives, I trust that you can say something even based on the image alone without a real hands-on exploration.

The feeback can be of any sort but of course constructive criticism is most appreciated. And yes, even though it is designed with the pinch grip in mind, the knife by no means tries to be a actual professional tool, but merely targeted for amateurs.


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## chrislehrer (Oct 9, 2008)

There's a thick finger guard which will interfere with sharpening, if I'm seeing the photo right. I will say that they're pretty.


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## Pat Pat (Sep 26, 2017)

The handle looks uncomfortable and the sheep's foot curve just doesn't appeal to me.

The knives remind me of a very bad and uncomfortable knife I own, as pictured.


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## rick alan (Nov 15, 2012)

Yes you really need to lose the full bolster, and it is so exaggerated at the top it seems to me it would dig into the thumb. A santoku is a santoku and as such yours looks fine. The chef profile you show is looks ok, but it does have considerably more height than average. Your handle will likely be uncomfortable for extended use, those ribs would likely cause bruising and blisters, or just be plain uncomfortable as Pat said, but most home cooks likely would not mind.

It's a commendable design exercise in terms of appearance, but has some flaws from a funcrtional standpoint.


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## Infillion (Nov 20, 2017)

Thank you very much for taking time to point these things out.
The stainless steel as a handle material seems to be notorious indeed. It is perhaps worse than really deserved, since there is little difference in friction between polished steel and hard resin (such as in polished pakka wood scales) to wet skin. But well, of course a knife needs to provide enough grip, if not for comfort, at least for safety. Many manufacturers have their all-steel handles roughly ground or with all sort of recesses.

Some sort of texture opposed to the mirror polish would certainly do good, if not for the entire handle, maybe for the lower part of it. Also the lower part of the handle could, naturally be just a different material, such as classical black POM.

As for the full bolster design: I agree it is quite silly in a santoku to star with. As you well know there are numerous well selling and well valued knives though with thich full bolster. Here the disandvatage to sharpening have actually been minimized byt the triangular cross section of the finger guard - it needs only needs to be ground back from one side, the handle side.

The design is slightly odd after all as it encourages to use pinch grip, which the "normal users" seldom do. If they did, they would probably enjoy cutting tasks more due to increased control.

An ideal design would not need to make a compromize between aesthetics and ergonomics. This obviously being less than ideal there seems to be some need for that then. I would think though, that for the greatest majority of customers the most essential thing would be that they like the knife enough in order to keep it sharp. If that emotional connection comes from aesthetics, brand or other "virtual" property it would kinda be just fine because it is unlikely that they would actually be bothered by the ergonomic imperfections, which would be critical for a professional user.

Here the full bolster design has been changed to sort of half bolster.


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## Pat Pat (Sep 26, 2017)

This is another one of the worst and most uncomfortable knives I unfortunately own. And it's designed by the guy that designed Porsche 911, so go figure.


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## galley swiller (May 29, 2013)

Benuser is absolutely right about the old Sabatier patterns.

One thing I would stress is to learn about how a knife is held - by learning about a pinch grip. Then hold one of the old Sabatiers. It will be a HUGE revelation.

Now, if someone were to re-introduce those old pattern Sabs, especially in carbon steel - that would be a blessing to humanity.

Galley Swiller


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