I'd go even further to say that you really only need one great knife. You can do pretty much all your cutting with a chef's knife.

That said, I have 3 chef's knives. A 12", 8" and an 8" santoku. All Wüsthof Classic. The other knives are more of a luxury and get used far less frequently. Bread knife which is also awesome for cured meats like chorizo and salami, paring knife and narrow kitchen knife (this is the one I pretty much never use, though my wife likes it).

I want to add a tomato knife to the collection, even though I don't eat raw tomato - it's great for cheeses and also cured meats and other odd and ends. I also need a long meat fork, but so infrequently that I haven't picked one up yet.

Which would make the American version "HomeGoods".

"TJ Maxx", BTW.

I just tried it on a lime (an Arabian/Mexican lime, not a key lime), and got about 35-ish slices out of it, not counting the discarded ends. Not that I'd ever normally cut a lime like that, but it's not exactly tomato season.

Actually, is your ceramic knife single- or double-ground? That is, does it bevel in on both sides or is one side flat?

I just came across a ceramic honing, uh, "steel", which makes a lot of sense. You want your … honer to be harder than your knives. I'm not sure that the Henckels steel I have is doing a damned thing to that super-hard Shun steel.

Which reminds me: I never pointed out that the reason that the Shun knives are so sharp is that they use a really strong steel for the edge that can hold a much more acute angle than most knives. It's 16° rather than the 220° you see on most European knives. Then they clad more normal steel around the edge piece to make up the bulk of the spine, which is what gives it that Damascus-y look.

Yeah, I'm looking for a new steel. You've also got to steel at a different angle, for the reasons you point out.

It always amused me that Mitsubishi makes pretty much everything from pencils to supertankers. And, it turns out, beer.

Though, a steel technically is not supposed to hone the edge, it's just supposed to realign it.

For a hone, you want to pick up a Norton waterstone. But if you steel often and correctly you shouldn't need that for 12-18 months.

I got a Norton waterstone when I switched to shaving with an old-fashioned straight razor, which has to be outrageously sharp to work. Instead of steeling a razor, you strop it, but otherwise it's the same principle for cutlery. The razor is a very, very hard carbon steel rather than a stainless, which is always going to be a compromise. The Shun is a super-high quality stainless, but still not as hard as the razor. The Norton works well on the Shun knife.

Come to think of it, I have a Dovo stainless straight razor also, but I never use it because I can't get an edge on it like the carbon razor. It works, but the difference is really noticeable when you're scraping your face.

Mine (which, I've just checked, isn't actually the 16cm one in the link I gave upthread, but the 14cm version of the same thing) is double-ground.

Peter

Dependant on your final installation I can recommend the Sparkfun Arduino Pro Mini as a much cheaper alternative to the Nano. It dispenses with the USB interface, which in an embedded application you're unlikely to use anyway. You can then just use a simple FTDI breakout for programming/testing.

Yeah, I looked at that. The reason I went with the Nano is that it handles the automotive voltage range, without me having to deal with adding my own voltage regulation. I can code, but my electronics experience is near-nil. I agree that it would be nice to drop the USB interface eventually, though.

Happy New Years all.

I can see how that would be helpful, although looking at the schematics of the Nano, it's just a 5V reg. Given it's got to step 12-14v down to 5 and it has no external heatsink, I wonder how hot it will get?

Yeah, I know that; I just don't know the right words, apparently.

Looking at the schematics for the Pro Mini, it says max input voltage is 16VDC, so this should also be able to handle automotive voltages.

Stig

The spec on the Arduino website actually lists 12v as the upper limit of the 'recommended' range. The absolute maximum is 20v, although I get the feeling it wouldn't last long at that voltage.

Given there's no heatsink on the reg I'd be reluctant to use it in my car like that given the normal operating supply voltage with the engine running is approx. 14.5v. If it was running all the time I wonder if that could reduce the lifespan of the device.

If I understood what I read correctly, the worst you should get is a spike up to 18v -- unless there's something disastrously wrong with the car. Being able to handle up to 20v should protect against any spikes.


Looking at the board, it appears that the microscopic heatsink is soldered to a pad on the board. Perhaps it'd be wise to add a small voltage regulator of my own, regardless.