When I say "We" here, I mean "We: all of the knife nuts who waste away on knife forums". I'm not trying to be mean here... just state a fact, that, over time, it's becoming more evident. I always had assumed that no one could be more of a knife dork than the knife makers, but I was wrong. Most of us at knife forums have achieved world record levels of knife-dork-ness. Really. I was talking with some Japanese knife makers, and a few of them that sell to the US said to me, "Some of the Americans we sell to are really dorky when it comes to technical questions about the knives". Yes, these are makers that you knife dorks know and buy from (I know because I'm a knife dork too). I started thinking to myself and realized how dorky I've become. Terms like "Rockwell hardness" and most of the Japanese steel names (shiro ni ko, etc.) are common words coming from my mouth. Even my Japanese wife doesn’t understand what I am talking about when it comes to knives (not because my Japanese is so bad- which it is- but because only a really nerdy person would know these things). I find myself asking all of the makers I talk to about their target HRc for different steels, or asking about knife shapes that they don't even have listed in their catalogs just because I know it's a shape I like (I like different kinds of deba... what can I say).
My Japanese reflects my dorkiness... I can speak and understand about food and knives (and sharpening) better than anything else. How about you? Are you a dork too?
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Jonathan Broida
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