A Knife were it starts.

A Knife were it starts.
I feel that a good one is important.
Anyone who has chopped an onion using a good knife alongside a bad will see an obvious difference.
The good knife will just glide on through.
The bad knife needs some muscle.
The same can be said about slicing and carving meat.
Remember how I said that thin portions are ideal in a stir fry?
A good knife will easily do that.
Meanwhile, that cheap, serrated, made in China piece of crap from the kitchen aisle at Walmart will just make a mess of things.
There’s a whole world of difference between the two.

You want a good knife.
And a good knife just goes far beyond all that.
Find a good knife and you’ll see yin and yang in action.

It’s cosmic harmony expressed and the answer to Crom’s enigma.
You see, steel that’s too soft, bends.
Steel that is too hard is brittle and breaks.
Find the spot in between, and you’ll see virtue.

This concept is seen again in the angle of the grind, once more finding that point where strength through width and keenness through narrowness meet. That point is generally accepted to be 17 degrees.

Like so much in life, a knife maker strives to avoid extremes.

It’s the Taoist concept of Wu Wei.
Good knives illustrate balance and perfection.

And this will blow your mind.
The next time you’re testing for sharpness, instead of shaving your arm or cutting some paper, just hold the blade up to the light.
When you look along the cutting edge, you should see nothing.
Both sides should join together perfectly, meeting infinity and vanishing into nothingness.
It’s like a geometric line, a series of points so infinitely small that they all but cease to exist.
Diminishing to the point of absolutely no thickness, your edge becomes nothing.
And nothing is what you’re after.
You absolutely want nothing.
Nothing is key.
When you have nothing, you really have something.
But something is absolutely nothing.
Understanding all this, it’s clear that a good knife is the very embodiment of Zen.
Meditate deeply.
#Knife

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