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All I Want for Christmas is a Hand-Forged Kramer Chef's Knife
Filed under: Pick of the Issue Tagged: Digital Edition, newyorker.com, Todd Oppenheimer
Benjamin Chambers writes:
I don't tend to like theme issues; I find the uniformity of subject matter makes me less interested in reading. But in the The New Yorker's November 24, 2008 "food" issue, one piece jumped out at me: Todd Oppenheimer's profile of Bob Kramer (Digital Edition link here), who is one of the only 122 people in the world certified as a Master Bladesmith.
To be certified, Kramer had to hand-forge six knives.
One of those was a roughly finished, fifteen-inch bowie knife, which Kramer had to use to accomplish four tasks, in this order: cut through an inch-thick piece of Manila rope in a single swipe; chop through a two-by-four, twice; place the blade on his forearm and, with the belly of the blade that had done all the chopping, shave a swath of arm hair; and, finally, lock the knife in a vise and permanently bend it ninety degrees.
If I used that bent knife to carve the Thanksgiving Day turkey, it would be far more effective than the bludgeons we keep in our kitchen for cutting up food.
Perhaps, in this post-consumer economy we've now entered, I might be excused an anachronistic desire to possess a well-made tool?
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Emdashes, founded in 2004, is currently written and drawn by Emily Gordon, Martin Schneider, Pollux, Jonathan Taylor, and Benjamin Chambers, as well as occasional guest contributors. (Unsigned posts through October 2008 are by Emily Gordon.)
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Other writing by Emily Gordon
- Profile: Valerie Casey, Designers Accord founder, is spearheading the design of sustainability (for SXSW World; PDF, p. 20)
- Feature: Rea Irvin: visionary art director, man about town, and New Yorker founding father (for Print)
- Report: Learning to read with comic books--that are edited by Françoise Mouly (for Print)
- Interview: Designer Eleanor Grosch (for Print)
- Review: Charles Addams: A Cartoonist's Life by Linda H. Davis (for Newsday)
- Review: King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game by Paul Hoffman (for Newsday)
- Review: Does a New Republic redesign mean a change of tune? (for Print)
- Interview: James Surowiecki on what's next for the wisdom of crowds (for Assignment Zero)
- Report: Eustace Tilley spruces up for The New Yorker's website redesign (for Print)
- Feature: Muslim immigration iconography in the Netherlands, and an interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali (for Print)
- Review: books about various New Yorker cartoonists by Liza Donnelly and Iain Topliss (for Newsday)
- Profile: screenwriter and novelist Joe Keenan (for Newsday)
- Review: The Complete New Yorker (for Print)
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Comments
Sounds like another satisfied Ginsu customer!
An aficionado of both food and classic hardware, I too loved "Sharper" better than any of the more edible articles.
But I wonder if anyone else detected a certain laziness about looking for the science under this subject? The writer seemed to have simply accepted the bladesmiths' assertions of an unknowable metallurgy. And in what sense does a Japanese knife edge have "teeth?"