Tactile Knife Co. is back with its third knife project, a kitchen knife they are funding through Kickstarter. The Tactile Knife Co. 8″ Chef Knife is the first culinary knife and fixed blade from the young company.
Like any other genre of knife, kitchen cutlery has its own catalog of go-to patterns that makers can draw on for their projects. The 8″ Chef Knife is Tactile’s take on the santoku, the all-purpose Japanese kitchen knife. Compared to the prototypical Western chef knife, a santoku blade drops the tip much further down; while neither format is strictly “better,” santoku advocates say that, once you get the hang of using it, the shape can make, more complete cuts with a single stroke compared to Western knives, which often need to be rocked to get the edge completely through whatever it is you’re cutting. You often see santoku blades with a granton edge, those little scallops on the flats that help keep food from sticking to your knife. Tactile decided to forgo this, instead giving their Chef Knife a clean, unimpinged full flat grind and a medium stonewash finish.
The 8″ Chef Knife’s blade steel is 14C28N. In a vacuum, this isn’t in the same performance category as the steels Tactile used on its two folding knife releases, the Rockwall and Bexar. But for a kitchen user, 14C28N is probably a better choice, packing in a lot of stain resistance alongside above average edge retention, while being easier to sharpen than your usual enthusiast-grade super steels. On their Kickstarter page, Tactile notes that they focused particularly on getting the Chef Knife very thin behind the edge – just .012″ thick, which allows the knife to deliver the high slicing performance that home and professional chefs look for.
A simple handle with scales made from Richlite round out the package here. As we all expected, the Richlite scales have their version of the signature Tactile texturing, a series of fine diagonal lines from top to bottom that provide traction and link the Chef Knife stylistically to its folding predecessors and the Tactile pens before them.
During the course of writing this article, the Tactile Knife Co. Chef Knife hit and exceed its funding goal on Kickstarter. Tactile intends to keep producing these after the Kickstarter ends, but backers get access to better prices and earlier delivery. The Kickstarter is open through November 19th, and the first knives are expected to ship in December.
Knife in Featured Image: Tactile Knife Co. 8″ Chef Knife
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