Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Saw this knife on Amazon and thought "What the Hell, Go For It". It arrived today and I was blown away by how nice this knife is - hefty, beautiful wood handle, and fairly sharp right out of the box. Will be using it to prep dinner tonight, so I'll let you know how it does in action. But still, for the price, one of the nicest knives I've run across.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00MOO ... UTF8&psc=1

Speaking of knives, I really like the Victorinox/Forschner knives. The handles are ugly as hell (black fibrox), and they're stamped-steel, but they're also really high quality. They come sharp out of the box, they hold their edge well, and they resharpen well. Cooks Illustrated rates them highly in pretty much every category.

Bought one at the same time as the Royal because of the Cooks Illustrated recommendation. No comparison in my book. The Royal weighs about twice as much (much thicker blade and bolster) and looks a lot better, too! And it's about the same price.

Have to admit that I haven't used the Victorinox much yet - just a couple of test slices during dinner preps last night. Decent sharpness. A couple of strops on the steel and it got even better. Same for the Royal. Need to get out the whet stones and work on both of them.

If you're not going to be doing a lot of work at one time, the Victorinox would be OK; but I suspect that you'll have some fatigue issues, due to it's significantly lighter weight, if you did a lot of chopping with it in one session.

Holy Cow!

They have dropped the price of the Royal knife to $14.99, YES, $14.99!!! Just ordered a second one at this price. Will become a gift down the line somewhere.

http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00M ... UTF8&psc=1