Thread: Mundial chefs knife edge chipping question.

Originally Posted by Ben Dono

and has never seen anything other than a dishwasher,

I cant say for sure if that is what caused the problem but I would never put a decent chefs knife like a mundial knife in a dishwasher.

Cheers

Doug

You forgot to add the glass chopping board and butchers steel!

I'm guessing mundial use stabilised wood for their handles but you not know it. It was bleached white and all swollen from many hot dishwasher cycles. It was a friends neighbour. Had he asked me I would have sharpened it up for him but he tossed it out into the rubbish and my friend nabbed it.

I just gave it a go prepping the dinner..... It's damn nice. As good as a Shun but my all time favourite is a $7 kiwi brand Chinese style vegetable cleaver! Love them!

I will give it a go for a while as it's the first time I have used a western style chefs knife. I have sharpened many of them so it's about time I gave one a go.

On a side note, I had a friend at uni that was a Cutco saleswoman to pay her way. She had a full set of actually pretty nice knives. I was over having dinner and fell over when I saw that she was using a glass chopping board. I asked her about it and her response was 'oh no, Cutco knives never need sharpening!'
I didn't say anything but have always wondered how many of her customers sent their knives back.

Add me to the list of people that have binned Mundials. We had a set of them that came in a timber block, and after maybe a year of use I got exactly the same edge problem as you described when trying to touch them up with a steel. Around that time the tips started to break off them, about 10-15mm in. My Mrs is spectacularly unco so I'm sure she contributed to the tip damage but these knives are crap. A friend of hers told us that she's also had the tip breakage problem, and had them repaired at king of knives. On the advice of the BIL who's a chef I got a bunch of Kiwi's from the Asian market and haven't looked back.

I've seen this on a few German knives I did for a friend. They had them for a while and were as sharp as tea spoons.

Sharpened them up for her while I was over for dinner. The first attempt the edge was brittle and nasty. Bugger I thought, so I broke out the ago 180 and ground it back. Good steel was found and then the edge sharpened like crazy.

I was at a loss to explain this. I just assumed it was laminated steel and somehow the inner hard core needed reexposing, like a lead pencil...sounds stupid I know, but there we have it.

Perhaps the core edge metal became "contaminated" or somehow rotten without being able to see it? Perhaps one of the metals, such as molybdenum, has adsorbed oxygen and became spongy?

I assume that the molten steel was of uniform composition when it was poured out of the blast furnace.
I assume that the steel stayed that way, right into the bladesmith's factory.
I assume that the bladesmith ordered and got what they specified.
I assume that the manufacture was a carefully controlled process, most likely automated mass production.

I'm not so sure those things are consistently true.

Of my 9 crooked knives that I use for carving, I have one with chips.
Just one cm of edge but right at the most useful part of the sweep.
Painfully obvios with a 10X magnifier.

Leonard Lee suggests that the chipping is brittle steel, with nothing that can be done about it.

There are two Mundials in our family. One belongs to my sister in law, the other to my son. Both are identical knives until it comes to sharpening. My son's is no problem at all, stones and steels beautifully. The sister in law's is far more difficult and will be inclined to chip if the stoning burr is too great when put to the steel. I have found to get an edge on this knife I have to use a multi cut steel whereas the son's responds best to a smooth steel.
The "chippy chopper" seems to be much harder than the other knife and sounds like it when run on a steel.

Alright, I gave that knife the ultimate test. I let guests use it! We just had 14 people here over night and the knife got flogged and the edge held up just fine. It is still plenty sharp.

I'm guessing they left this batch too hard when they were annealing them. I'm heavy handed on the coarse stone when I'm re establishing the seconday bevel. I'm guessing that does not suit this brittle knife, but their is an easy way around it.

It's a great knife. The tip is not a pry bar and I would not be chopping chicken bones with it. But I don't treat any knife like that anyway unless it's a cleaver.

I have always thought using a traditional style butchers steel to be counter productive on a standard knife. When I sharpen a butchers knife I am trying to produce a tiny, consistent wire edge. Being a softer knife, the wire edge can be 'stood up' multiple times with a butchers steel. With a normal chefs knife, the steel is harder and you remove the wire edge in the sharpening process.
Maybe I missed something here?
The chefs I have known as well as the ones I have sharpened knives for do not use them. I'm thinking I should take one for the team and give it the Pepsi challenge!

I'm sure we have Butchers and Chefs on this forum that would have an opinion on this!

Mundial is a Brazilian brand knife and like so much chefs' gear that comes fom
over there the qaulity is uneven.

I would never again buy Mundial because you don't know what you will get.It
seems quality control is crap in the factory.

If that knife is good for you then you are very lucky

And second that on the 'uneven quality' bit. I've had Mundial knives with chipping problems. Somewhere on here there's also a thread about them snapping off at the handle, too.

Just take 'em off your preferred supplier list; the quality problems have been going on far too long to be one bad batch!

That's a fair point.
Mundial probably needs to come out and explain all this a bit better. I googled it last night and it's been going on for a while.
Maybe they believe the harder/brittle knife is a benefit? To be honest I have always preferred a knife to be higher on the Rockwell scale. Ceramic knives suffer these problems much more often and it is sold to the public as a benefit.

Watching a very busy Chef work, they are cautious but they get the most out of their knives and use every part of it as their tool. I can't say I have seen them use the tip to pry anything they should not. Dropping a knife, well it happens but it's not a bush craft knife.

I am starting to think maybe it is partly an oxidation issue as Evanism stated. Once I ground past the chips the steel was fine.
One thing I have noticed on a lot of the knives I have had to grind to reset the primary bevel is the steel behind the factory sharpen always performs much better. Machetes are notorious for this but it probably most evident with them because they are heavily reground more often. Once you have taken back the edge by about 2mm, that edge seems to perform much better.

Who knows? I think they are definitely good knives with a few quirks you need to watch out for, but that's every tool really.

On a side note RV, I have been thinking I need to pick up a few cheap loupes so I can have a closer look at my sharpening.
I find microscopic chips in the edge by slicing newspaper and tissue paper. If the paper tears on a spot on the blade twice, I know it's a dent or chip. If it glides neatly through the paper under its own weight, it's pretty close to a single polished edge.

Originally Posted by Ben Dono

On a side note RV, I have been thinking I need to pick up a few cheap loupes so I can have a closer look at my sharpening.

A great idea! I got a loupe a few months ago (as a freebie with another tool). My sharpening has improved very much and it saves time because you can see exactly where and what the problem is.

I have two sets of mundial knives and have not had this problem with any of the knives. They are older sets. Is this a problem with ones tht have been manufactured in the last 10 years or so?

Doug

Loupes.
In the analog days, photography shops sold them for detailed examination of negs and transparencies.
I have a really good one with multiple lens elements, came from a forestry/geologist supply store.
Chrome-plated metal which swings out of its own little case.

I got one crooked knife blade. Could not understand why I could not get one of the bevel edges to cut anything.
One look with the loupe to see that I had not quite run out the filed bevel to the edge! Clearly, I hadn't finished the basic shaping. I'd still be trying with 1500 grit without the 10X loupe. A little more chalk on a chainsaw file and I was done in 5 minutes.

BTW, examining wood carving tools: do try to keep from shoving the tool up your nose.

Hahaha! That one got me RV! I can now see how easily that could be done now! To be honest, I could see myself making that mistake. I'm glad you pointed that one out!

I have come dang, dang close to knicking the tip of my big old beak.
Thought it useful to point out the possibility.
A "carving sharp" edge could slit your nose for a cm before you know it.

In the past 2 weeks, I've managed to slit or stab myself several times.
Just nicks, mind you, but enough to make me do the "what if" sweats.
As wood carving tools, I would have them no other way.

BTW why the interest in Mundial knives? Not in my country.
Porsche, Henkle and others dominate the market.
No screaming Hello, but the Porsche knives I have are entirely adequate.
I've got crapola Tomas and no-name, sharpened, they are just fine.

Time to put the brakes on.
Need to ask the foodies here if they know the differences in the bevel angles for the different
types and uses of cleavers. I use three and it is necessary. Can they sharpen accordingly?