SC - French knife

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Seton1355 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> I helped set up a Hadassah rummage sale this evening.  I was lucky enough to
> get a bunch of leather & suede.  (Don't know what I will do with it yet)  And
>  (and here's the food content)  a French 12" chef's knife.  full tang.  The
> knife is about 40-50 yrs old.  It is still sharp!!  But, the sides of the
> knife are sort of yucky.  Not rusty just yucky-spotty looking.  How do I
> clean up the knife?

Fine steel wool should do it. Obviously you need to be careful where
you'r near the blade's edge. I have a stainless-steel sink in the
kitchen, and what I normally do is plonk the blades of my carbon-steel
knives flat against the side of the sink, and scrub lightly with steel
wool. Then flip it over and repeat. The object is to get it smooth, not
necessarily mirror-finish silver-color we normally associate with
stainless steel, which, of course, it is not.

As for its age, one pretty good indicator is how its handle is made.
Today a quality knife is recognized by having the hilt made like a
sandwich, with a flat tang between two similarly-shaped pieces of wood,
all rivetted together with as many rivets as possible, normally three in
a good knife. Older chef's knives, however, are likely to have a tubular
handle like a sword, plugged into a sort of chape or collar at the wide
end of the blade, with a thin tang running through the tunnel in the
handle, peened over at the "pommel" end. I have actually seen
photographs of Escoffier at work with such knives.

I actually have two of these, one acquired at another rummage sale (by
my aunt, who paid a quarter!) and the other, well, accidentally
absconded with. I accidentally left a knife of mine behind (yes, a 10"
Dick) and packed away with my own tools, on a catering job, an old
peen-tanged carbon-steel chef's knife that apeared to have been
seriously dulled in opening cardboard boxes. 

It shouldn't happen to a dog! 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com