my father's knives

While I was visiting my parents this year, we went to their summer cottage. There we had some fun making tea with samovar, taking sunbathes and so on. I've found few interesting things there, first on which was a giant axe that is used for wood chopping.



While it might not look impressive on photo, since I forgot to add anything for scale, this wood killer weight about 6kg. If there would be Third World War, this thing could be used to chop tanks armor.
Because of it's weight my father doesn't use it, so it mostly sitting there and collecting dust. I used it for chopping few logs, but my back quickly informed me, that it wouldn't stand such abuse for long.

So I went into summer house and searched for knives. Here's what I found:



On top is some unknown chef knife that my father uses for chopping branches. Next is some handmade hunters knife that is produced by prisoners and has some maker mark on it. And the last one is a knife that my father gave me when I was about 14 years old or so (I was really surprised to see it in a good condition after so many years).

When I asked father where did he get that huge chefs knife, he replied that it's not the biggest one he got. In a few minutes he returned with another monster:



That big ugly knife with black plastic handle is mass produced stainless chefs knife "Trud Vacha". It's a older model made from some soft metal. Both chef knives are being used solely as a branches cutters and has a pretty good edges for their tasks. They wouldn't push cut paper, but appears to be sharp enough and edges on both knives were free from scuffs or bents. I was surprised. My father uses small and super aggressive carbide sharpener that seems to work just fine on that steel.

The small knife on top with broken tip and stag handle is now repaired and being used for vegetables peeling in my parents kitchen.

There were a lot of different cheap stainless knives as well, but I didn't bother to take photos of them. On most kitchen knives my father just uses back of coffee cup or an old steel (whichever is closer) and results are pretty good. It takes him 20 seconds to bring dull stainless knife back into cutting form. Not for long, of course… but just 20 seconds.

During our vacations we also visited many friends and relatives, and on every kitchen I could see mostly cheap stainless knives which were sharpened by steeling. And it works just fine for them. With my addiction for high end cutlery I almost forgot what the things looks like in most Russian kitchens.

 

That's a very interesting post Anton! I always love seeing and reading about how other cultures go about daily tasks like this. It being knife related is just icing lol.

 

…and there was another monster knife that I forgot to show!

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A serious folder!

 

Nice pics/ stories. Kitchen knives are much more all-purpose over there. My brother-in-law cut his hand last year using one of their kitchen knives to try and loosen screws in the engine compartment of his car. And a chef's knife we gave my mother-in-law was destroyed a couple months later when my father-in-law used it to hack up a frozen roast. So we know now not to send them any more good kitchen knives

 

Thank you for sharing. Interesting read.

Very curious little folder