F. Dick

Why r/BuyItForLife recommends F. Dick

4 mentions from real owners

• #1Jul 3, 2025

  BIFL Quality Knives that Last

  Watch out: Sabatier is now a style of knife and there are dozens of companies using the name. Generally people say the ones marked "K Sabatier" are the authentic original quality. Tbh for the average home chef there are hundreds of knives from dozens of companies which will meet the BIFL requirements. Food is soft, metal is hard, cooking isn't that difficult. Gordon Ramsey has used Wusthoff knives his whole career so when you see redditors scoff at them you know it's another one of those topics which Reddit cares far more about than any mentally stable individual should. Japanese knives have some of the finest cutlery craftsmanship in the world. Don't get a Japanese knife. The handles and blades are generally less robust and need more care, and traditionally they are single ground (only one side of the edge is slanted) and softer carbon steel which means more care and more wear. You can get western handles and stainless steel from Japanese makers but then you're just dealing with a more complicated subset and might as well go western. A better approach is to pick a style of knife e.g., 20cm-ish European style chef knife in stainless steel, and then pick a brand selling a good one. In simple terms "good" means: * forged (although tbh some stamped knifes are great too) * Quality steel which holds and edge but isn't brittle (tbh leave this to the brand don't get worried about Rockwell ratings yourself) * long-lasting handle construction such as plastic, resin, or very very well-preserved and stabilised wood, with the metal of the blade continuing through the length of the handle * no bolster or only half bolster (bolster is a chunk of metal on the heel of the blade which you can put your fingers against. Over time it can make the blade harder to sharpen as material is removed and the bolster starts to stand "proud") Anyway for my money I would get an F. Dick 1905 chef knife 21.5cm. Classic European shape, beautiful handle which is also going to outlast your grandkids, great forged steel, old and well respected company.

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• #2Jun 3, 2025

  What’s one thing you bought once and it’s still going strong years later?

  Good cast iron, and carbon steel cookware. A good carbon steel wok can last a lifetime. A good kitchen knife...doesn't have to be fancy, a good 8 inch chef knife from F Dick, Dexter Russell, Mercer (about $10-20). Anything from Tom Bihn. The bags are very thoughtfully designed, and tougher than chrome/timbuk2 bags. A really good screwdriver. Grace screwdrivers and Bahco are my favorites...with Vessel from Japan being a new fave. Vitamix. Robocoupe...refuses to die. FWIW, a Breville food processor died on me after only 2 uses of intermittent use.

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• #3Jan 6, 2025

  Recommendations for glass food storage and knife set please

  Mercer, Dexter-Russell and F. Dick all make great usable stuff. Victorinox tends to be a good combination of quality, value, ergonomics and availability. Most cheaper kitchen knives try to look like something more expensive at the cost of actual performance. Commercial Cutlery is meant to work, and be comfortable to the user. All go, no flash.

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• #4Dec 2, 2015

  Kitchen knife for personal use

  > You will constantly have to do a swaying-motion to seperate the smallest things. Why is this a bad thing, if you don't mind explaining? There's a pro chef in the family (he shows up on the Food Network now and then) and we all use European-style knives. Sure, there's some rocking with cutting. I do it all the time. So please tell me what is wrong with that. As you might guess, I'm not part of the Japanese knife circlejerk. Sure, many are well made and work well. But it seems to me that Japanese knives are for collectors. People get off on the various shapes, steel used, the mystique of the manufacturer, and so on. That's all fetish stuff. That's not about knocking off two or three hours in the kitchen. You don't want some fussy, prissy knife where you're terrified of nicking the blade. I don't keep my knives in precious little presentation boxes and fawn over them. I *do* take care of my knives, but they are *tools.* Not that different from my bandsaw or milling machine. I take good care of those, too, but I don't preen over the milling machine and make sure it goes back into a decorative case after each use. If you enjoy that level of preciousness, well, I'm glad you enjoy it. There's really nothing wrong with it, but it is not necessary to cook well. The person eating your food will *never* know which knife you used and there isn't much advantage during prep, either. Which is why we use sturdy European knives. Wusthof, Henckels and F. Dick make fantastic knives that hold up for decades. They're not the cheapest, but comparatively, much cheaper than Japanese knives. $100 on a Wusthof would get you the functional equivalent of a $300 or $400 Japanese knife. Granted, the Wusthof will come in a cardboard and plastic case instead of a fancypants presentation case, but who cares? Well, if you're going to cook, that is. If you want to oooh and aaah over a knife with other collectors, then maybe you should pay three or four times as much for the pretty box.

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