Chef's knife K4 HRC 60 blue-blasted

The blade shape of this chef's knife from the Windmühlenmesser-Manufactur K series is medium-pointed. This makes it suitable not only for the cradling cut of herbs, garlic and onions, but also for dividing vegetables, filleting and carving fish and meat. In short, the K4 is actually a universal knife with the blade of a chef's knife. We recommend it to all those who have so far refrained from buying such a knife out of respect for the tool - or who prefer smaller knives. Thanks to its handy size, the K4 is the ideal training knife (not only, but also for children with a passion for cooking, who should only use this knife under adult supervision). The blade is made of carbon steel and blue-blued in the Solingen style, the handle scales are made of steamed applewood and finely ground.

The Windmühlen knives from Robert Herder in Solingen are remarkable not only because of the knife steel (at least 0.75% carbon content and a hardness of at least 56 HRC for the carbon steels), but above all because of the craftsmanship, which spares none of the traditional grinding efforts: Windmühlen knives are ground extremely thin. This results in their astonishing cutting ability, which is an experience in use. The most elaborate type of sharpening is fuller grinding, a special type of thin grinding in which the blade is tapered towards the back of the knife.

In Solingen, the process of smoothing the grinding grooves remaining on the blade is known as flattening, i.e. fine grinding. The most complex stage of this technique is blue polishing. The steel is ground finer step by step. You can tell that a blade is blue-fluted because it reflects slightly blue in the light.

The elastic blades of the blue-blued knives from Herder are ground using the Solingen thin grind and fuller's edge. Thanks to the very high hardness of 60 Rockwell (HRC), they keep their sharpness significantly longer. However: Due to the high hardness - and precisely because they are ground so extremely thin - the blades should not be twisted or even tilted, as this can lead to chipping of the material when cutting.

Carbon steel knives do not belong in the dishwasher. Wipe the knives dry after rinsing and occasionally apply some blade oil. Discoloration may occur on the blade material. However, this is not a sign of inferior quality, but only indicates the rather high carbon content in the material. In case of flash rust, the use of the rust eraser is recommended. A resharpening can be done with the sharpening steel.