I probably ought to keep my mouth shut, since I've kept things very reasonable for the past year and a half or so. My extravagances have been small and not barbecue specific.
I bought a few Nogent style knives from The Best of Things. For those of you who care about knives I can very highly recommend both the Nogent and the Sabatier (Thiers-Issard) carbon steel knives sold there.
http://www.thebestthings.com/knives/sabatier.htm If you're interested in putting together a set of European carbon knives, you should also look at Sabatier K knives.
http://www.sabatier-k.com/uk/index.php? ... Ywod9zKl6Q You can (sort of) see examplars of each in my avatar. All of these are very good performers. The Nogents especially are light, agile, and take and hold a great edge. Great performers at a reasonable price for the level of quality -- and all of them historically significant. Face it, despite its performance advantages, carbon steel is gone from all but the specialty markets.
FWIW, the best knives made of the best steel are Japanese not European, No. Not even German. Not to say there aren't wonderful German and Swiss knives at all price ranges. Japanese knives in the western style (wa-deba) are usually made in French (as opposed to German) shapes, and are made of proprietary rather than "world" steels. These shapes are lighter, more agile, and have a straighter edge which work better with a slight push cut as opposed to the rock-chop a German rounded belly favors. The steels used by Japanese manufacturers for their good lines are much, much, much harder than world steels, and have been modified to prevent chipping. In a way, this segues back to the Nogents. The Nogent blanks were made in the twenties and thirties long before anyone ever thought of world steel. Consequently, HRC is mid to high fifties.
My personal knives are Sabatiers rather than Japanese for a few reasons. I started with Sabs as my first good knives back in the late sixties. I switched to Henckels in the mid seventies because I wanted stainless and a heavier knife. But in the eighties, when I sharpened up one of my old Sabs as a goof -- I never went back. This is all before you could get Japanese western-style knives. And there's the money. Top line Japanese knives are incredibly expensive. I can't imagine a lighter, more agile knife than the Nogents, nor a more useful knife than the "K" or Thiers-IIssard chef and slicing carbons.
A knife is no better than its edge, and even the best factory edge (with which my knives were not supplied!) eventually dulls. And that takes me to my next set of purchases: sharpening stones. I'm an experienced free-hand sharpener, but had been uisng a Chef's Choice 100 for the past four years, as my old stones had been lost in a move and because I was living in apartments and wasn't using tools the Chef's Choice was all I needed. Well we moved to a house a couple of years ago and the Chef's Choice finally got clogged this winter. Besides, at its best it was only adequate, never great.
So I had the opportunity you don't often get with stones -- and that was to put together exactly the set I wanted from scratch. I decided on four surfaces: Coarse and fine India; soft and surgical black Arkansas. If you know stones, you know Indias are proprietary and made by Norton. You also know that the gold standard is the compound 8" IB-8. It's a stone with which most free-handers (including me) have a lot of familiarity. And that's what I got, along with one of Norton's new, spiffy case/stands.
http://www.cutleryandmore.com/shop/sear ... rds=norton
I knew I wanted a soft Arkansas to put the real edge on my knives; and either a hard, black or translucent Arkansas for polishing, because these would be a better compliment to the India stones than what I'd had before; a hand me down White Washita and hard Arkansas (brand unknown), and although they'd been refaced both had bad spots you had to work around. Washita is a little faster and takes a little less steel than a fine India, but basically it's a very similar stone. Besides, it's become almost impossible to find good Washita.
I did a lot of research on the Arkansas stones before I decided on Halls Pro-Edge soft and surgical black.
http://www.hallsproedge.com/bench.htm Honestly, I went with Hall's because of their prices and they came recommended by someone I respect. Still, I was worried that they might have been "too good to be true." The choice of the surgical black was based on a recommendation by Richard Hall the owner of Pro-Edge. If you want really sharp kitchen knives, you want stones. If you use sharpening stones for your kitchen knives, you want both of these. My knives have sharper and more usefully beveled edges than any non-Japanese kitchen knives I've ever seen.
