Yeh I had a cheap Japanese one. One piece of steel. It always felt so balanced to use, the weight on one end made it feel like deliberate actions, with little bounceback. Again the smooth one piece of steel made it hygienic and quick to clean. Was less than 10 USD. Someone cadged it off me I always wanna ask for it back. 🤣

I do also see the Victorinox Fibrox boning at so many food service places, i will likely buy one of them at some point.

Never bought an expensive pan or knife yet. Nothing of mine matches though.

Victorinox Fibrox boning knife for the win. If you know you know. Cheap, excellent oversized handle. Multiple certifications. Great knife. It’s my go to kitchen knife. I Home cook everyday from raw and base resources.

Basically anything short of a stamped metal boning knife is “buy for life” if you actually know how to sharpen it. No, not the grinders but a whetstone. And then just hone it (optimally every time you use it… so like once every other month).

Different metals will dull/misalign faster but basically no home chef will really have to worry about that. It is only really an issue when you are dicing dozens of pounds of veg a day (so restaraunt and some recipe developers). And the big difference there is just that you are sharpening once or twice a week instead of two or three times a year.

The real benefit to a more expensive knife is almost always balance and ergonomics of the handle. And unless you know what you want, you are just going to waste a lot of money.

Saying “this knife is buy it for life” is like saying “this hammer is buy it for life”.

One other caveat. A lot of people will see a youtube chef cut through the joint of a chicken leg or carve out the spine or something similar. Unless you know what you are doing, that is where those cheap stamped metal boning knives come in handy. THAT is how you chip and break a blade because you weren’t actually cutting through the cartilage (?) connecting the joints and were instead hacking through the bones themselves.