On Kitchen Knives

Having worked in a number of commercial kitchens, I have had the luxury to try about a million different kitchen knives, and I have a wide variety in my home kitchen. I am not fetishistic WRT knives, all of the knives I own cost well under a hundred dollars and most were bought on a whim. Not counting bread, paring, carving and the rest..just "Chef's Knifes", I have, A Chinese Cleaver, A Japanese Nakiri Veggie Knife, A Sabatier 8" Carbon Steel French Chef's Knife, a 12" Brazilian Stainless Chef's Knife, a 10" Henkel's Stainless Chef's Knife and an Italian Kitchen Knife that is like nothing I have seen elsewhere (it looks like a cleaver with a chef's knife's rocker). Non of these are what you could call high a end knife, but the two I reach for most often are; The Sabatier Carbon Steel, The Nakiri and the cheap Brazilian 12" Chef's Knife. Now mind you, I am NOT an expert in knife sharpening, I have a good (very good) electric sharpener and a steel. So, despite the fact that the Nakiri is only supposed to have a single bevel, it gets sharpened the same as all the others. The Sabatier is the easiest to sharpen and gets absolutely razor sharp with minimal effort, the blade is somewhat soft though and it looses it's edge quickly (Though I must say, a quick steel brings it right back). The Japanese Nakiri gets equally sharp, and is like voodoo on veggies, and while the edge lasts longer than the Sabatier, it is significantly more finicky. The Japanese knife must be sharpened just so, get it right and it's perfect, miss it and it sucks. The Brazilian stainless chef's knife is somewhere in the middle. It is never as sharp as the other two, but it's not bad and it's easier to get an edge on than the German knife. I think it may be my favorite knife. A 12" Chef's knife is big, but it really is very manageable if you have a decent sized cutting board and you choke up on it as you should.