I recently got back from a two month visit to the states. When I got back I ask my lovely if she knew where my chef knife was~the one I had had for about ten years. It took about three days for her to fess up that she had accidently destroyed it while trying to crack open a coconut with it! Oops. It took another two days for her to finally show me the remains. I spent six months keeping it out of reach telling them it wasn't like the dollar store knives here. This was a beautifully forged knife made in Korea using Japanese metal and an excellent curve. I used to regularly cut 200- 400 pounds of produce a day with it during my chef days. She must have put a chip in the edge at some point, then took it to be "sharpened" using a bench grinder. This immediately took off the brittle hardened steel core, leaving it no sharper than a butter knife. I would have taken the thing with me, but I got a cheap ticket and couldn't check the thing. It's a hard loss.