Now my kids have grown up and certain other knife-wrecking relatives are no longer in my kitchen, I feel I can finally upgrade to some decent knives for general kitchening. I'm not a chef, but I do most of the cooking at home, and I appreciate a good, quality tool.

I was given a nice Ballerini santoku-style knife for xmas, and I'm enjoying slicing with an actual sharp and balanced blade.

Over the next wee while I'll obtain some more, variously sized knives - a paring knife, a utility knife, that kind of thing. I'm not a fanatic about making them all match so I'll probably find ones that just look/feel nice.

On top of that, there's the whole maintenance thing - Up until now a Wiltshire knife sharpener and a cheap steel have kept my cheapo knives sharp enough, but is that good enough for nicer knives? I don't know. There's a billion YT vids if I want to get lost down a very sharp rabbit hole for a few weeks. I saw a couple of recs in the Annoy thread, but I figure there's some keen slice & dicers in the GZ genpop.