A frenzy of farkles.....

The last couple of days have been pretty good in terms of farkles, albeit quite diverse in function.  The first item arrived in the post yesterday....

A fellow Street Triple owner in Perth, Australia (cheers Allan!) alerted me to some very nice swing arm crash bobbins on EBay.  I don't plan on crashing anytime soon (fingers and everything else crossed) but their design has another nice feature.  As the Triple only has a side stand, lubricating the chain and doing laser wheel alignment requires the use of a paddock stand.  With the previous home made locators for the stand arms, there was always a risk of scratching the paint. The new crash bobbins double as locators for my paddock stand and the shape of them keeps the arms clear of the swing arm too.  Relatively unobtrusive as well.  A great result all round!

The new swing arm bobbins/paddock stand locator

The next farkles arrived by courier today......

With the exception of the Damascus Steel carving knife we commissioned  a few years back (story and photos HERE ), our kitchen knives purchased over the past 4 decades have been cheap and utter crap (a technical term) and simply won't hold an edge.  In fact, a carpentry saw might give a better result. I suppose I'm the last of the moto-bloggers to cotton on to the value of really good kitchen knives!!!

Finally losing patience, we recently investigated what might be described as high end kitchen knives.  The first reaction was "Bloody heck" (another technical term), mainly as a result of the eye-watering price.  I reckon that NZ kitchen accessory shops could teach the Mafia a lesson or two in terms of extortion.  Fortunately, the Internet is a wondrous thing and we found a supplier in the US who specialises in internet sales to keep overheads to a minimum.  Not only would they ship to NZ at a saner price but he gave some excellent impartial advice to help us navigate through the bewildering minefield of specifications.  Their advice was that you didn't need many knives at all, but quality was everything.  We ended up with these 4 knives:

Tojiro ITK 270mm blade bread knife (also great for melons and the like)

It has a thin, hard core to keep a lethal edge, sheathed with a surgical grade stainless steel and like all the knives we bought, the general "feel" and balance is light years ahead of our other knives.

These are the rest:

Wusthof Ikon 4 1/2" utility knife, Wusthof Classic 6" serrated utility knife, Tojiro 15cm utility knife

Haven't had time to use them properly yet but have seen an impressive demo of the bread knife on YouTube and at lunchtime, I cut a soft tomato with the serrated utility knife - it's like it's cutting through air!!!  Incidentally, the Wusthof Ikon 4 1/2" utility knife was the most expensive of the lot at just under US$100 - go figure that one! At least Jennie can't grizzle about the outrageous price of bike accessories any more!

As a final comment, I'm inclined to think that internet shopping has made suppliers world-wide really lift their game in terms of quality of service.  Whether it be motorcycle parts or anything else, I'm  struggling to think of an example of having been on the receiving end of poor service in the last couple of years. If only the same could be said of our local councils and some notorious banks where poor service is the norm, rather than the exception!

Addendum:
A nice sharpening jig arrived today.  You can set the sharpening angle and it comes with 4 stones between 400 and 1800 grit.  Tried it on one of our crappy old knives and it works perfectly.  I'm useless with a steel and this delivers a professional finish even when operated by a complete idiot like me!

 Idiot-proof sharpening jig