How easy is it to cut oneself with a serrated cutlery knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “a serrated knife should be used to cut“
How easy is it to cut oneself with a serrated cutlery knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “a serrated knife should be used to cut“
That’s a hard question to answer because it depends a lot on the knife. I think I can sort of answer with a few related thoughts though:
A serrated knife is jagged, therefore, it will require more pressure when dragged over a mostly-smooth surface to cut that surface.
A serrated knife will likely require less pressure to cut something when being pressed straight down than a non-serrated knife of similar quality.
Both of those previous statements are general, because it depends where the blade is sharpest along the pattern of the serrated edge.
Being cut with a serrated knife will almost always hurt more and be harder to stitch than a cut with a non-serrated knife. The cut will usually be more jagged, with more tissue damage and a greater risk of bone damage than a non-serrated knife (especially when it comes to fingers and other bones without extensive musculature to protect them.
All of these statements come from a combination of things my mother has said (she’s a nurse practitioner of many years so she’s stitched up a lot of people), and assumptions I’ve made from cutting a lot of meat while cooking. I’ve never cut another person – in fact, I’ve never even cut myself severely enough to require stitches. But if freshman biology in college taught me anything, it’s that pigs are supposedly pretty similar to humans.
As for how easy it is to accidentally cut yourself, it really, really depends on the knife and what you’re using it for. Serrated knives are not ideal for carrots, for example – you should chop those with a chef’s knife. Some serrated knives are more for bread, some are for meat, some are for soft vegetables, but the key to not accidentally cutting yourself is to own at least 4 knives: One for meat, one for bread, one for hard vegetables, and one for soft vegetables.
Always use the right knife for the right job!!! And if that doesn’t come intuitively to you, get a cheap color-coded set of knives at the store! You don’t need a pay a lot for decent knives, and you don’t need one of those huge sets – just enough to use the right knife for the right job. Knife enthusiasts may debate serrated vs. non serrated vs. recessed edge, and plastic grip vs. metal grip vs. wood grip, but you don’t need to do that. The average person is best served by just consulting the description on the knife package to determine which kinds of cutting your knife can safely do.
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My wife was using a Wusthof serrated bread knife to cut a bunch of rose stems. This was the wrong tool as it skipped off and down the bunch and through her knuckle. Luckily we were with a wilderness fire fighter who patched it up. Unluckily we were with a wilderness fire fighter who patched it up when she should have gotten more significant aid. It healed but she had to carefully stretch it during her commute for months to get all her range of motion back.
It was more a function of the medium she was cutting and the fact she cut away from herself (good) but toward her hand (extra bad but better than stabbing herself by accident). I don’t think it was an inherent quality of the serrations.
Serrations do three things great. They maintain sharpness in a situation where a plain edge would dull (against ceramic plates all day at food service). They gather material between the peaks and cut it with the curving sections of the valleys harvesting mechanical advantage. They are generally sharpened on one side only so if the individual edge bevels are equal to a plain edge knife, then the serrated would be half the thickness 10 degrees on one side, 0 on the other rather than 20). These all combine to make a very aggressive cutting edge. If very sharp they can hew material too rather than simply cut if you know what I mean.
So yes, they will easily cut you if they are not dull and they are harder to effectively dull than your plain edge knives. The real danger lies less in the blade than the material you are cutting and how you cut. NEVER put a body part in the direction you are cutting.
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No!
Do no cut yourself!
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And serrated knives leave nasty jagged cuts that heal slowly, are painful, and leave ugly looking scars.
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The cheapo steak knives we have are most excellent at cutting fingers, even a four year old could do it. They are a sort of wavy edge rather than jagged serrations.
Oops. Add “Careful, it’s sharp” to “Careful, it’s hot” to the only things she believes her daddy gets right.
An overdone steak is pretty tough, and these guys go through it quite easily.
The other set which are more “pointy” serrations make a pin prick but are harder to actually cut yourself (and steak) with.
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Those things won’t make a straight clean cut.
A sharp steak knife might, but it doesn’t sound like you are referring to this. A serrated steak knife will probably cause some puncture wounds, and then tear your skin. It wouldn’t look like a slice, but more like a horrible gash.
If your standard is breaking skin, then yes, you will probably break skin. You might cause wounds that need stitches.
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