Hi guys…
Well I think I might have gotten the deal of a lifetime…
A friend of mine is set up to weld stainless steel and made me an 1/8”, round frame, horizontal cut curd knife.
I was talking to him a couple of weeks ago about wanting to buy a set and he said he would be more than happy to make them for me, other than stringing the wire.
He does run a commercial manufacturing business (that employees about 20 people) so he has to keep his expenses down. Since stringing the knife would be so time consuming he didn’t want to do this part of the process.
What he did instead was to “notch” the edges of the round bar so that I could then wrap and twist the wires to the frame which not only worked out pretty well, (the notches aren’t exactly perfectly symetrical), but will also make for an easy replacement if and when one of the wires break.
Now here’s the good part…
He made me the horizontal cut frame which I just finished wrapping with wire.
He is also planning on working in a vertical cut knife, the next time he sets his wire feed up for stainless.
I did use Wayne’s (a member on another cheesemaking board) idea of stainless steel trolling line that I purchased from Cabela’s. This worked out really well, even though it poked me in the end of the finger several times which really hurt like a b***h.
But wait…..
That’s not the good part. I’m not a sadist afterall.
The good part is that ALL of this work is being done for the low low price of one, two pound wheel of Gouda!
I nearly fell out of my chair when he told me this.
I asked him if he would be willing to do some stainless welding for me and his response was “are you willing to give me a sample of the cheese you make?”. Well of course my response was, “you bet”.
He initially asked for a 100 lb. wheel of Gouda but said he would settle for whatever I had ready to go. Since a 2 lb. wheel of Gouda was all that I had ready he said that would work.
It will probably be a couple of weeks before I get the vertical knife, but here’s a shot of the horizontal.
It just came out of it’s first run through the dishwasher.
As I said, the notches (which space the wires) aren’t exactly perfect but it’s MUCH better than what I’ve been using for the horizontal cuts.
I can’t wait to give it a try this weekend.
By the way…
The spacing of the wires is 1/2”. If I need a smaller cut I can simply get a little more agressive with the knife.
I did worry a little about the possibility of the twisted wires being a place for bacteria to hide but I think this problem can be easily solved.
First of all, I plan to put this in the dishwasher after every use and secondly I plan to soak it in Star-San solution before each use.
I think this will effectively take care of the potential problem.
Dave

One more thing…
The REALLY wide spacing on one end will always be above the level of the curd.
The knife is 6” wide x 13” tall and my cheese pot is only 11-3/4” deep.
The open place gives me a handle, of sorts, with which to spin the knife through the curd.

Dave

Looks great, def need to invest in one, just like always its the price thats the problem.

oh my god , horizental cut will ease ur life, and cut down cutting time ten times

this is what i always dreamed to have

I’m with you on the price thing, Neil.
If I hadn’t lucked out, it would have been a long time before I could have bought a professional set.
I will say that after stringing these wires, the curd knife manufactueres do earn their money. Especially since they solder/weld the wires to the frame, which has to make it an even more tedious operation.
Nabil…
I’m really hoping this does help with the process.
Not only should it speed things up, it shoud also give a better final product due to the consistancy of the curd cut.
It only makes since that if I have some pieces that are 1/4” and some that are 1/2” then they are not going to cook evenly or expel whey evenly.
Hopefully the knives will pretty much solve this problem.
Thanks for the replies, guys.

Dave

I had a mental picture of a knife setup just like what you have received.  But in my mind the knife was the exact size of the diameter of my pot.  Another thought on the sanitizing.  Boil it.  Then even the trapped particles won’t be a problem.  You always have to wonder if your sanitizing solution soaks all the way through those particles.

Good advice as always Rich. Thanks for the tip.

Dave

What will you do if you need to cut for a different size curd? Taking the time to set up a different size knife will surely be a labour of love.

Newbie..
That’s the reason that I set this knife up for a 1/2” curd.
If I need to cut at 3/8” or 1/4” I will simply use my whisk to reduce the curd as I have in the past.
This knife will be used for the initial cut…simply to form the curd into cubes and then I will further cut with a whisk to reduce.
I’ve found that once I start using my whisk the curd size stays really uniform throughout.
Regardless, I might go ahead and make one set of knives for 1/4” and one for 3/8” since there’s no doubt it will produce a better final product.
I just hate to dump too much of this time consuming work on my friend at once, since he is doing me a favor in welding them up.
Also, I could just use this same knife to cut a little more aggressively. I’ll just have to see how it works and try to find the proper procedure for using it.
If nothing else, it will be fun playing with my new toy.

Dave

Rich…
I see your point on making a knife that is the same diameter as your chesse pot but the reason i chose the size I did is:

1. the round stock that I could find locally could only be found in 12” lengths (it measured right at 13” after I made the elbows out of stainless tubing).
2. 6” is close to the radius of my cheese post.

The way I plan on using it is to put one edge in the center of the pot which should place the outer edge of the knife at the outer edge of the pot.
I then plan on spinning the knife around the circumference of the pot which should cut every column of curd.
This is all theory at this point but I will post a review on how it has worked out tomorrow afternoon.
I plan on making a traditional cheddar to christen the knife and also my newest addition…a PH meter.
Wish me luck since a traditional cheddar is a new one to me.

Dave

Good luck Dave !! One thing I learn is I love using the PH meter, I find it much better to know whats going on and how its reacting and knowing when to expect the curds to form

i will have my horizontal knife within three days made out of food grade stainless steel ... yahoooooooooooo

Nabil, congrats!
I’m pretty sure you are going to love it.
I used mine for the first time yesterday and it performed beautifully.
The only problem that I saw was that it did sort of “mash” a thin section of the curds when removing it from the pot.
Other than that, it was great and the beauty part is the speed of the cut. I’ve been doing some reading and it seems getting the curds cut in under 5 minutes is something that is very important.
Tomorrow I’m taking my vertical knife material to my welder so he can get it ready to string.
Hopefully within a week or two he’ll find time to get it welded up for me.

Dave

u r right, i am so concern about mashing up a part of the curds while inserting the knife and removing it , i think when u use it in a huge containers like in factories they don’t care , but for our case , i am really worry about it

mashing caused by the frame which is about half inch wide

Nabil..
That is one reason that I went with the 1/8” round stock for the frame.
Most of the knives that I’ve seen have been made out of 1/2” stainless flat bar that is 1/8” thick.
In my thinking the 1/8” thick is fine but the 1/2” will cause some problems on the lower “rail”.
One thing that I have considered is puttting the kinfe into the curd, before adding the rennet.
That way you will only harm the curd while removing the knife.
The only problem with this theory is that it will make it very difficult to make the vertical cuts with the knife in the vat.
Another thing to consider is adding a handle to the knife that is angled at 45 degrees.
This will allow you to introduce (and remove the knife) at a sharp angle, causing a minimum of damage to the curd.
This is not my idea but instead comes from Cartierusm, a member on this forum.
I will say that the damage I saw while removing the knife was minimal.
Basically I had an 1/8” wide x 6” long section of the curd that was sort of turned to mush.
The rest of the curd looked better than it ever has before and my curd pieces turned out to be very symetrical.
Hope this information helps.

Dave

Nabil, one more thing….
Plan on doing a LOT of cleaning on your knife once it comes back from the welding shop.
The above photo was before any cleaning had been done and there was a LOT of it to do.
The welding process really blackens the stainless and this has to be scrubbed off with a brass bristle brush.
Even after this, I still had residue that would come off when wiping with a white cloth.
I finally began a regimen of soaking the knife in a solution of Star-San…..washing with dawn brand dish detergent….rinsing and then repeating the process all over again.
It took probably 10 circuits of this process before I did not get any residue on my white cloth so it wasn’t an easy thing getting it ready to go into the cheese.
On my vertical knife I will perform this cleaning BEFORE stringing it with the wire. This should make everything go much easier.
Again, I hope this information helps you out.

Dave