Florence Fabricant’s article,  DINER’S JOURNAL; Food Stuff: Keep the Hacksaw In the Garage, from the Style Section of the New York Times, caught my eye, and fired up my imagination in regards to citrus and other fruit drinks in the heat.

Neatly slice that blushing peach or that ripe tomato bursting with juice. Cut thin rounds of firm, peppery salami. Gently quarter sea scallops. Whack wedges of lime for drinks. These and many more everyday kitchen jobs will not daunt the new French paring knives by Nogent, with handles in bathing-suit colors.

What makes these knives unusual is that the stainless steel blades have serrations so fine as to be almost microscopic. They do not give hacksaw treatment to delicate fruits; they can handle tougher jobs, and, for those whose sharpening steels and stones simply gather dust, they require no sharpening.

Stainless steel knives with nearly microscopic serrations and no need of sharpening? The implications are not trivial: firefighters and rescue workers cutting people from seat belts; remote medical facilities able to re-use surgical instruments after sterilization but without resharpening? Survival knives which can undergo protracted use in harsh environments?

According to Nogent’s Canadian website, the firm is French, has been in existence since 1823.