My meat slicer blade shattered mid-shift on a busy Friday night in Austin

It was about 7pm, dinner rush hitting hard, and I was slicing prosciutto for a charcuterie board. The blade just let go with a loud ping noise and pieces flew everywhere. Nobody got hurt thank god but we had to shut down the whole cold prep station for an hour while we cleaned up every tiny shard. Turns out the blade had a hairline crack I never noticed during my visual checks. Has anyone else had a blade fail on them like that or am I just unlucky?

2 comments

2 Comments

jenny471mo ago

Glad nobody got hurt because that could've been really bad. I've seen a blade chip before but never a full shatter like that. You're probably doing your checks right but hairline cracks are sneaky and hard to spot without a proper test. Might be worth tapping the blade gently with a metal tool before each shift to listen for a dull thud instead of a clean ring. Dull sound means there's a crack somewhere in the metal.

the_elliot1mo agoMost Upvoted

honestly the tap test is solid advice, i've caught two bad blades that way in the last year alone.