Inception moment: I was using my insanely sharp knife last night to make strop sticks, and by the end of the process the last inch of the blade would no longer shave hair, so I hit it back on the strop stick today after the glue had set and yep, right back to ridiculous.
There’s a reason there was a stop on every barber’s station for a long time, for sure. It’s just sad they kind of fell out of use. I had a strop not long ago but it fell in some grease in the kitchen and wasn’t fit for use anymore. I need a new one now.
By the way, you can get a strop belt for the worksharp!
The only trick is having a source for leather scraps, a source for wood scraps, and some rubber cement to marry the two. Between the Amish and my woodworking and leatherworking a strop costs me essentially nothing other than another ten cents in honing compound, which comes in five-lifetime bricks for ten dollars. I showed/did my buddy’s chisels today and even with barely any diligence on the setup, I only went 400-600, I was still able to jump to the strop and see a remarkable improvement in the edge.
Not sure if this fits here or kitchen gadgetry, but I really want a set of really sharp, high quality kitchen knives that don’t cost the same as a slightly used SUV. I picked up a set of Materiel brand on a super sale, love the look and the magnetic block, but they already are kind of disappointing.
I assume starting out you only need a big carving knife, a smaller paring type knife, a serrated knife, and maybe one more to start? Recommendations?
I only use 2 knives when I cook. The skinny one and a bigger chef’s knife (more useful for chopping hard vegetables) Cleaver is useful if you process whole chickens.
Victorinox Fibrox chef’s knife is the gold standard for affordable quality. I like the 10", most prefer the 8". Other than that I’ve used and abused a KitchenAid paring knife that’s held up well. That’s really all you need.
My best knife is a Wusthof. Yeah, I know. But I’ve had it for decades and it rarely needs actual sharpening. Just a hit with the steel. It was $80 and well worth it. YMMV
Maybe my impression is colored by years of exposure to ruined co-op kitchen knives and Goodwill knives, but I was impressed with how well my partner’s IKEA knife held up. It’s got nothing on my fancy Takayuki knives from my brother-in-law in Japan, but it does a decent enough job for the dirt cheap price, and it’s easy to sharpen.
I have a Wusthof chef’s, paring and sankotu. They hold their edge well, and I like the balance.
This what we use! And we use this knife sharpener (recommended by some chef on YouTube I think it was Sam the Cooking Guy. Not too worried since the Victorinox knives are reasonably priced if we make a boo-boo.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07KF8MKKJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
i was curious so i went to look for the reviews. I know some of the pullthroughs are not good. They have these neat machines that measure the edge. Lower = sharper
The pull through ones seem to score at the 300-500 level so they can be okay.
The more sophisticated methods get you ~200
The one you posted is most similar to this one, a pull through manual with 3 different gauges. Seems like it will work.
source: project farm vid 1
vid 2
I have the 8". It has been and still is my goto for prep. However I have other Victorinox knives that I use very frequently, and I’m partial to this one in particular which isn’t -quite- a paring knife and in my eyes lends itself to a full utility use knife. I believe they call that the 5" utility or mini chef.
Other knives I also use, but those two get the MOST use.
I’ve sharpened all sorts of knives for friends. Honestly, get a set of knives that handle well for YOU and meet your budget. Then get the -easiest- method of sharpener that again meets those criteria and simply keep your knives good to go more frequently than never and less frequently than annoying. :)
More seriously though, if you want to go down that line, very early on you’ll need to know what style of knives you like in the kitchen, roughly Western/European vs Asian. There are entire books about the differences but note that each style takes a bit different care techniques. IMHO, if you just want something that doesn’t need more TLC, go with a Western/European style knife and stick to traditional brands where you can find decent reviews. Going outside of that or going with custom knives requires a lot more homework just to have something to use in the kitchen.
One of my least favorite things are people that hear from someone I sharpened knives and ask if I can, “fix my Shun knives, they are all chipped!!” It isn’t that Shun makes bad knives, they make very sharp knives with long edge retention and the flip side of that coin is … treat them poorly and they will chip.
My quick list would be these goto brands.
Western/Euro:
Wusthof
Victorinox
Zwilling
Asian:
Shun
Miyabi
Global
Note that my picks for Japanese brands are mostly the westernized types and that’s for a reason. They require less precise care than some of the very amazingly sharp but near specialty care level knives of different brands.
I didn’t recall who also had the Worksharp, but now I do! I’m sure you read my post about strops, I wanted to lay one more anecdote on you. When I was shaping up my friend’s chisels I only went to 800 grit, which I imagine you’re familiar with as far as scratch pattern. That white compound no kidding mirror finished the chisel bevel in about twenty strokes. It cuts remarkably, and there’s no problem jumping to the 16000 compound straight after.
Since you do it for money I would advise against providing strops, but you should be using one!
This is a great point. Whetstones are undeniably better than pull-thru sharpeners… when used. I’d bet the average lifespan sharpness of knives that frequent the pull-thru is somewhat better than those that only see the whetstone or professional grinder.
I’m making our knives a permanent sharpening station in our new kitchen, but they’ve already lived some of their life below optimal because it was tedious to get the whetstones off the top shelf.
Also, this thread has convinced me to get a strop. What should I know about strops?
Though I’ve been tipped, I don’t sharpen for money honestly. I don’t really want to go down that avenue because doing it as a favor means I can just say, “I’m busy, sorry!” without feeling too much guilt. The worksharp with belts means I can run 3-4 belts through 20 knives in no time so it isn’t like I’m blowing all my free time if I help someone. My best/worst feedback so far has been, “dude I’ve cut myself twice this week on my knives.” So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.
I have a strop belt for my worksharp but have not used it. It came with a compound but I don’t know how light or heavy it is. After your mention of stropping I want to break it out though.
Not a thing in the world, other than a piece of wood, scrap leather, and rubber cement. These are the wax compounds. (Same company in white as well)
I noticed that the Q&A section on Amazon and the comments are all over the place, trust me that this is not anything in the sub-1000 grit world. The white is aggressive and I would clock it at 1000 to 3000 or so, the green is super fine, around 16000. I’m not the end all be all, but I have some very finely made Japanese water stones up to 6000 and they produce a more pronounced grit surface than even the white.
I have a box of utility razor blades for my various projects and tools and while they are very sharp, they aren’t as sharp as what the green produces on good steel. A common fault is that thinness can suggest sharpness, which is why a barber’s straight razor can seem and be very sharp, because it does only one thing re: cut hair so can be ground at 10 degrees or whatever. For a working knife, 15-20 is really as thin as you want to go, and these methods deliver.
My baseline for “is it really sharp?” is whether I can try to pass it over my hair on the back of my head, and “sharp” means that it grabs but skips. Pretty sharp means that it grabs and cuts a few. From the WorkSharp system, I expect it to stop moving at all, i.e. when it touches hair either you push it and you shave off the back of your head or you stop. Then, beyond that, there’s the push factor where the knife needs no lateral movement, this is tangled up between the previous grades, but my favorite is cutting a paper towel. There’s just about nothing harder to push cut than that, it’s so soft and so many cross fibers that are quite tough at this level, you’ll get snags and tears. You get a knife that passes through a paper towel like it was a sheet of printer paper, that’s friggin’ sharp. The green gets you there. I haven’t made it to an edge that can be cut from the side on a paper towel like regular paper, maybe one day, I’m talking about stabbing the knife through and then cutting.
After a lot of reading and an interesting article in Bon Appetite making an argument against things like electric knife sharpeners, I’ve decided to start with maybe 4 good knives (doing my homework,) a sharpening stone, and a honing rod. The only thing I’ve picked so far has been the rod:
Recommendations for the stone?
I haven’t had good luck with the affordable combo stones like this:
I’ve found them to be either much coarser or finer than the grit suggests, at least to me. My premium ones perform as expected, but they’re north of 60 dollars per.
I would also strongly suggest not getting that ceramic stick. Ceramic will take material, and as such is both a sharpening and honing tool. It’s also very overpriced. Get this instead:
Eight bucks, same thing, except five times more material. Ceramic is all repurposed industrial electric components so it’s been commoditized for a long time. The stuff that is branded for culinary use is taking advantage of a market, like when people sell mineral oil for cutting boards for $15 a bottle when you can get the same product and amount for $2.50 in the laxative aisle.
Thanks for the info. I though the whole point of the honing rods is that they do NOT remove material from the blades, just smooth out the burrs? And I’m confused, did you say don’t get the ceramic honing rod but then recommend a ceramic honing rod?