Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/13/great-deal-on-a-good-kitchen-knife-sharpener.html
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Stupid and bad product is stupid and bad. Don’t do this, @frauenfelder
If you hone your knives regularly you won’t have to sharpen very often. If you use one of these “every week” you’ll remove a hell of a lot of material very quickly and drastically shorten the lifetime of your blades. Also, the fake hammer marks are even worse than fake pattern welding. They detract from the knife’s effectiveness as a cutting tool and make it more difficult to clean.
Get better knives. Learn how to care for your knives, and don’t abuse them like this.
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Best sharpener for chisels, knives, carving tools. Yeah, it’s pricey but my dad always had the mantra that we were too poor to buy cheap stuff.
If you get all three grits, you can turn a dull edged POS knife into a chef-worthy tool in less than 15 min.
Depending on the underlying quality of the steel, it may even last a while.
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As others have noted above, the best way is for tool using humans to learn the skill to properly sharpen their knives with a sharpening stone (japanese water stone, oil stone, diamond stone, I don’t care…).
But, I also realize that a lot of people aren’t going to learn that skill, or do it well. And though every fiber of my being would be sad if you dragged a knife that I made through one of these beasts, at least it has people using relatively sharp knives. Dull knives are dangerous knives.
A comparison would be an adult who only reads “romance” novels or similar “not literature”… Yeah, maybe not the greatest wordsmithing out there, but they’re reading eh? Which is a lot better than a lot of people.
So yeah, this is the knife version of a “book” with Fabio on the cover, but at least there’s an effort being made.
(though I’m snobbishly going to say that if you use this sharpener, don’t waste money on good knives. There are cheap and serviceable knives that you can abuse that will do just fine…)
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I’ll just wait until this shows up on BoingBoing Shop for 97% off…
(I’m also going to pretend that could happen…'cause that would be really nice…)
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I’m going to pretend I have $700 for a proper sharpener. 
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For around $160.00 US, Chef’s Choice has about the best reputation among powered sharpeners.
Good argument here for using a powered sharpener, for those unwilling to take the time to learn to use a stone.
As Bobo says
It’s definitely better than not sharpening. Since I’m at home and have already put in the effort to learning how to sharpen using stones and the money into buying a decent set of them and a flattener I’ll probably stick with them for everyday use. The expensive Tormek is aspirational. I make knives as a hobby and would love to be able to dial in an initial edge and have it come out perfectly consistently at the angle I want (different angles for different uses). A frog can dream, no?
I looked at the tormek as well because of the ability to not use the diamond wheel, but to get waterstones for it, and was like “It’s how much?”… I’ll just stick to roughing in things with the 2x72" belt grinder and finishing on the stones…".
Also, pic of my most recent one:
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That’s a damned fine knife
Have a 2x42 grinder at the moment. Getting my welding skills up to scratch before I build the 2x72. The new forge just arrived yesterday. I really, really miss the local outdoors school which had bladesmithing and blacksmithing classes plus open forge nights every week. Hephaistos willing they will start up again when vaccination rates improve.
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“good kitchen knife sharpener”
Hmmm. There are a few good ways to sharpen knives and this is not one of them.
This is like needing to fill out a paper form and somebody trying to sell you a crayon.
Maybe it’ll go some ways toward doing what you want but you’d be crazy not to just buy or borrow a pen.
I’m still using the oil stone given to me 40 years ago. It was probably a few decades old by then. Still sharpens knifes to Holy-Shit!-Knives-can-get-that sharp? sharpness. And I’m not even that good at using it.
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@Melizmatic @teknocholer @Bobo
OK, well and truly triggered!
We are talking about sharpening one of the most ancient tools for cooking here (as well as killing and stuff). Everyone needs to learn how to use one and then take care of it, unless making food for yourself or others is not an issue!
Modern knives are generically German, French and Japanese by sales data. I would look to the Asian history for utilitarian knives and how to use them. Have a big passion for Japanese myself.
The ubiquitous Chinese ‘clever’ would be the most universal for me - fine precise cutting and crunching through bones in one knife instead of several. Kinda interesting that no one is making these bespoke!
Learning to sharpen is part of using a knife and historically this is a stone in Asian culture, where as the ‘steel’ was introduced into the Western food production system as a more industrial answer to repetitive tasking.
Stone and/or steel; everything else is fluff.
Yeah, those things are AWESOME. My wife (and her mom) used to be a chef and they had an awesome collection of oil stones. I stole one or two since I do some wood carving as a hobby and they will put an edge on a chisel that is so vicious that I wouldn’t even think about picking a sharpened one up without some serious gloves.
I have quite a collection of oil, water, and diamond stones. I usually sharpen my kitchen knives on a simple V sharpener made with two 1000 grit ceramic rods from Lee Valley, set in a wooden base. That plus stropping and occasional steeling will keep them adequately sharp for years. Chisels and plane blades get a little extra attention.
Except some people don’t care, they just want to cook stuff, as in the article I linked to. The old knife grinder with his hand-cranked wheel has been a fixture in cities for centuries, probably millennia. Telling people they are wrong for not doing their own sharpening on a flat stone is like the car enthusiasts who crop up regularly to tell folks that they aren’t real drivers if they don’t have a stick shift or change their own oil.
I was in Cambodia a couple of years ago, and in the variety stores there you could buy a plastic-handled Chinese-style chef’s knife for a dollar US, or a blister pack of three different knives for about two dollars. Interestingly, on the shelf besides the knives there were usually sharpening stones for sale.
I’m a bit of a knife guy and use a way more complicated sharpening system, but these things work fine. But @frauenfelder, as another guy stated you really shouldn’t be sharpening weekly. Get a ceramic hone or honing steel. They are easy to use and don’t remove steel. You can hone every day if you want.
