My approach is to steal the (expensive) knives every time, and never sharpen them!
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Typo, or refreshing frankness?
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I’m not much of a chef and certainly don’t have the skills to enter the realms of knife-snobbery but I’ve been incredibly pleased with an inexpensive knife made by Kiwi. Less than $10 and wickedly sharp! I give it a sharpening every month or so and it has held up well over the past couple years.
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Frankness.
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“You’re a very nosy fellow, kitty cat”
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Well, this guy had a nice folded steel knife, and he sharpens it every day, and after 10 years about 1/4th of it is left.
It is in the very beginning of this video.
Also - is this going to devolve into a knife sharpening fight again? Eh, @Medievalist?
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All my quatloos on the strapping lad. Er, I mean stropping lad.
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A man can dream!
The steel in el cheapo knives is of highly variable quality. Some of them are so hard they’re nearly impossible to sharpen, but they’ll hold an edge like grim death, while others don’t even seem to be purposely tempered and will fold over if hollow ground or sharpened at too fine an angle.
I sharpen my chisels much like this guy sharpens knives, but for kitchen knives I use the belt grinder (which, incidentally, is what every professional bladesmith I know does, although some with fairly exotic belts).
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I love the minuteness of the japanese. Even wabi-sabi paradoxically shows such minuteness. Love it.
(Are they still considered the overall best knife makers?)
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It depends on what you mean by half-assed. If the angle of sharpening it too steep or inconsistent, you could make the knife worse than we you started. The size of the metal grain is also important. While there are some larger-grain expensive steels, cheap steel is almost always coarse and won’t take as good of an edge as a fine-grained steel. Then with fine-grain steel some is very hard and will keep a sharp edge for a long time, while some is softer and will dull faster. How evenly you use the edge and on what also matters. I can sharpen my toughest steels once a year and they will hold a better edge for months than most dollar store knives will ever take.
One way to prolong the keen of your knife’s edge is to stope it every dozen uses or so to get the grains somewhat back in formation.
I gather it requires a special mechanical wheel. But ceramic doesn’t dull because it doesn’t have little metal grains to push around. It just gets nearly microscopic chips if you keep hitting it on harder materials. I use Kyocera ceramic knives for fruits, vegetables and other soft materials. I’ve had them for a few years and I love them. They’re perfect for pairing, peeling, dicing, ect. If they do eventually develop enough microchipping to noticeably impact their cutting ability, I can send them into Kyocera (or just hand deliver them when I’m in Japan) and they’ll resharpen it for free under the lifetime warranty.
ETA: Found a video of the Kyocera sharpening process…
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I’m ready to fight!
I, ahem, prefer folded steel knives, once sharpened with sanding belts and then leather belts, then stropped after every use. It doesn’t take much stropping and you end up removing very little steel by continually maintaining a very honed edge. Cheap steel knives can be sharpened, but they never hold the edge. Good quality steel will not need frequent sharpening if stropped regularly. The quality steel lasts forever that way and really will be easy to work with every time you slice/cut/chop.
That said, most people find the process I’ve described tedious, sooooo…just get some ceramic knives or get some decent steel knives and a decent ceramic steel rod and beat the fuck out of the knives. Honing edges won’t work for most people as they are too brutal on the knife edges (not a criticism. Just a fact. And if you are not likely to care and love a knife edge, then beat the fuck out of the knife and toss it or sharpen the fuck out of it. Seriously, that’s the best way to go).
My not so humble advice then is to treat a knife edge like a baby if you want to keep the knife for years or to buy on the cheap and abuse the knife until it completely fails and toss it.
Both methods work well.
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My favorite part of that video is the handwritten note on the buffer:
Makes Kyocera look like a mom-and-pop operation.
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I used to work as a tool and cutter grinder in my youth.
The sign is for general safety awareness, and less likely to peel off. Due to the amount of dust, one needs to clean the equipment once in a while, and labels often deteriorate.
There’s also usually someone who’s in training or subbing in for someone else, so even writing a warning on the hood is helpful, in case of accidents.
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In the pub kitchen where I had my first job, all the knives were really cheap (because commercial kitchen), and regularly sharpened (because professional chefs). Some of them were practically banana shaped from being sharpened so many times. They still cut nicely though, despite being dumped in a drawer most of the time, and sharpened by untrained idiots (ie me).
So for me, cheap knives are good enough.
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I for one am amazed that a knife sharpening thread a day old has <40 replies. Is everyone feeling OK?
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Here is another vote for a belt sanding type solution. Isn’t there something to having a the sides curve towards the cutting edge rather than the edge be beveled? I thought that was a thing. Here is what I use: Work Sharp
Well, obviously. What better things could we possibly talk about? Well, OK, there’s beer, but that’s just a tie, not actually better.
I thought you might mean hollow ground, but looking at the Work Sharp you linked, it has no platen, so it’s going to deliver a convex edge. (But with 6000 grit belts it’ll be a damn sharp convex edge, one you can strop on the heel of your hand instead of leather 
).
I only use a convex grind for axes. A cheap* hewing axe or camp hatchet** with a reasonably well balanced head will “pop” dry wood apart better with that kind of edge, and will resist notching and folding of the bitter edge better, and is less likely to get stuck.
But for a cooking or woodworking knife, I think a convex (or “arched”) edge isn’t really optimal. It’s harder to get even, straight cuts and maximizes the amount of soft or sticky material that will get stuck to the blade. It’s arguably a decent grind for a lightweight killing weapon capable of stabbing, though; I’d use it on a knife intended for fighting, because it’s meaty and strong and inherently resistant to bending.
A small bench sander with a platen and an exposed wheel lets you do all the different grinds with the same tool. A seriously practiced person with a stone can do them all, too.
Yeah, but you didn’t give me anything to disagree with! I think your advice was excellent.
* You can also use a slight hollow grind on a really extremely high quality axe with a heavy poll to get a better hewing edge while still getting a good splitting “pop”.
** a carpentry hatchet is a totally different tool.
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I place a bit of thick leather behind the belt to allow for more of a taper grind like you get from a stone. But even when I don’t it cuts even and straight just fine.
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Well, it’ll get the job done for you. But we’re geeking out here.
Try cutting medium-soft cheese with that, and then try with an equally sharp hollow-ground knife, and you’ll almost certainly notice a difference. Then try a late summer tomato or a sheet of folded paper standing on edge with the same two knives… but for most jobs, sharp is what you want, and the grind profile is really not critical. And 320 grit with a belt grinder will get you plenty sharp enough for kitchen work.
But just for comparison, 320 grit won’t get you sharp enough for a serious framing chisel, and it’s overkill for the average woodsman’s axe or foot adze.
A soft platen like that will be a lot less noisy than my steel one! Good hack.
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