I use a knock-off of the edgepro I got for $30 online, with a nice set of compatible whetstones that click into the assembly that were $20 online. I did what everyone else does and hotglued some magnets underneath the piece you hold the knife on.
I tried a compatible strop that clicks in but it's not worth it imo; just use a normal strop.
just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and materials. i'm surprised at all the apparent knife enthusiast posts trashing this device. I take my victorinox (which is absolutely nothing special and surprises me that it costs $60+ dollars) to the farmers market for sharpening but sharpness isn't even the problem. Potatoes in particular stick to the blade like a strong magnet and it takes me 5x longer to prep. I enjoy cooking but not chopping endless veggies and i'm hoping this thing can carry some of that weight without looking like i'm using an oversized electric toothbrush.
> just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and material.
You're right that's a hobby. But the hobby's definition of "proper maintenance" and what it "requires" is basically just people nerding out about things that don't matter the slightest in the real world.
To maintain a kitchen knife so that it cuts a tomato without squishing it, you don't need a book on knife science. Further, that nerdery is probably actively harmful, because instead of simple solutions, people are told they need an inspection microscope and a variety of jigs and other implements. So they buy an objectively bad electric sharpener and move on.
> just want to point out that maintaining a knife is a whole hobby that requires a time investment of learning the skill and storage of additional tools and materials.
Properly maintaining a knife does. Most people don't need to properly maintain a knife. You can do it good enough with a honing steel and some crappy automatic sharpener.
I enjoy cooking good food for my family and myself, but cooking is not a hobby of mine. So if my knife can slice a tomato without crushing it, then that's good enough for me. I don't need to shave a tomato so thin that the slice is transparent.
Does the crappy automatic sharpener work? Well the knife cuts better after I use it, so yes, it does.
Yes as I mentioned I use often-recommended knives (victorinox, shun) and have them occasionally sharpened professionally and at least in my case the ultrasonic knife appears to solve some very real problems that knife maintenance cannot.
it takes no skill to make a blunt knife sharper. To make a sharp knife sharper, sure, but in a good vast majority of home knife situations, just doing anything with any flat sharpening surface is an improvement.
I can attest to this as I have improved knifes day one of trying despite my lack of any sort of skill
Sharpening a knife to r/sharpening standards is hard. But just honing frequently and occasionally using a cheap sharpener will get you further than 95% of home chefs.
my new favorite kitchen gadget is small deli slicer, $75 on amazon.
minor pain to clean, but MUCH faster than a knife, totally safe (pusher keeps fingers away from the blade) and you get precise thickness cuts every time, which means they cook precisely too.
Especially good for vegetables like potatoes, onion, eggplant, etc.
No? The point was to understand what the tool does and when it can help. And he found out that if you have a Burr it can help. But if you have a properly sharpened knife without a Burr it won't do anything to help and will just destroy your edge.
I used to sharpen my straight-knife planer blades, planing irons, chisels, and knives with whetstones / water stones. It was too big of a pain in the ass over time, so I switched to diamond stones.
Biggest advantages is that you don't need to pre-soak them and diamond stones don't develop a valley / have to be flattened.
if you plan on getting into sharpening I would just start with a coarse, fine, and extra fine diamond stone and a leather strop w/ stropping compound.
Whetstones were hard 20 years ago. Right now there is abundance of quality info and products. The community actually figured out idiotproof and effective ways to deburr, to strop, resin bound diamond stones are affordable (or even cheap if you just buy the abrasive from China and go the diy route).
In my case I just wait for the sharpening knife guy who pass once a week in my neighborhood. It is quite easy as I am working from home and he plays those distinctive panpipes notes.
When it does come time to sharpen, I constantly see places offering knife sharpening services, and they’re usually cheap enough. Or you could get a gizmo that does a mediocre job (and shaves away far too much material) if you just want to get it done. Or you could learn to do it yourself which isn’t that hard or time-consuming but is somewhat of a labor of love.
This is the first time I've heard someone say honing is very important, when I was first learning this, I was told that it was the next thing to pseudoscience!
Absolutely not. A blade can stay sharp for a much longer period of time than it can stay honed. The edge of a piece of paper is extremely sharp, but it only cuts you in specific circumstances due to being difficult to maintain a firm edge.
A knife's edge is closer to that than you'd think. At the scales of sharpness of a good knife, it's impossible to keep the edge straight for very long. A honing rod quickly brings these back in line. I hone knives after maybe a week of use; it only takes a few seconds.
And this is a comically easy property to test. Use a "dull" knife then hone it and try again. It will cut drastically better.
