Overall agree it seems cool, and maybe interesting.
"People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives,"
The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer.
The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what?
I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzmann staring at knife edges with an SEM, but even if i did it completely by hand with shaptons, it takes like 15 minutes, max, to sharpen 10 knives, through an entire insane grit progression (which i do for plane blades when i need to cleanly slice end grain without going to a super high-angle plane or something. For knives, i was just trying to get a comparison point, i use electric sharpeners in practice).
Or approximately 2 minutes with an electric knife sharpener.
While sure, there is a difference when i put them under my digital inspection microscope, either can slice paper towel cleanly and easily (slicing paper is easy, slicing paper towel ends to be hard because any burr catches really easily)
Are there really even semi-normal people out there spending hours to sharpen knives?
If so, like, why?
(Obviously, again, if they need to be reground because you knicked it really badly, sure that takes a bit, but beyond that)
None of these steels are tough enough to require all that many strokes (it's pretty easy to test it with a marker and see when you remove the marking), and if you are using super custom steels (RIP Crucible :(), carbide, or ceramics, you need CBN or diamond anyway, but the same is still true - given the correct abrasive material, sharpening knives is just not that slow.
I actually travel with an electric knife sharpener if we are going to be staying in an airbnb somewhere for >1 week and are cooking most nights. It's the most consistent thing about airbnb - no matter what level of luxury, etc, they always have many knives, and all of them are dangerously dull. It still doesn't take more than a few minutes to sharpen them all.
I spend hours every 6 months or so sharpening knifes on whetstones. I like the excuse to have some me time, listen to an audiobook or just do some thinking. Akin to meditation.
I also dont like the blades ruined through automatic sharpeners - the knifes are made of good quality steel, were made to order in Jp, and have sentimental value. I also sharpen the cheap knifes this way, tho - I like manual work.
Do you not sharpen them in between? I've had to spend hours sorting out knives that have been left far too long without sharpening, but my routine is to spend about 15 minutes sharpening them every weekend. Then they're always sharp and never get into a terrible state and need remedial work.
My knives get noticeably suboptimal in a couple of weeks without sharpening, so if I left it 6 months they'd be blunt pretty much all the time.
Usual advice is that you need to straighten your blade every week or two and then you can sharpen it every 6 months or even a year (depends on usage of course). To straighten the blade you use honing rod which many people mistake for sharpener.
I have a steel honing rod but it's never seemed to have much effect. Perhaps my technique isn't right.
I also have a ceramic sharpening rod, which I use to sharpen my breadknife. That's very effective, but different as it actually removes steel. I give my straight-edged knives a few strokes on each side on a 3000 grit whetstone every weekend, which seems to keep them nicely sharp. That will slowly wear them down but it hasn't done so noticeably yet so I expect the knives to last many years.
What should one look for in an electric knife sharpener? It’s hard to search as there’s so much content farming. I’m UK based. Are they worth it compared to a simple “drag through” thing?
But you have to let go of the "ruining it" fear. Sharpening a knife does ruin it, you're taking off a tiny amount of material each time. Since your knife is full bolster, you'll eventually notice a small difference in height of the blade at the bolster.
Yes you will ruin the knife over decades of sharpening. In the mean time you have a wicked sharp knife that's a joy to use (not just look at). It's a tool not an art piece.
Most people can buy an opinel and be happy for decades. You don't need anything fancy for a general purpose knife. $50 max, and that's if you're feeling like getting something special.
Expensive steels are, by and large, incremental progress over cheaper knife steels, provided it got an appropriate heat treatment and has good edge geometry. In almost no applications will an end consumer notice the difference.
I've been using the same thrift store knife I picked up 15 years ago. It gets sharpened maybe once a year, honed every so often. It was like $20 i think? Most chefs I know have a similar story with their knife/knives, something cheap that does the job.
Spending more on knives is just status symbol nonsense, which unfortunately has infected absolutely everything. It's like spending $300 on a spanner wrench. Who in the hell spends that much on a wrench? Why would you spend that much on a knife? lol. It's what you do with it that matters.
I remember seeing a comment by a local "celebrity chef" where he said he never sharpens cleavers - he just buys a specific inexpensive brand 5 at a time for $8 each and throws them away when they become dull.
While I don't agree with externalising the manufacture/disposal costs with that sort of disposable consumption, I do see the economically-rational decision making behind it.
If you're running a restaurant in Australia, your lowest paid kitchen staff get $24 an hour during weekdays, 30-35 and hour on weekends, and as much as $55 an hour on public holidays. And if they work more than 8 hours in a day it's 1.5 times those rates for the first 2 hours of overtime, and double those rates for anything more than 2 hours overtime. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/find-help-for/fast-food-restaura...
While spending 15 or 20 seconds honing the edge with a sharpening steel during use makes sense (and I'll bet he does that just out of reflex), once the edge gets damaged enough to need more that what a steel can fix and you start needing a whetstone, it's probably not cost effective to have kitchen staff spend time doing that.
If a dull knife takes whole 5 minutes to sharpen, it's 12 knives an hour. At $8 per knife, this is $96 per hour. Not worth it during deep overtime during a public holiday, otherwise...
I suppose someone less handsomely paid collects these disposed knives, sharpens them, and resells them on the side.
I'd take issue with your price point but agree with the sentiment
I've seen victorinox fibrox knives in Michelin Star kitchens, they get the job done and are very reasonably priced ($60 for a chef's knife).
Admittedly the knives I have at home are significantly more expensive largely because the knives I have at home are on display so I want something that looks good and I actually enjoy using them.
On one level it's a little silly but then on another level people spend thousands on art/sculptures which has no useful purpose.
There are lots of great knife makers. Depends on what you want. Knives become about aesthetics and feel pretty quickly, price point wise. Not cutting functionality (ease of cutting, whatever).
Victorinox knives rank very well in just about any real-use ranking I’ve ever seen and are extremely affordable. If you just want good knives that will serve you well, won’t break the bank, and you won’t feel bad using them, that’s what I would do. There are other good recommendations in the thread as well.
As for custom steels - outside of currently very expensive processes (powdered metallurgy, etc), it is basically “maximum sharpness”, “edge retention”, “ease of sharpening”, pick maybe two. Edge retention here is shorthand for both brittleness (chipping) and abrasion resistance (regular wear), even though they differ for some things.
High grade carbide, for example, is extremely tough and resists edge abrasion. But because of the large grain size it is ~impossible to get it as sharp as carbon steel by hand. Additionally, the same abrasion resistance also means you need something hard enough to sharpen it.
If you remember those little scratch kits you may have played with once in science class as a child where you tried to see which rocks scratches other rocks, this is the practical application of that.
Even in metalworking people will often make or use hss cutters when they need something really really sharp or custom. Or just cheap. And use carbide ones when they don’t. Because you really can’t get carbide as sharp as HSS and sometimes it matters. I can also easily make a really good HSS cuttter, but making a really good carbide one would take significantly more expensive tooling and time.
This is one example.
Ceramic knives[1] tend to have very high edge retention, but are very brittle and fracture easily. So it's very easy to nick them. This makes them last forever if you are slicing but not if you are chopping. They are also ~impossible to sharpen without diamonds.
In the end - we can construct steels and other things with very nice properties at high cost, and it's cool and fun to explore the limits there, but it’s not going to make you a better chef, or make your prep 10x faster or whatever. This isn't to say it's completely impossible to make somethign that is awesome at everything, but we use what we use because we can make them without nudging atoms into a matrix one by one :)
So while it's possible to get 5x the edge life out of an impossible to sharpen knife (for example), for most people, it's not worth it. They don't even notice once the novelty wears off.
[1] Tungsten carbide is really a ceramic but people often mistake it for a metal/steel, when in reality it's often just alloyed/glued/etc to metals, etc. Assume i'm not talking about tungsten here.
I admire you. You are a minority, you know that, right?
I don't have time in my schedule at the moment, which says "sharpen the knifes". So for me - it would be amazing if someone solved this problem in a radical way.
Sporadically I would sharpen the knives and since I don't have it in my "skills" section of the brain, I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.
You know you can buy a <$5 gadget you drag the knife across a few times for 10s that gets it about 95% as sharp as a professional job? Zero skill or attention required.
Dont have time in your schedule...jeeze. Sounds like learned helplessness to me. That or spoiled rotten. The comments in this thread help me understand the general animosity towards the tech industry from much of the population.
I have one of those "roller" sharpeners, in theory a "good" one, it's from Global (the Japanese knife brand) not just an AliExpress knockoff.
It works reasonably well and is definitely quick. But its not even close to "95% as sharp) as when I spend 10 mins with my Lansky sharpening kit (which is really just a small set of graduated whetstones with a jig to keep the angle right while using it).
Would I recommend everybody spend $70 or so for a bottom end Lansky kit or similar? No. Not even close. But if cook a lot, and you're going to buy "nice" knives that you intend to keep for decades, and you notice and care about the difference between sharp and dull knives - then I'd suggest you at least consider it.
Admittedly I have not made a comparison but I've seem some youtube vids where they compete various sharpening gadgets vs the pro way. They all seem to do very well even at bottom barrel prices. I'm sure defects are higher though.
That lansky looks awesome I think I'll pick it up. I think the crowd on here will see this basic life skill as too much "work".... so thats why I recommend the cheap drag through's. Safer than a dull knife at least... Weird how so many people here have no issue churning thorough another JS framework but spending 10 min to learn a life skill is too hard.
The roller/drag-through thing is worthwhile owning, I use mine a lot more often than I get out the Lansky kit. It's probably a couple of times a month I'll find my usual knife is smooshing ripe strawberries or tomatos a bit instead of effortlessly slicing them, and a few swipes through the fine wheel on mine will make that knife slice nicely again. Mostly I get out the Lansky tools when I've damaged a knife, then I'll sit at my workbench will all my knives and spend an hour or two in a Zen knife edge grinding trance making everything stupidly/dangerously sharp. The ultra-fine ceramic hone in my kit does an amazing job, but you need to work up to it through the coarser grade hones - especially if you've been using the roller sharpener on that knife for a bit - I'm pretty sure they don't get the edge angles right in a way the the ultras fine hone can take advantage of.
I really like my Lansky kit. In retrospect I might have shelled out the extra for the set with the diamond sharpening stones - but I doubt I'll ever come close to wearing down the regular stones with my use patterns.
> I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.
Get the Worksharp fixed angle sharpener for about $70 (about the price of 2 decent stones). If you're really interested, get the leather strop add on for about $10. Get on with sharpening your kitchen knives. Put it in your closet until next year.
Is it "great"? No. If you want to be a knife nerd, it's not for you.
If you have a couple of kitchen knives you need to sharpen once a year, it's absolutely fine. And you don't have to "get the feel" of sharpening again before you can get sharp kinves.
Even with the stones and equipment I have, it is way more mindless and a lot less messy to simply use a fixed-angle sharpener. Sure, you won't get "The Ultimate Hair Whittling Edge(tm)", but your knives will quite readily Julienne your vegetables.
Reiterating that any sharpener with the ability to set the angle is really all anyone needs if they don't want to invest in the time of learning how to sharpen.
I have the ruixin version and it works fine. I like that I can use the stones without the system.
Sure. Most fixed angle sharpeners work to some degree, I just recommended one that isn't sold by "Random Letter Chinese Shop" and that I have bought and know personally works.
In addition, for the moment, the stones used in the system I recommended are reliably decent and have been analyzed by a bunch of the YouTube knife nerds. The other fixed angle systems can be hit or miss with the stones.
If someone is sufficiently interested that they want to use the stones without the system, they've started down the path to being a knife nerd and have outgrown my recommendation.
In Japan I could just drop my knife in a nearby house's box with $6, they'd sharpen it and phone me to pick it up within a few hours. Cheap enough that I never bothered to do it myself.
"People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives,"
The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer.
The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what?
I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzmann staring at knife edges with an SEM, but even if i did it completely by hand with shaptons, it takes like 15 minutes, max, to sharpen 10 knives, through an entire insane grit progression (which i do for plane blades when i need to cleanly slice end grain without going to a super high-angle plane or something. For knives, i was just trying to get a comparison point, i use electric sharpeners in practice).
Or approximately 2 minutes with an electric knife sharpener.
While sure, there is a difference when i put them under my digital inspection microscope, either can slice paper towel cleanly and easily (slicing paper is easy, slicing paper towel ends to be hard because any burr catches really easily)
Are there really even semi-normal people out there spending hours to sharpen knives?
If so, like, why?
(Obviously, again, if they need to be reground because you knicked it really badly, sure that takes a bit, but beyond that)
None of these steels are tough enough to require all that many strokes (it's pretty easy to test it with a marker and see when you remove the marking), and if you are using super custom steels (RIP Crucible :(), carbide, or ceramics, you need CBN or diamond anyway, but the same is still true - given the correct abrasive material, sharpening knives is just not that slow.
I actually travel with an electric knife sharpener if we are going to be staying in an airbnb somewhere for >1 week and are cooking most nights. It's the most consistent thing about airbnb - no matter what level of luxury, etc, they always have many knives, and all of them are dangerously dull. It still doesn't take more than a few minutes to sharpen them all.