Christmas - the gift of sharpness.

[Gadgetaholic]

On Christmas day I went to my mother's place to catch up with the family and to eat too much (a yearly tradition). One thing that has bothered me for years is the fact that my mother's knives are all blunt - even before getting interested in knives.

So this year I took my DMT Aligner and CrO loaded strop. I took a knife out of Mum's drawer and sharpened it up, then I tested it on the ham in the fridge - it cut well and my teeth chewed well, complete success. Then I sharpened another knife, just as I finished that I saw Mum pull a knife out of the draw and was about to cut some potato - I said "I'll swap with you" and gave her the knife that I had just sharpened. While I got ready to sharpen that knife I heard the best comment from a non-knife person yet, on the first slice of the potato my Mum said: "Oooooh". It was a Christmas miracle!

I ended up sharpening about 6 knives - 2 of them were very old (60+ years) Sheffield steel ones that were quite good and 4 of them were junk. But I left them all quite sharp - not crazy razor sharp, but noticeably sharper than they had been and definitely a few levels improvement. I suggested that Mum should try using the old Sheffield bone handled knives more as they were actually quite good - she thinks that her mother would have got them when she got married, so plenty of history there!

 

[chococrazy]

A sharp knife is a safe knife I love these stories .

 

[dan oliver]

Very good thing to do for family members. I take my Sharpmaker to my mother's, son's and daughter's houses at least once each year and try to get their knives usable again. Most sharpen very well. You are right.....they very much appreciate it.

 

[Gadgetaholic]

The thing I liked was that I was gaining valuable experience at sharpening. Also Mum's knives were so crap that it was very easy to improve them - the difference in sharpness was VERY noticeable.

The reason Mum gave the "Oooooh" was that she was so used to using a lot of pressure to push cut through the potato that it was a very pleasant surprise to find the knife slicing through the potato with a fraction of the pressure. The job of slicing up enough potato to feed a dozen people was made very much easier. :thumbup:

One interesting thing I noticed was that there were 2 knife steels in the drawer, I don't think they saw much use though.