I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago in a beachhouse rental in the Outer Banks NC. My turn to prepare dinner was going to be pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, beans, and my signature rosemary/garlic oven fries. I bought some pork shoulder (Boston butt - upper shoulder cut) and started going through the kitchen drawers looking for a knife to trim the excess fat (we were only staying a couple days and went on short notice so I didn't bring my Shun kitchen knives).
Predictably, all that I could find in the drawers was the usual collection of worthless junk knives so I started washing my Spyderco Bob Lum Chinese folder which I have been EDCing since Bob's passing a couple of months ago. The blade is really too short for what I wanted to do but at least it is sharp and would have done adequately. Someone tells me that there is a "chef's knife" in the other drawer. I check it out and it's a Chicago Cutlery 7 1/2 or 8 inch chef's knife! Nice - full tang, wood handles, nicely done brass rivets - a pretty good low cost chef's knife.
I only have to glance at the edge to see that the thing is so dull it couldn't cut butter if you heated it up. This thing had obviously never been sharpened and had probably been used for everything from splitting chickens to cutting up lines of coke on the wall mirror which seemed to have a lot of suspicious scratches on its surface. As I thumbed the demolished edge my wife's aunt, who had pointed it out to me, wisecracks "Oh, you were able to figure out which edge is the cutting edge?" Well ha ha and thank you very much. Not being one that is easily undone or even deterred by inferior kitchen equipment I rifled the cabinets and found a plate and a bowl, one with a pretty rough unglazed rim on the bottom and the other with the unglazed rim revealing a fine grained porcelain.
I went to work, freehanding the edge across the bottom rim of the rough grained bowl. After a couple of minutes I could see black residue starting to build up on the unglazed rim - I was taking steel off the edge! A couple more minutes and shiny steel could be seen on the battered edge of the knife. After about 15 minutes of pretty vigorous sharpening I had a decent but very rough edge. A couple of minutes on the rim of the fine grained plate and I had removed the burr and polished that edge to my satisfaction. Now I'm not going to make up any stories about it being hair-splitting sharp or even paper-cutting sharp, but it cut the excess fat off that pork roast with ease and even my wife's cynical aunt was pretty amazed by the whole process.
I guess the moral of the story is that, like skinning a catfish, there is more than one way to sharpen a knife. Don't get hung up on using the most high-tech sharpening systems (and yes I do own just about all of them that have been named on this forum), but be resourceful and do whatever you have to do to get an edge on that knife! After all,
Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures!
Predictably, all that I could find in the drawers was the usual collection of worthless junk knives so I started washing my Spyderco Bob Lum Chinese folder which I have been EDCing since Bob's passing a couple of months ago. The blade is really too short for what I wanted to do but at least it is sharp and would have done adequately. Someone tells me that there is a "chef's knife" in the other drawer. I check it out and it's a Chicago Cutlery 7 1/2 or 8 inch chef's knife! Nice - full tang, wood handles, nicely done brass rivets - a pretty good low cost chef's knife.
I only have to glance at the edge to see that the thing is so dull it couldn't cut butter if you heated it up. This thing had obviously never been sharpened and had probably been used for everything from splitting chickens to cutting up lines of coke on the wall mirror which seemed to have a lot of suspicious scratches on its surface. As I thumbed the demolished edge my wife's aunt, who had pointed it out to me, wisecracks "Oh, you were able to figure out which edge is the cutting edge?" Well ha ha and thank you very much. Not being one that is easily undone or even deterred by inferior kitchen equipment I rifled the cabinets and found a plate and a bowl, one with a pretty rough unglazed rim on the bottom and the other with the unglazed rim revealing a fine grained porcelain.
I went to work, freehanding the edge across the bottom rim of the rough grained bowl. After a couple of minutes I could see black residue starting to build up on the unglazed rim - I was taking steel off the edge! A couple more minutes and shiny steel could be seen on the battered edge of the knife. After about 15 minutes of pretty vigorous sharpening I had a decent but very rough edge. A couple of minutes on the rim of the fine grained plate and I had removed the burr and polished that edge to my satisfaction. Now I'm not going to make up any stories about it being hair-splitting sharp or even paper-cutting sharp, but it cut the excess fat off that pork roast with ease and even my wife's cynical aunt was pretty amazed by the whole process.
I guess the moral of the story is that, like skinning a catfish, there is more than one way to sharpen a knife. Don't get hung up on using the most high-tech sharpening systems (and yes I do own just about all of them that have been named on this forum), but be resourceful and do whatever you have to do to get an edge on that knife! After all,
Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures!
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