Gift advice - Knife Sharpening System for Kitchen Knives? Poll

[DeadboxHero]

Wat? Benchstones man. Especially for kitchen knives

 

[Cow51]

To reiterate what others have said; There is no reason to spend that type of money on a system that is going to be over kill for general kitchen cutlery. I suggest the Spyderco Sharpmaker. It is excellent at maintenance and touch ups. It lacks in the re-profiling department, but you won't need to re-profile kitchen knives much. If you do, you could pick up diamond or CBN rods that will take care of that. It is not guided like the ones you asked about, but it is very easy to use.

 

[Bill1170]

It’s already been said many times. The Sharpmaker is the best bang for the buck. Fancy guided systems probably won’t get used, too fiddly. Bench stones require training to get good results, again, not likely to happen.

 

[midnight flyer]

Another vote for Work Sharp Ken Onion Electric Knife and Tool Sharpener. It keeps all of my knives screaming sharp.

I use 12" diamond rods on my knives, but I learned so sharpen free hand on stones about 50+ years ago. The diamond rods are excellent.

But my amigos can't sharpen to their own satisfaction. After reading some glowing reviews on this machine here a couple (or more) years back, I suggested it to a friend of mine that has bought different systems and had no success. He loves it.

He has learned how to repair the damaged edges on some of his knives, and has turned into a sharpening monster. Nothing is safe, and he told me he is now sharpening knives that have been unused for years as the steel was too hard to sharpen with his poor skills.

I do enough sharpening for others that I pick up enough for a new knife every once in a while, but I am tired of damaged knives and chewed up edges and the time to work them out. And I am getting more knives to sharpen on a regular basis. So I bought the KO edition of the Worksharp (wider belts, an additional guide, more angle choices then the base model) and I love it. This machine is about as bullet proof as you can get if you follow the instructions. I had the movement and stroke speed down on one knife. You could probably burn the blade if you went to sleep when using it, or made it a point to try to, but if you follow the instructions you can get an amazing edge even on crappy knives.

I had seen these on sale at different gun shows and walked right by them for years. I admired the edges the guy that sold them got, and he had quite a schtick going. He would sharpen a single blade on a knife for $5. If it was a larger hunting knife that just needed a touch up, it was $7. He sharpened your knife and then sliced ribbons off a piece of phone book pages. If you bought a Worksharp from him at the show, he waived the sharpening cost. I don't use it to touch up my own knives, but for resetting and edge, rebeveling, repairing damage, or sharpening my restaurant buddy's knives, this thing is the stuff.

Robert

 

[Chefget]

As a professional chef I have spent a lot of time and money sharpening knives.

I've had a Wicked Edge, have an Edge Pro, an extensive (and expensive) set of waterstones with all the paraphernalia, etc. I've spent many a late evening with waterstones and cognac over the last
10 years.

After seeing that former BF great Dexter Ewing uses a Worksharp Ken Onion to sharpen knives professionally I had to try one.

After the first knife I was amazed, after the second knife I was giggling. I took it over to a fellow cooks house and we put a beautiful polished edge on over a dozen knives in under a hour. The first knife my friend sharpened turned out beautifully, the rest even better.

Also, and this is important, the WSKO puts a CONVEX edge on a knife. This is big.

This advice is coming from a person who, in the early 80's as a young chef was scouring the public library looking for books on how to sharpen knives. It's been that long to find the answer I now have with the WSKO.

-Michael

 

[brownshoe]

A family member who is a chef uses diamond hones and finishes with a water stone.

 

[midnight flyer]

After seeing that former BF great Dexter Ewing uses a Worksharp Ken Onion to sharpen knives professionally I had to try one.

After the first knife I was amazed, after the second knife I was giggling. I took it over to a fellow cooks house and we put a beautiful polished edge on over a dozen knives in under a hour. The first knife my friend sharpened turned out beautifully, the rest even better.

Also, and this is important, the WSKO puts a CONVEX edge on a knife. This is big.
-Michael

I an co-catering an event at the Fisher House with a couple of buddies of mine on Christmas Eve. We hope to be serving about 200 troopers and their families.

He is the manager of a large food wholesaler here in town and we use his kitchen to prepare all the food off site and then transport to the Fisher House to serve. While is whipping up breakfast for our volunteer servers, I sharpen his knives. Silly to me, but his sales reps demo whole cooked pork loins, pork rib chops, specialty bacons, and on a on, and cut to serve the product in front of potential buyers by using really dull knives. Hard to convince the restaurateurs that they are selling a really tender pork when they have to saw the meat like cutting a tree branch instead of a smooth slicing motion. His salespeople hate using those knives and are frequently embarrassed at food shows when using them. Amazingly, even in the food/meat business they have no budget for knife sharpening!

They will have about 15 knives for me to sharpen and unless there are a couple that are damaged I should have them all in paper slicing condition in about an hour to hour and a half. (After all the knives are sharp, the head meat prep guy usually hides two somewhere in the warehouse for his own use, LOL!) The WSKO is that fast to use and that accurate. To be fair, I have used the system on these knives before so I am anticipating more of a good touch up with the medium belt and a couple of swipes on the fine than anything else.

I am not complaining about sharpening for them as they really take care of me with some of their gourmet offerings in exchange, but I could teach one of their guys to use that little machine very well in about 15-20 minutes. I bought the delux model listed as the "TV offer", and it comes with a few extra goodies as well. All that machine and ten belts, ceramic hone, nice carry bag, instructional DVD for $170. Nice.

Robert

 

[SCBaldr]

I started with a bunch of stones of various types which I've accumulated over the years. Once I got proficient, I could cut new bevels and go all the way up to the 15K Naniwa stone in about 45 minutes for an 8" chef knife. I bought the Wicked Edge Pro Pack II with a 20% discount, so I ended up paying a little under $650 for it. I probably have more than that between all the stones, so it seemed worth it. The Wicked Edge took 45 minutes down to 15 minutes and let me have very fine and repeatable control over the angle and finish quality. Is pretty fool proof. You just have to be careful not to round off the tip, which is easy to do. You also need to make sure you narrow down the angle by 1.5-2 degrees per side when you switch to the strops to account for the deformation of the leather against the edge so as not to round it off. I love my Wicked Edge, but I'm thinking I want a Tormek T8 next. I can then use the wicked edge only for super fine mirror bevel jobs which it excels at.