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- Sep 27, 2007
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- 7,680
My mother in law is a notorious "blade duller"
She asked me to help her pick out some Shun Elites the other day because all of their kitchen knives were way too old and worthless. Granted, they love to get new stuff just like anyone else, but I said, first let me see what I can do with one of them, you know just for fun.
I took home their 7 inch Santoku from J.A. Henckels. I'm not sure exactly what steel it is, but I believe it's something close to what Wusthof uses, which is X50 CR Mo V15.
Anyway, like I said, my mother in law could dull ZDP-189 in 3 minutes while cutting up celery sticks
, and this Henckels was no exception. The edge was so flat that I could see it with my naked eye. I know it wasn't, but it looked like 1/32 of an inch!! You could run your thumb down the blade without fear.
I started out with the 1 inch belt sander to set the edge, then went on to the sharpmaker with diamond rods, medium rods and then fine rods. Just for fun, though, I did something different than I usually do. I did some liberal stopping on an old chromium oxide loaded belt that I have free-hanging from a shelf next to my grinder. I did each step as normal, but stropped maybe 15 times each side in between, finally finishing with a good stropping session after the fine rods. The results were EXCELLENT!!
The knife was as sharp as a 2 X 4 when I started, so I knew things could only get better, but for some reason, this worked out REALLY well:thumbup: I'm not knowledgeable to tell you the reasons why this worked so well, but I assume the stropping between steps helped to remove any remaining bits of wire edge so each step starts out with a clean edge, but I'm not entirely sure. Others may be able to add their input.
Anyway, as you can see from the pic, the knife now makes short work of a free hanging piece of paper like it's not even there, and hairs will jump off your arm like crickets I think I'll tell my in-laws to go ahead and get the Shuns, as long as they send all the old knives over to me!!!
-Jon
She asked me to help her pick out some Shun Elites the other day because all of their kitchen knives were way too old and worthless. Granted, they love to get new stuff just like anyone else, but I said, first let me see what I can do with one of them, you know just for fun.I took home their 7 inch Santoku from J.A. Henckels. I'm not sure exactly what steel it is, but I believe it's something close to what Wusthof uses, which is X50 CR Mo V15.
Anyway, like I said, my mother in law could dull ZDP-189 in 3 minutes while cutting up celery sticks
, and this Henckels was no exception. The edge was so flat that I could see it with my naked eye. I know it wasn't, but it looked like 1/32 of an inch!! You could run your thumb down the blade without fear.I started out with the 1 inch belt sander to set the edge, then went on to the sharpmaker with diamond rods, medium rods and then fine rods. Just for fun, though, I did something different than I usually do. I did some liberal stopping on an old chromium oxide loaded belt that I have free-hanging from a shelf next to my grinder. I did each step as normal, but stropped maybe 15 times each side in between, finally finishing with a good stropping session after the fine rods. The results were EXCELLENT!!
The knife was as sharp as a 2 X 4 when I started, so I knew things could only get better, but for some reason, this worked out REALLY well:thumbup: I'm not knowledgeable to tell you the reasons why this worked so well, but I assume the stropping between steps helped to remove any remaining bits of wire edge so each step starts out with a clean edge, but I'm not entirely sure. Others may be able to add their input.
Anyway, as you can see from the pic, the knife now makes short work of a free hanging piece of paper like it's not even there, and hairs will jump off your arm like crickets
I think I'll tell my in-laws to go ahead and get the Shuns, as long as they send all the old knives over to me!!!-Jon
