We gave away one of our best kitchen knives the other day. We still have plenty of them, but now that the nicest one was gone, it was time to try to make the remainder cut better. They mostly had an edge that was far too thick.
One of them, a bit blade designed for chopping on a board, was not sharpened right to the handle. Why on earth do they leave a 'safe' unsharpened portion about half an inch long on a knife like this??? It is a nuisance when chopping cabbage for coleslaw etc.
Anyway, I got a full bucket of water for cooling ...and my 4" disk grinder and gave all of them a going over. I gave them all a lick on a medium stone, then finished them on a Tri-Angle Sharpmaker that one of my step-daughter's suitors sent us from the USA. I am looking forward to preparing the next meal now.
That's the chit-chat out of the way. Now for the more interesting stuff.
I once worked in a big fish-processing factory. There were hundreds of knives on site...conventional hand-held ones and circular blades that fitted our Baader fish filleting machines. As a fitter it was my job to sharpen these circular blades. They had to be rotated by hand against a pair of fine grindstones in a purpose-built machine. I asked how I could tell if they were sharp enough, and the best advice I got was that they would catch on my thumbnail when I dragged the nail lightly over the edge.
Flesh recovery as a percentage of the whole weight of a fish was a big deal at this factory, so knife usage was studied quite a bit. Many of the filleters would have filleting knives with the bevel ground on just one side. A right-handed filleter would bevel the left side of the knife.
Naturally I obtained one of these knives for my own use.
My family have filleted heaps of fish. We stay on an island, and at the beach is an old shed with one of these filleting knives jammed in behind a dwang inside the door of the shed. The stone that the knife gets sharpened on mostly is an old broken bit of what appears to have been a medium grit, square, scythe sharpening stone. It is not the ultimate in sharpening tools, but it has served us for many years. Just a few wipes down the blade occasionally and the knife works well.
Anybody else bevel a filleting knife on just one side?
One of them, a bit blade designed for chopping on a board, was not sharpened right to the handle. Why on earth do they leave a 'safe' unsharpened portion about half an inch long on a knife like this??? It is a nuisance when chopping cabbage for coleslaw etc.
Anyway, I got a full bucket of water for cooling ...and my 4" disk grinder and gave all of them a going over. I gave them all a lick on a medium stone, then finished them on a Tri-Angle Sharpmaker that one of my step-daughter's suitors sent us from the USA. I am looking forward to preparing the next meal now.
That's the chit-chat out of the way. Now for the more interesting stuff.
I once worked in a big fish-processing factory. There were hundreds of knives on site...conventional hand-held ones and circular blades that fitted our Baader fish filleting machines. As a fitter it was my job to sharpen these circular blades. They had to be rotated by hand against a pair of fine grindstones in a purpose-built machine. I asked how I could tell if they were sharp enough, and the best advice I got was that they would catch on my thumbnail when I dragged the nail lightly over the edge.
Flesh recovery as a percentage of the whole weight of a fish was a big deal at this factory, so knife usage was studied quite a bit. Many of the filleters would have filleting knives with the bevel ground on just one side. A right-handed filleter would bevel the left side of the knife.
Naturally I obtained one of these knives for my own use.
My family have filleted heaps of fish. We stay on an island, and at the beach is an old shed with one of these filleting knives jammed in behind a dwang inside the door of the shed. The stone that the knife gets sharpened on mostly is an old broken bit of what appears to have been a medium grit, square, scythe sharpening stone. It is not the ultimate in sharpening tools, but it has served us for many years. Just a few wipes down the blade occasionally and the knife works well.
Anybody else bevel a filleting knife on just one side?
