Wife has a high end culinary set!

[eKretz]

Noob pwnage, lol.

 

[Sadden]

At best she has a set of German knives and this "sharpening rod" is nothing more than a honing rod. It does not sharpen knives and if it made that much of a improvement then you probably have a lot of dull knives you use on a regular basis.

Personally I avoid honing rods like the plague, they ruin geometry and fatigue the edge causing poor edge retention. Use it all you like but stones are a much better option.

Spot on.

It wouldn't even make that much of a difference unless you were using a ceramic or diamond type rod (not gonna go look up what you have sorry)

Cost is a subjective thing , I have knives that cost well in to the $xxxx range , and some would call those expensive , and other not so much. Too me they are , being a spry young 22 year old.

One can buy a decent quality gyuto for a couple hundred , but that is neither here nor there...

 

[HeavyHanded]

This is a pretty interesting chart I found on www.cookingforengineers.com, gives a better insight into how this all works and why it doesn't on so many other pieces of cutlery. I bring this up as I recall sharpening my Mother in Law's nearly 50 yr old set of Sabatiers that were so low RC a SiC stone was massive overkill, I wound up sharpening one of the pieces (butter knife dull to start) with nothing more than black compound and a few drops of oil on a sheet of paper. On steel with this low an RC, is possible to "file" a very nice edge complete with clean parallel scratch patterns using a grooved steel, and the smooth can finish it off to a hair whittling edge - on the right knife steel. And on something in the mid to upper 40s RC, a little work hardening is not a bad thing for edge retention.

Personally I don't care for them myself anymore, but have used them for a number of years on cheaper cutlery and yard tools (made my grass hook frightfully sharp) - they work fine if you understand the application.

Table 1 - Selected Knife and Sharpening Steel Hardness
---------------------------------------- HRC

Wusthof Classic Paring-------SS-----------56.5
Wusthof Dreizack Paring-----SS------------54.1
Sabatier 4-Star 10-in. Chef's CS-----------58.3
Sabatier 4-Star 14-in. Chef's CS-----------37.8
Sabatier Two Lions Cleaver SS-----------46.6
Sabatier 4-Star 6-in. Nogent SS-----------47.1
Hoffritz (Henckel's) 8-in. Chef SS-----------50.9
Anton-Wingen Othello Slicer SS-----------41.7


Sharpening Steels
----------------------Equivalent HRC

Wusthof---------------- 60.1
Hoffman---------------- 61.2
F. Dick------------------61.9
Sabatier----------------62.1