General knife talk

[blades]

I use the Edge-Pro doohickey to sharpen my knives. and I keep a log of what 'settings' aka 'angles'
I use a 10x loupe to see/evaluate what I'm doing/have done.

for 10 years I did the free hand stone thing - never managed to impress myself.
the Edge-Pro is far superior for establishing a consistent edge - and the cutting performance of the same knives speaks to the doohickey's ability to produce a bad-xss edge.

there are any number of similar sharpening gadgets. since I don't sharpen knives on a weekly/daily basis and don't have 30 years to perfect my skills . . . these styles of guided sharpening devices are a real boon.

chef's: 10 + 8 + 6
slicers: 10 + 8 + 6
plus santoku, boning, , , and misc paring, etc etc

I too use the edge pro. A guided system like that maintains a consistent angle throughout the process and produces a better edge in less time. My kitchen knives are all Japanese made with thin hard blades and I use 15 degrees per side for all of them except for cleavers which I grind to 25 degrees per side.

 

[billmarsano]

I've searched for a general thread just for knives and couldn't find one, so I opened one for nice conversations and exchange of informations about knives.

Here is my small collection
View attachment 55586
Thomas bread knife~ 40€, Tramontina bread knife?, Wüsthof chef knife ~65€, very cheap chef-knife knife~5€, Zwilling petty-knife~45€, WMF Santoku~75€, Fiskars deboner ~30€, Wüsthof office knife 5€, Tucan office knife 9€, from top to bottom.

As a german, I'm very proud of our knives, but in my opinion every knife is a good knife and every knife maker is a good knife maker. There are some cool knives out there, but they are to expensive for me, right now I'm looking for an office knife with a length of 12cm.

What knives do you have, are you sharpening them by yourself, what kind of knife would you like to buy in the future?
Stay healthy

I’ve cooked for my family off and on since the 1980s, and often do the knife work when my wife, a much better cook, is at the ‘piano,’ which is French chef-talk for stove. It pains me to see her use a knife, but you don’t stay married long without being flexible, so over the years I’ve let her have a couple of those horrible pull-through sharpeners, her own knives and her own way. I have on occasion put temptation in her path and have been pleased to see her move up from doing everything with a paring knife to using a 6” utility knife (now called for some reason a ‘petty’ by fanboys) that I slyly left within reach.

My main blade is a Zwilling Pro 8” w/a blade width at the heel of 2-3/8”—perfect for scooping “off the board and into the pot.” (Too bad, but I don’t think Z’s Pro 8s are that wide anymore.) It’s about 10 years old and it has never been sharpened—and I believe that unless you are abusive to it, your chef’s knife, too, can avoid sharpening. What I do is steel my knives often. I use a 14” Z steel, very fine grained., that’s now about 40 years old. Four to six strokes a side, edge toward me, followed by reverse steeling: edge still toward me, but sweeping the knife away. It’s like stropping. Oddly, I’ve never heard of anyone else, online or off, doing it. I think it helps.

Try it for yourself. Steel your knife as usual and have a go at some sheets of newsprint (never printer paper, please). If satisfied, go back to the steel for a little reverse steeling—say four strokes a side—and then the newsprint again. The power of suggestion is strong but I’m pretty sure I’m right when I say the first thing I notice is that the cutting SOUNDS a little different. And the cutting itself is improved, too.

I also do, occasionally, a little ‘real’ stropping. I use an old 40” leather belt loaded with neatsfoot and mink oils. I keep it semi-slack, not taut. I like the blade to ride along comfortably.

And that’s it. Ten years of even light use and NO sharpening stones? Give it a try.