I take my knives to a professional* knife sharpener once a year and use a honing rod in between sharpenings. A while back, we bought good knives and tried to sharpen them ourselves. Because we really didn’t know what we were doing, over time we pretty much ruined them.
We bought better knives and they are a delight to use.
*old, disabled Veteran who understands why I have him sharpen my dad’s pocket knife with the concave blade yearly.
I’m sorry you found it lacking. If you are careful to hold the blade vertical it seems difficult to mess it up. A friend tried mine and immediately bought his own. At the time he was traveling in his RV and when he went to a new RV park and folks found he could sharpen kitchen knives he was quite popular.
Ditto. Very scary sharp.
I asked about knife sharpening a year and a half ago. In the end I stuck with using whetstones, partly out of an expectation (from YouTube videos) that this method could deliver really good results, and partly because I was interested in learning something new. While I can now get a pretty good edge, I’ve never been able to duplicate the extreme out-of-the-box factory sharpness on the nice knife I bought two years ago, so I’m interested in upgrading.
It looks to me like the Worksharp is one of the few devices that strokes the metal in an appropriate direction, i.e. perpendicular to the edge of the blade. On top of that, it includes super-fine abrasive belts that look like they can give you a very smooth edge that reduces friction/grabbiness (like a razor blade, rather than a very sharp wood saw). Based on the reviews here and in the actual performance shown in the video @running_coach linked to, I’m now leaning toward getting the Worksharp.
I suggest that you spend a bit more and get the Work Sharp Ken Onion Edition. The belts are wider which makes for faster sharpening.
For simple, no-/minimal-skill sharpening, I recommend the Lansky C-Sharp and QSharp. The QSharp has carbide blades and will put a new edge on your knife, and the C-Sharp has ceramic blades to finish/maintain it. Less than $20 each, easy to use, and small enough to fit in your pocket. They won’t get your knifes shave-sharp, but they will be plenty sharp enough for vegetables.
I’ve got a Work Sharp. They’ve made it as idiot-proof as is possible, but there’s still definitely a learning curve. You WILL round off the tips of the first few knives you pull through it, so practice on something you don’t care about first.
Another vote for the Spyderco Sharpmaker; been using it for years.
It’s not hard to use but you will have to read the instructions or spend some time to watch the video to learn how. Once you understand it it is pretty quick and easy. Can do serrated knives and scissors, too.
Short of fancy machines or developing skill with a whetstone, this is the best knife sharpener you can buy, and it only costs $6.95 from Amazon. $6.95 is high, you can find these for less, often on an impulse buy rack at the grocery store.
It is likely with anything fancier you’ll excessively grind your knives and even make them duller. It’s only disadvantage is that you need a flat surface at least twice as long as the knife blade+ 1 handle length to use it.
According to the reviews, that particular one has nothing on the wheels for grip to allow it to roll.
This purchaser, however, should be banned from handling sharp objects.
Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2019
The sharpens very well any tool I need sharpening.
The wheels are knurled. I guess it could slip on a slick surface. It would help if it had some rubbery stuff instead of hard plastic on the wheels, but I used one of those for years at home without a problem.
I did watch the video. The only explanation is that I suck at it. These are knives that haven’t been properly sharpened in years so maybe I need more strokes.
< backs slowly away >
Yep. Stroke it some more to get a good start.
I just checked and Amazon tells me I bought this thing in 2008. Some of the knives I started with had been in the drawer for (at least) 40 years. It took a while but it definitely got them very sharp – including a cheapo old serrated knife that my mother probably bought in the 1950s.
Once that initial grind was over the things all sharpen very quickly; ten or twenty quick strokes and the tomatoes can get super thin with no squishing. They really can get sharp enough to shave my arm, even considering that they are all very old nothing special knives.
I’m very happy with it. I feel it was worth the time learning to use it.
That tool has four sharpening angles. How do I know what angle my knives are at before I try to sharpen them?
Most kitchen knives are going to be roughly 40-60 degrees inclusive, so 20, 25, or 30. Of course it’s easy to remove metal, and impossible to add metal back (well, not impossible, but certainly not worthwhile), so if you’re unsure, you want to start big and work down. Most kitchen knives are going to be just right at 25-30. I’d only use the 17 for boning or paring knives.
I’ve also got one of those. I generally find the “blade grinder” attachment works best for my use.
I’m knife and sharpening systems poor.
I have one of those Lanskys and one of those with the sandpaper-y belts. (We’re not at home so I can’t go look.) I use the Lansky most times, at 20 Degrees. and it gets our knives more than sharp enough for our purposes. I don’t generally want or need to shave with kitchen implements.
The trend these days among expensive chef’s knives, following the success of Japanese models, is for ~15 degree angles.
The breakdown used to be that high-end Japanese knives were thinner and made from harder steels. So they came sharper, cut with less resistance and more precisely and held an edge longer, but were rather more fragile. By contrast the main high-end German companies like Henckels and Wusthof were cast from softer steels and had edges more around 20 degrees - they were tougher but had to be sharpened more often.
The Japanese model has largely won out and now the German manufacturers have mostly switched to thinner blades as well to compete.