A friend of mine is a culinary arts student, and a few weeks ago he showed me a sharpening steel he had purchased. This thing is amazing, and I have been trying to find one ever since to no avail. It is not round in cross section like a conventional steel, but rather like a very flattened oval shape. It seemed to be coated with industrial diamond dust or somesuch material, and (he said) cost about $75. I suspect it cost more than that.
Anyone out there have any first hand knowledge in this area?
I had one from Ikea for a while; it only cost $20 or so. It’s no substitute for proper sharpening, especially if you have good knives. However, it’ll keep knives “sharp enough” for a longer time between sharpening. I found it particularly good for keeping my extra-shitty cheapo knife set sharp enough to be useful.
OTOH, the relatively course diamond in a steel like this will destroy a perfectly razor-sharp, mirror-polished edge. So I would recommend against these if you have good knives that are professionally sharpened on a regular basis (or are an obsessive geek about using your collection of ultra-fine sharpening stones).
But a cheap diamond steel like this is an improvement on no sharpening at all, or a lot of other cheap sharpening gadgets. Come to think of it, this would make a good gift to my in-laws, who use some POS sharpener that keeps their knives butter-knife sharp.
That was my basic starting point. None that I saw have the flattened-oval cross section that I really liked.
I have good knives that I do get sharpened professionally every few years. Some I have had for over 30 years. I try to use the sharpening steel every few uses when I’m cooking something more than a salad.
This DMT diamond sharpening steel isn’t oval like you ask for, but I would recommend it because it has an extra-fine diamond grit that’s good enough for final honing of any blade. It definitely won’t damage a knife edge. (FWIW, I use a 1200 grit DMT bench stone on my knives.)
There are a number of oval-cross-section diamond sharpening steels like this one from Henckels. I hesitate to recommend it, however, since I don’t know how coarse or fine the diamond is on that particular steel. My cheapo Ikea diamond hone is noticeably coarser than my DMT 600 grit stone. That’ll degrade a professionally sharpened edge. However, it ought to be good enough to maintain a decent edge on a knife that’s starting to get a bit dull between professional sharpenings.
When I did that search I saw three different ones that were a flat oval. I think the F. Dick model that Furious_Marmot noted is the one I’ve been familiar with the longest, and is the one Alton Brown recommended in one of his books.
As I had hoped, you all have given me much to think about, and research further. It hadn’t even occured to me that the sharpening steel could actually DAMAGE the knife edge.
It appears my friend had a *fluted *steel…and the search continues…
“Damage” is perhaps too strong a term. A medium-coarseness diamond sharpener will make your knives medium-sharp and give it a sort of micro-serration. It’ll do that regardless of whether you started with a dull, chipped blade, or a finely honed razor sharp blade. That’ll make for a very serviceable knife, and one that’s a lot more useful than the neglected knives that are in many kitchens.
Ikea has them, $15. We replace it every year or two.
The biggest disadvantage is that if you use it regularly (and that’s the point), your nice straight blades will start to have a curve near the hilt, from where you dig in on each pass. The fix for that is to occasionally have them done by a pro, or get a good whetstone to use periodically. It took several years for the curve to appear on our knives.
