Can we talk about people who sharpen their knives wrong on purpose?

I swear, every other week some home cook comes into my shop with a $200 knife that looks like it went through a blender. They keep running it through those pull-through sharpeners that rip the edge off at a crazy angle. Last Tuesday a guy showed me his Wusthof that had a 25 degree bevel on one side and 15 on the other because he kept swapping hands. I told him to just use a whetstone and he looked at me like I had three heads. How do you spend that much on a blade and then treat it like a butter knife? Does anyone else have customers or coworkers who refuse to learn basic stone technique and then complain about tearing meat?

4 comments

4 Comments

knight.dylan23d ago

Can't some folks just admit a whetstone isn't that hard?

linda_dixon4923d ago

Yeah exactly, it's not rocket science but you gotta get the angle right or you'll just mess up your edge. A lot of folks overthink it and end up making it harder than it actually is. Just keep a consistent angle, use light pressure, and don't rush it.

rowan96923d ago

You ever try sharpening with a really cheap stone? I did once. It chipped the edge bad. Switched to a basic Norton and it was night and day. Just soaked it for ten minutes, kept the angle around 20 degrees, and did ten slow passes. Fixed my kitchen knife in like fifteen minutes. No stress.

sandra_bennett5923d ago

Tbh that cheap stone thing is a lesson everyone learns once. I grabbed a dollar store puck once and it left deep scratches in a vintage paring knife I actually cared about. Total nightmare. So yeah, @knight.dylan is right, a whetstone isn't hard once you've got one that actually works. I did the exact same thing rowan did with a Norton and a cheap kitchen knife, ten minutes later it was slicing paper. No stress at all once you stop fighting bad gear.