My knife angle gauge sat in a drawer for 6 months before I used it

I bought a little angle gauge at a kitchen supply shop in Portland back in March and just left it in the drawer. Last week I finally sat down with my whetstone and measured my actual sharpening angle. Turns out I was holding around 10 degrees on my chef's knife, way too flat for the edge to hold up. After three passes at 15 degrees and a quick strop, the difference was immediate. It took me about 40 minutes total to fix a habit I'd been fighting for 2 years. Has anyone else had a moment where the right tool was sitting there the whole time and you just ignored it?

2 comments

2 Comments

jade_jenkins1mo ago

My buddy Mike had a digital caliper for a year before realizing it measured his knife bevels.

joel_jones1mo ago

The real wake up call for me wasn't the gauge itself, it was the scratch pattern on my stone. Once you measure and see you were way off, you start noticing how uneven your bevel actually was. @jade_jenkins mentioning calipers makes me think about how we just assume our hands are consistent, but they never are. The muscle memory you build up over years is basically lying to you the whole time. That 40 minutes you spent is nothing compared to the two years of edges that rolled over on the first tomato. The part nobody talks about is how measuring once makes you second guess every freehand pass you ever make after that, which is probably a good thing.