What is a good knife to own - revisited

Hi folks,
I get the question often, what is the best knife, in fact, I get it all the time. I think that people feel like I judge them if they bring me an inexpensive knife or they just don't feel it is worth getting sharpened.

First of all, I don't judge people if they bring me a $7.00 knife, in fact I admire them because they appreciate the value of a sharp knife. 

Here are some good knives to get, and think about what you are cooking too, if you spend 90 percent of your time cutting up vegetables, you may like a Nakiri, (veggie knife).

8 inch chef knife: (Everyone should have one of these).

-Grohmann;
-Global;
-Shun;
-Henckels:
-Wusthof;
- MAC

I sharpen these brands often, they are all good knives and if you were to ask me which is the best one to buy I would choose a MAC or Henckels Twin Cermax (high end Henckels). 

If you cut a lot of bread, purchase an inexpensive serrated knife and replace it every year.

Global Knives

Japanese hand made Nakiri (vegetable) knife

MAC Chef knife

The secret to knife happiness is to have it sharpened, regardless of the brand or how much was spent  on the knife, there is just nothing like cutting up food with a very sharp knife. All these are good knives, but unless they are sharp, they are really no better than a 10 dollar razor sharp knife.

Thanks for reading this, I truly appreciate it.

Peter

My knife only cost $14.00 why pay $10.00 to get it sharpened?

This  is a good question and it's a common one.  It deserves a good answer and I have one so bear with me.  The answer involves much more than just a "because it is dull" response, please have a read:

First of all, not many people make the right knife choice when purchasing one.
You need to have a sharpening plan when you buy a knife, regardless of the price. Let's say you went nuts and purchased a $400 chef knife, it was sharper than your wildest dreams and made everything you did in the kitchen better.
Now I on the other hand got lured into the $30.00 Henckels Chef knife I saw at a store and I knew it was a good deal because it was a Henckels.
The truth of the matter is that both knives will become very dull and they will be dull in a short period of time. In fact, I would say that $400.00 knife will get dull more quickly. You will be some amazed at how beautifully it cuts that you will be slicing everything you can get your hands one, you'll go to your neighbours house and cut their vegetables up.  In other words, you're going to put a lot more wear and tear on the edge, it's good, that is what you are supposed to do.

Whatever knife you choose to purchase, you need to know that it will get dull, ( a knife worth three thousand dollars will get dull), so you should have a plan to get it sharpened again.

You have options and none of them include a machine of any type, unless it is a belt sander with some sharpening belts, you can get a knife very sharp with one of those. No..I am talking about gadgets, in fact, if it says "knife sharpener" on it, it is not worth the money, it isn't a knife sharpener.

Purchase a knife and purchase a Japanese Water Stone and learn to sharpen your own knife. Or just give it to me of course but really, why spend $400 or $150 on a knife if you are going to let it get dull.
You can buy a nice knife and a 1,000 grit stone and keep that knife razor sharp for many many years.

What about that $14.00 knife, why would you pay me $10.00 to sharpen it?

Well  you can sharpen it yourself, or you can pay the 10 bucks and have it sharper than new. Or you can throw it out and purchase another $14.00 knife and do that every 3 months. However, that knife won't be very sharp when you buy it. A $400.00 knife will be sharp but again, it will be dull soon.

You want to pay me because I can make that knife sharper than you would believe, you'll love it, you'll feel good about it and you haven't thrown anything away.  Now if you really want to feel good about yourself, imagine sharpening it yourself on a waterstone?

(By the way, not all Henckels knives are created equal and again that is a good thing, but there are 11 different types of Henckels, the top three are very nice knives)

Don't feel bad because you have inexpensive knives, feel bad because they are dull and you're not doing anything about it. The last thing you should do is go buy another new knife, more expensive.....remember, that one will get just as dull.

I'm here for you.

Cool Eh?

Sharpening serrated knives

This is an explanation on how to very inexpensively sharpen a serrated knife, it isn't exactly how I do it but it is close enough and with practice it should work for you. The idea here is to give you an option that is easy to do and affordable.

Remember, you need to form a burr on the flat side of the knife, i.e. the back of the blade by sharpening each serration separately. I didn't invent this, I got the idea from Ben Dale who created the Edge Pro. I have modified it slightly but I don't take any credit for it.

What you need: Here is a wooden dowel or a ceramic rod which is to the right of the wooden dowel in the picture.  Also some wet/dry sandpaper which I use dry.  (about 5 bucks for the dowel and sandpaper which can be re-used)

Just wrap the 320 grit around the dowel and hold in place with your finger, it is easy, no need to adhere it to the dowel, let's make this quick and easy and efficient. (Start with the coarse grit paper and work your way up, you can go as high as you like, I usually stop at 1,000 grit if using sandpaper. (I often use ceramics for this job)

Now to hold the blade, and again making it quick and easy, I just put it on the edge of a telephone book which was on the counter top. It just gives you access to the handle and provides a good firm platform to hold the blade. 

Now run the dowel down each serration at the correct angle. You can use the sharpie trick on the serrations to find the angle but it is pretty simple to determine the angle, about 45 deg. You just use a trailing motion on each serration, do a count of 8. You need to repeat the process with each separate grit of sandpaper of course.  (The count of 8 is not critical, use 10 if you like)

Assuming you have a burr on the flat back side, you need to remove it and here I am holding the stone over the flat side at about 5 deg or less to remove the burr. If you haven't formed a burr, go back and try again. You are not achieving anything if you haven't formed a burr, i.e. removed that fatigued metal.

This is just the quick and inexpensive but very effective method. You can send the serrated knives somewhere to be sharpened professionally I suppose but why.

Good luck, have patience. 

Let's talk about serrated knives

I just cut and paste the info below from wikipedia  to get things started


A serrated blade has a cutting edge that has many small points of contact with the material being cut. By having less contact area than a smooth blade, the applied pressure at each point of contact is relatively greater and the points of contact are at a sharper angle to the material being cut. This causes a cutting action that involves many small splits in the surface of the material being cut, which cumulatively serve to cut the material along the line of the blade.

So, what about serrated knives: 

There is no doubt that they excel (when sharp) at cutting bread, especially crusty breads. This is because of the multiple points of contact and those multiple pressure points, which are sharp doing their job.  However, when they get dull, it can be a challenge to sharpen them but not as difficult as you may think.

However, if you don't have someone to sharpen them for you and you don't want to sharpen them yourself you are stuck with a dull knife right? (no different than all the other dull knives that many folks use)

I recommend that if  you like the serrated knives, then don't purchase expensive ones. Get a cheap one for $20.00 and just replace it when it is dull. These knives stay sharper for a longer period than regular knives, so you can a year out of one, just throw it away and get a new one. 

Now.....let's say you have gone out and purchased a beautiful MAC serrated knife for 200 dollars and it's getting dull, or a Shun, they are quite beautiful knives and obviously you are not going to throw those away.

How do you sharpen them (besides letting me do it of course)?

Here is the quick and dirty of one way to do it but if you don't have the tools, well, you're going to have to send it to me or someone else.

Here is a simple and cheap way. Get yourself a wooden dowel the same size as the serrations, i.e the diameter of the dowel is such that it will fit nicely inside a serration on your knife.  NOW get some wet/dry sandpaper in various grits, 320, 600 and 1000 grit. Not expensive at all.
Now hold the blade on the edge of a table or counter top in such a fashion that the edge is hanging over the side but you can grab the handle so it would be on a corner for example.

I will get some pictures posted soon.

Now you just run that dowel with the sandpaper (320 first) wrapped around it and you hold it at an angle that matches the serrations and run the dowel down the serrated side. Basically, you are sanding off the dull parts of the serrations and you do this on every single serration with the different grits. Do the whole blade with the 320 grit then repeat with the other grits.

Now, the goal is to for a burr on the back (flat) side of the knife, if you have done that, you are going to have a sharp knife assuming you remove burr and that is the tricky part if you don't have water stone.  If you did have a water stone you could flip the knife over and just carefully run the stone over the back of the knife at a very low angle to remove the burr. 
If you had a ceramic rod you could do the same but you need to remove that burr. 

I will publish some pictures that illustrates what I am talking about. 

(Now you know why I say to buy an inexpensive serrated knife)

What about ceramic knives

I think at some point most of us are lured into the idea of using a ceramic blade. I know I was and I picked one up ages ago. I believe that the best ceramic knives are made by a company called Kyocera but you can also get them at Paderno in Bayer's Lake and many other spots.
They are not expensive and some may like the very light feel to them.

I HATE them, Im just putting it out there right now, I would never own another one. I didn't find it particularly sharp when new and they are brutal to sharpen. Now I think Kyocera offers free sharpening if you want to ship the knife there. I just don't know why anyone would want one with all the beautiful steel knives out there that are easy to sharpen and are much much sharper.

Now if you have ceramic knives and you love them, as I suspect you do, I can sharpen them. I had to purchase some special diamond plates for my Edge Pro but it isn't something I enjoy doing.

Now having said that, I do believe a new ceramic knife will do a very nice job in the kitchen on both veggies and proteins, they are easy to keep clean and will likely hold their edge for a long time. I think that would be the one advantage that I can think of, a sharp ceramic knife will stay sharp longer than a sharp steel knife.

However, once they are dull, they will stay dull for a long long time.

This is a ceramic knife that I repaired and sharpened, it took me forever to repair the edge and then even longer to sharpen, I mean longer than forever.

The funny thing about sharpening a ceramic is that there is no burr formation, you will NOT get a burr.

(I have never seen a serrated ceramic knife.....I wonder if there are any)

Did I tell you I don't like serrated knives either, I should talk about that.

I appreciate you visiting my blog.