Sharpening things
Anna had been cutting tomatoes with a knife that could not cut a tomato, and had adapted by pressing harder, which is how people cut themselves. Ten minutes on a stone and it is a different knife.
Anna was cutting a tomato and the knife was skidding off the skin, so she pressed harder.
That’s the whole reason for this one. A blunt knife is the dangerous one — a sharp knife goes where you point it, and a blunt one slides off and goes wherever the pressure sends it, which is usually a thumb.
The kit
A two-sided water stone. It is the only thing I would add to the three tools for a kitchen. Ours cost about twelve pounds — a King, which I mention because someone will ask and not because anybody has given us anything — and it has done every knife in this house for six years and is barely dished.
Soak it in water for ten minutes until it stops bubbling. Then put it on a damp tea towel on the worktop, because a stone that slides about is how you learn about angles the hard way.
The angle
Fifteen degrees, roughly. Take a right angle, halve it, halve it again. That’s about right.
What matters is not the number, it’s holding whatever you’ve got. Every stroke the same. A consistently slightly wrong angle gives you a sharp knife; a wandering perfect angle gives you a rounded edge and forty minutes gone.
I hold the handle in my right and put two fingers of my left flat on the blade, and I keep my wrists locked and move from the shoulder. If your wrist is doing the work, the angle is changing.
The burr
This is the bit nobody told me for years and it turns the whole job from guesswork into something you can actually finish.
Work one side, slowly, covering the length of the blade, and every so often run a thumb across the edge on the other side — across it, not along it, please. At some point you’ll feel a tiny rough lip that runs the whole length. That’s the burr, and it’s the two metal faces having finally met.
When the burr runs the whole way, that side is done. Not before. Turn over, do the same, then a dozen light passes on the fine side to take the burr off.
That’s it. That’s the whole job, about ten minutes for a knife that’s been neglected.
Leave the slurry
The grey muck that builds up on the stone is doing the cutting. Don’t rinse it off halfway through like I did for the first year. Keep it wet, keep the slurry.
The pull-through
There’s one in the drawer. It came with something.
It works, in the sense that a knife goes in blunt and comes out cutting. What it’s doing is dragging two carbide teeth down the edge and scraping metal off, and you can see the swarf. It’s fast and it’s expensive in a way that doesn’t show up for two years.
If it’s that or a knife that can’t cut a tomato, use it. But a twelve-pound stone will see out every knife in the house and probably you.
The steel is not a sharpener
Common one, this. The steel that came with the block doesn’t sharpen anything — it straightens an edge that’s rolled over to one side, which is why a steeled knife feels great for a day and then doesn’t.
Steel it often. Stone it two or three times a year. When steeling stops making a difference, that’s the stone telling you.
Two knives
Nobody needs eight sharp knives.
We have a big one and a small one and they get done together, twice a year, and everything else in that block is for opening post. I spent a whole evening once sharpening a bread knife, which has scallops, which you cannot sharpen on a flat stone, and which I did anyway for about forty minutes.
And learn on the cheap one. Not the good one. I learned on the good one.
Things people email to ask
- How do you sharpen a kitchen knife at home?
- A two-sided water stone, soaked for ten minutes, sat on a damp cloth so it cannot slide. Hold the blade at roughly fifteen degrees, push it away from you along the stone in slow strokes covering the whole edge, and keep going on that side until you can feel a fine burr on the other. Then turn it over and repeat, then finish on the fine side.
- What angle should you sharpen a knife at?
- About fifteen degrees for a European kitchen knife — roughly half of forty-five, which you can eyeball by halving a right angle twice. The exact number matters far less than holding the same angle for every stroke. A consistently slightly-wrong angle produces a sharp knife; a varying perfect angle produces a rounded edge and a wasted afternoon.
- Are pull-through knife sharpeners any good?
- They are fast and they are hard on a blade. The carbide teeth scrape metal away rather than grinding an edge, so you get something that cuts for a fortnight at the cost of material you never get back. If it is that or nothing, use it — a blunt knife is more dangerous than a badly sharpened one — but a ten-pound stone will outlast every knife in the house.
- How often should you sharpen kitchen knives?
- Properly, two or three times a year for a household knife in regular use, with a steel used in between. The steel is not sharpening — it straightens an edge that has rolled over, which is why a knife that has been steeled feels better for a day and then does not. When the steel stops helping, it is time for the stone.
Tom
Carpenter. Writes when something in the house breaks and he has an opinion about why. Types with two fingers, which is why there are fewer of his.
If this was any use
Three tools fix nine things out of ten
People ask me what to buy and expect a list of twenty. It’s three, plus a torch, and the money is better spent on one decent version of each than on a set of forty in a plastic case.
The chair I fixed four times
Three of those fixes were wrong and one of them was wrong in a way that took a year to show up. What I should have done on the first evening, written down so I stop doing it.
The washing machine wasn’t broken
It wouldn’t drain, it was eleven years old, and we’d already looked at new ones. Then I took the filter out. There was a 2p, a hair clip and something I have chosen not to identify.
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