Hey bit-tech, Merry Christmas everyone. Fed up of having blunt and notched knives in the house, want to get a good sharpener. Suggestions? Thinking up to about £20. None of the knives we've got are super duper ones, they just all gone blunt. Cheers
Bought one of these recently, have sharpened everything from knives to mower blades. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sol-Inge-Multipurpose-Knife-Sharpener-Tool/dp/B00C70L05A
It's not a bad wee thing if you avoid the carbide pull through, the rod is handy for serrated blades. I use https://www.heinnie.com/lansky-universal-sharpening-systems if a blade is proper banjaxed. Or, a https://www.heinnie.com/lansky-turn-box-4-rod for more routine sharpening.
We've got an bench grinder in the shed I could use, but I know I wouldn't get a very straight edge on it, Think I'll get a whetstone.
Get a honing steel as well as a whetstone - often incorrectly called a sharpening steel, or simply a steel. You won't - or shouldn't - use a whetstone very often, only when you need to put a new edge on the blade. Maybe once or twice a year at most, depending on how hard it gets used. A honing steel, on the other hand, should be used as often as possible. I've got a set of kitchen knives made of German X50CrMoV15 steel (see here http://zknives.com/knives/kitchen/misc/articles/kkchoser/kksteelp2.shtml for info) and I use a honing steel every single time I use one of them - it makes such a huge difference to the blade. I haven't even opened the packaging on my whetstone, the knives still feel just as sharp as when I bought them ~6 months ago. I'd really like a kitchen knife made of high-carbon steel, but I can't justify >£80-£100 on one single knife!
I know the knife obsessives will hate it, but I use a cheap stick-on V-form sharpener in the kitchen, brilliant purchase.
To be honest it keeps the knives sharp - I'm only using a set of Sabatiers, the handles will fall apart before the blades are ruined.
Is the honing steel the round bar that looks like a file that you get with some knife sets? If so we've got one of those, but the knifes are so notched and crappy that you'd be going for hours with it,
That's the one. Once you've sharpened a knife with a whetstone (or whatever) you shouldn't need to sharpen it again for a long time if you use a steel regularly. The steel doesn't actually "sharpen" - i.e., grind away material to create an edge. It straightens all those little burrs and bends that you can't see on the edge of the blade: http://kitchenknifeguru.com/honesandsteels/whats-a-honing-steel/. It does keep the knife sharp, but it doesn't do it by grinding material away. I bought a knife sharpener a few years ago because I was sick of using blunt knives. Then I got sick of having to sharpen my knives all the time because they couldn't hold an edge. Then I realised what I was doing wrong .
The Spyderco sharpmaker is still the king; any idiot can put a razor edge on a knife with one. I've been sharpening knives with every method going for 14 years now and I struggle to match the edge I can get with the sharpmaker.
I got one of the totally-not-a-Lansky's from Massdrop to regrind a set of awfully abused knives, worked well enough.
whetstone, better if two grade, its best way to sharp any knife. Some sh*t like APEX sharpener its a bad and expensive method.
I never recommend whetstones, they're beyond most people's capabilities and many don't have the desire to spend the time learning. Stick with the easy wins I say!
