/knifeporn/

the german knife luddites always rave about samurai folded steel because they have no idea about modern knife manufacture, and the people who have a clue about this stuff either bait them or try to teach them about how it works in reality (decent japanese brands use modern steel that is not folded and comes from mostly either Hitachi or Sandvik, the latter being a Swedish brand)

german knives are, at best, made of x50crmov15 which sacrifices edge stability for being able to be used as a can opener and bashing through frozen blocks of hamburger meat

you can get japanese knives that are more than adequate for cutting bones and shit, but some people here who aren't used to picking the right tool for the job mistook the german "do everything badly" approach for actual knife quality

Yup great knives exist from both sides. In the US you'll be paying more for a Japanese blade because it has to be imported and the market isn't nearly as big for it, some people here on Veeky Forums believe spending money for anything besides preformance is retarded, so they see someone buying a $200 Japanese knife when they could've gotten 2 or 3 decent western knives for the same price and their autism kicks in.

And on the other side of the table you get weebs who think a $200-500 Japanese blade is somehow magically going to improve their cooking skill or be 10x sharper than a western blade. Now there can be some actual differences in preformance and wear, but not to a huge degree with good knifes.

Multipurpose field to kitchen

If you are so new as to not know the voila mémè then I oblige you to post and say you are an idiot sandwich, good day.

>x50crmov15

If you're using your expensive chef knife to open a can, you're kinda lost...

i really cant claim to know that much about knives because like the majority of people, i used like 3 serious knives in my life.

imho once you have a decently hard steel and know how to sharpen your knife you can basically use every model which feels comfortable, which is consistent with ramsay claiming the key in a good knife lies in its handle. oh and maybe dont go for a super thin and brittle japanese one if you are clumsy.

i feel like a common beginner mistake is to choose a knife with a much to short blade, once you have learned the professional grip and correct technique everything below 8 inch feels a little awkward to use. dont get me started on my parents cutting onions with pairing knives.

that being sad i own a 23cm wüsthof classic and am very happy with it as its very robust, the steel keeps a good edge and it fits my hands pretty well.

>once you have learned the professional grip and correct technique everything below 8 inch feels a little awkward to use

I'll disagree with you here, I have a 10" (23cm) Wusthof classic as well and I simply find it too large for my daily needs, I find myself using a 6.5" santoku as its almost always more comfortable and less awkward to cut with.

the x50crmov knife set was the obligatory wedding present since the baby boom generation, many many wusthofs have been used to open cans and other dumb shit. if they were using knives optimized for cutting food they'd have gone out of business from all the angry customers returning their "defective" damaged knives

i think a smaller knife is a good addition to a medium sized one for some more flexibility especially when you are cooking for only you but if you had to choose only one, i'd always recommend a bigger one. provided that your cutting board is large enough. when im at my parents and cooking i use their (also really good) 6" solicut which is sufficient most of the time - but its a little annoying when im cutting asparagus for 4 people.

Yea for work purposes I can agree, but for a home kitchen I rarely use larger blades, I'm usually cooking for myself or 1 other so it's never a lot. And while I have decent counter top space my primary cutting board is only 8x14" with about 2" taken up by a juice groove. So not a great size for a 10" blade.

I'm moving into an apartment and I don't have any of my own knives. I don't cook much at all and I'm not very good at it. I want to teach myself how to cook. What knives should I buy?

Pls help, I'm retarded

IMHO you only need one good knife, rather big, sharp, also get a sharpener..

i think its common knowledge to go for (in this exact order)
>all purpose chefs knife + proper cutting board
>small knife for more precise cutting
>large serrated edge knife
and some veg pealer is always very handy.

If you have a bit of money investing in 2 or 3 "good" knives isn't a bad idea. You'll want a ~8" chefs knife or if you prefer Japanese style 170-200mm santoku/gyuto. A pairing knife (or petty knife for Japanese style). And depending what you like a bread knife or cleaver type knife for meats.

If you only can afford two knives an 8" chef and a pairing knife are your primary tools. Wusthof is a good large production brand for nice western knives and Shun is good for Japanese knives.

oh yeah, and getting a sharpener with your chefs knife ensures that you can resharpen if it starts to feel blunt. but get a sharpener, not only a honing rod, those japanese waterstones are good and quite easy to use.

get a chefs choice electric sharpener and some dexters from the restaurant supply

you'll have better performing knives than 95% of muh freehanding autists who like to talk big but cook with a mutilated scratched up mess made of the latest high speed powdered tool steel that can totally shave arm hair with until the burr falls off

what are dexters?

Thanks, guys, I appreciate the help!

Cheap work horse knives meant for Mexican line cooks

fibrox minus the retard tax

if you want something a little nicer get some misono 440 from ebay japan and a knockoff edgepto. they're a bit underrated because people think 440 = chinese crap but 440C is actually a really good steel, very well understood and has everything you want from a cooking knife. don't fall for the carbon meme unless you are freehanding and require that to make up for your lack of motor skills, and do not buy a kitchen knife made from steel designed for carpet knives, you're just throwing money down the toilet even though spergs act like food = carpets

My collection, i actually use the ikea one with the wooden handle the most because its very light and great for chopping leafy vegetables, for small soft stuff i prefer the ceramic

You sum kinda ninja or something?

some.. sometimes i pretend i am...

...

I use this one a lot, super cheap, plenty sharp for general kitchen use, and easy to maintain:
ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60289244/

I got a Global knife for christmas, it's my first proper knife so I'm pretty happy.

It's only a 13cm blade though so I'm planning on buying a bigger one. I'm a poor student though so it won't be for a while probably.

Look, I'm sorry you had a difficult time trying to learn to freehand sharpen, but it really isn't that difficult to learn.

It's also pretty easy to learn to quickly and reliably deburr a freehand sharpened knife, whereas using an electric pull through is pretty much certain to result in a malformed edge with a massive floppy burr and very bad edge retention.

Freehanding is easy as fuck to "learn", yes

The difference between being able to scrape out a more or less functional edge and actually meet the limits of any given knife, let alone these 8k chosera memestones people convince themselves they need, is like sewing a button back on your shirt and making a new shirt from scratch

You can lie to Veeky Forums but don't lie to yourself. You're not very good at this and you're fully aware of it

knives are the worst meme on Veeky Forums these threads belong in /r9k/

I have a YouTube channel about freehand sharpening. You should try watching some of the videos. You will see that it actually really isn't that difficult to learn to freehand at a skill level that will allow someone to maintain their kitchen knives.

I usually suggest starting with a tutorial on burr based sharpening:

youtube.com/watch?v=cWU_qTp3DLM

and a short tutorial on shearing off a burr using high-angle passes:

youtube.com/watch?v=oRmcQ-MqbBE

If you want to see how quickly a proficient freehand sharpener can get a knife from butter knife dull to doing crossgrain pushcuts on newsprints at 90 degrees to the page, watch this:

youtube.com/watch?v=LB-sm7M0d_I

If you have any more questions on learning to freehand, please feel free to ask.

Don't know if that counts as knife porn, but for a 15€ knife pic related is the best one I've used so far.
Perfectly balanced and really sharp after going at it with a grinding stone.

>those fat hands
>that nasal voice
you're that guy who had a mental breakdown and flooded a cooking knife thread with pictures of yourself stabbing phone books with your MRE SERE SEAL tactical assault tanto

that was hilarious

So you aren't interested in learning to freehand sharpen then? That's alright, the video links might be helpful to anyone who comes into this thread who actually is interested in learning to maintain their knives, rather than destroying them and getting a terrible edge with an electric pull-through.

I can freehand just fine, I don't need your videos

I'm helping noobs to not get tricked by freehand spergs into thinking it's either necessary or likely to give good results without extensive practice

You mean to say you are mindlessly shitposting and trying to convince people to waste money on edge destroying pull through sharpeners rather than trying to help them learn a skillset you claim to posses.

Freehand sharpening isn't that difficult to learn if it is learned the right way. The real problem is that online discussions about sharpening are filled with people who advocate very poor sharpening methodologies, or worse, who actively mislead people because it makes them feel special.

>anti-sperg sperging

what is worse ?

mindless shitposting is having a tantrum when something doesn't go your way and flooding a thread with pictures of your fat hands stabbing phone books, user

chefs choice is quite a bit better than the average pull thru device and cooks illustrated rated it very highly

it's not something I'd buy for myself but 98% of home cooks would be far better served with a CC than with bench stones. you obviously have lots of phone books attacking you IRL and I am sure you need daily reprofiliing on your Battle Ready CPM M1911 Crucible Assault Tanto but most people are just chopping onions and shit, so they only need to sharpen every once in a while

OK, I'll post my knives

That steel japanese styled handle really sticks out
Mind me asking what the brand is? Or was the handle a custom installation?

Sure. I got it years ago from this place:
japanesechefsknife.com/HybridWaBochoSeries.html#HybridWaBocho

It's an aluminum handled stainless yanagi, which is weird as fuck but pretty fun. I used it a lot for slicing meat and fish before I got the Tojiro sujihiki next to it. I prefer western handles and symmetrical grinds, but this was fun to learn on. It was hard getting a decent stainless yanagi without a shit handle that's under 100, and call me a pleb, but I just don't like carbon steel knives.

I understand you are desperate to divert from the deliberately poor advice you tried to give people up thread, but pretending like sharpening advice from cook's illustrated should be taken seriously is a bit too ridiculous to be taken seriously.

Pull through sharpeners are universally terrible and totally destroy the edges they are used on. There is absolutely no reason to advocate them when it really isn't that hard to learn how to freehand sharpen kitchen knives. It just takes watching some good tutorials and doing a little practicing on a cheap knife with a cheap oilstone.

For me, I prefer to try and help people learn rather than coming into every knife thread on Veeky Forums to shitpost up a storm and try to bait everyone.

please don't listen to this guy

he wants you to believe that removing a few microns from an edge with a low speed diamond wheel will destroy a knife and that a home cook who sharpens once a month at best will develop the skills to surpass a machine by freehanding once every 30 days. as a fairly skilled freehander with 11 years experience I can assure you this is pure fantasy

if you want proof that fathands mcgee up there doesn't know what he's doing, take a look at his videos where he demonstrates his "skill" by cutting scraps of paper with his freshly mangled edges, which anyone can accomplish with the back of a coffee mug on the worst dime store knife

the real test is how the knife is cutting after chopping a 50 pound bag of onions, something he has never done because his knife play is based on shredding paper and stabbing books

don't fall for it, freehanding is a fun hobby but if all you care about is results, and you don't want a sharpening hobby, a machine is the best choice. not just any machine, there are some bad ones, but a chefs choice is easy and well regarded (one of the most experienced sharpeners on a major cooking forum bought his daughter one). an edgepro is also a good option if you want to make a hobby-lite of sharpening

>edgepro
This is what I am thinking of doing, I currently have my knives professionally sharpened every ~6 months.
But at some point I might look at the edgepro as an alternative, as in about 2-3 years it'd pay for itself.

they're good machines, I would suggest the atoma custom plates because they never dish or change shape

the 1k atoma is as fine as you will need, you can use progressively lighter strokes to refine the edge and if sperg (not really necessary) finish on an old belt rubbed with jeweler rouge

it's not completely mindless so if assembly and angle setting is more than you will realistically keep careful track of, a chefs choice is not a bad alternative but the ep will give a much nicer result if you are at all picky (and willing to put at least a minimum of effort in)

an idahone would also not be a bad idea for touch ups

Why are you lying to people? Like, what do you get out of deliberately misleading others?

bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/872626-Chef-s-Choice-Model-312-Electric-Knife-Sharpener

"This picture might help you decide. It is one of a series I did of identical knives sharpened on different machines. This one is of a knife after being sharpened on the Chef's Choice:"

That is pic related. That is what this person is advocating you do to your kitchen knives instead of learning to freehand.

>the real test is how the knife is cutting after chopping a 50 pound bag of onions

How about after whittling pine?

youtube.com/watch?v=gDB0q1QffOc

Or whittling bamboo chopsticks in a deliberately abusive manner?

youtube.com/watch?v=6FhWZsO3ef4

Those two videos just serve to show that you are a knowing and deliberate liar. You know full well that the clean,burr free apexes demonstrated with those sharpness tests on newsprint will stand up to a lot more than some onions. Why are you trying to mislead people reading this thread?

Freehanding is not hard. Being able to do it does not make you special. Literally anyone willing to take the time can learn how to do it. Stop lying to people for sport.

It really doesn't matter what the blade looks like under a microscope. it matters how the blade cuts.

the chef's choice will produce a blade that will easily get through thousands of pounds of food much faster than any free hand and at less risk to ruining the shape of the blade.

knife autists are the #2 reason that /ck sucks ass... just behind steak autists.

what a shock, a diamond wheel gives a different looking edge than a waterstone

yeah, as I said before, an edgepro is better if you want to put in some extra work. but enough with your stabby fantasy "tests", this is as cringy as the cutco sales presentation where they saw through a shoe

also bladeforums is worse than facebook in terms of prissy drama and butthurt, no surprise you'd be a regular there

So OP you want some knife porn or not? Yours clearly isn't

What's the Victorinox that everyone always says is the best value?

Fibrox is the meme knife, don't fall for it, do this

>It really doesn't matter what the blade looks like under a microscope. it matters how the blade cuts.

And how do you expect that mess of an edge will last in use? Especially with the high risk of it having been heat damaged?

>the chef's choice will produce a blade that will easily get through thousands of pounds of food much faster than any free hand and at less risk to ruining the shape of the blade.

If you want your knives to end up looking like pic related, sure.

How do you have so much energy to be this wrong all the time? Just thinking about it makes me feel exhausted.

If by different looking you mean mangled and very likely heat damaged, then yes.

On that note, here is a discussion with a PhD metallurgist who showed that any amount of power sharpening without active liquid cooling was very likely to heat damage an apex:

hypefreeblades.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=391&start=0

Why go through all of that or spend hundreds of dollars on an Edge Pro when learning to freehand is not super difficult or expensive?

Hell, if you really don't want to learn to freehand you would be much better off sending your knives to a pro to be hand sharpened and then keeping them touched up between uses using a balsa wood strop with a fine diamond paste applied to it. In home use a knife can be kept extremely sharp for months between sharpenings using a pasted strop.

Anything would be better than you advocating people waste money on electric sharpeners that will then ruin their knives while giving awful edge retention. And the worst part is that you obviously know better and are just shitposting and baiting for kicks.

>hype free blades
As seen on TV, right?

Also I like how you're arguing against spending a couple hundred bucks on an edgepro while at the same time advocating sending money off to have a knife "professionally sharpened"

You realize any reputable sharpener who freehands on bench stones is charging like $30 a knife, right? You'd rather have people waste all that money and, presumably, buy a spare knife to cook with while the knife is out at the sharpener's (oh I forgot, you don't cook so being without a knife won't change your cooking situation) because you are this afraid of progress?

Machines are not the enemy, user. Stop trying to trick innocent people into wasting time on your hobby.

I arguing against the edge pro because it's a waste of money. With the right approach to freehanding, precise angle control isn't that important, which makes it much less daunting for a beginner to learn. The EP is solving the wrong problem (angle control) instead of the right problem (wrong approach).

Why would my knives be at a sharpeners? I obviously sharpen my own knives (on video no less) so I wouldn't send my own out. The idea is from sharpening a friend's knives and leaving him with a strop to keep them touched up. It's been working very well for him. Far better than the knife destroying nonsense you are tying to troll people into.

Nice attempt to ignore the science that shows that any power sharpening without active liquid cooling has an extremely high risk of de-tempering the apex and ruining your edge retention though.

It's really sad that there are so many people in online knife discussions who get their jollies by shitposting though. It really serves to discourage people from learning to take care of their knives properly.

>Nice attempt to ignore the science
Oh boy here we go, "I said 'science' so I win", typical bladeforum garbage

There is nothing "power sharpening" about an edgepro, and whatever minor detempering happens on a chef's choice is inconsequential compared to your amateurish "apex" achieved through freehanding on stones which is, sorry bub, mostly burr, and therefore no better and likely worse than any minor detempering going on with a slow moving diamond wheel

Keep stabbing those chopsticks :)

just go ceramic

That knife is shit

>heel is a huge chunk of metal

Useless

actually ... is ceramic good at all?

I see sperg.

Recently my chef gave me his his old beat up shun 10" Damascus chef knife with rust and all. It was so blunt I ended mashing watermelon instead of cutting it into slices. Got it sharpened and my god now I understand why people spend money on knives.

Also picked up a sabiter (I think sabiter lion?) petty knife today. I absolutely destroyed prep. Tasks that took 30min on my old no brand 10" took 15mins. Feels absolutely good mang to have the proper tool for the job.

What should I get next as an aspiring knife nerd who work professionally in a kitchen? I've got a basic apprentice kit. Served me well for a couple of years but now I want to incrementally replace them.

you own more than one fedora.

Lets assume that a $20 dexter will get heat damaged and within 2 years of monthly sharpening, it will be ground beyond recognition. Why wouldn't the casual cook just spend another $20 on a new knife? Hell, why wouldn't they just spend another $100 on a new german knife? $100 every couple years isn't a big deal, especially if you take into account the convenience of it.

If I was the average home cook, and I only saved 5 hours of time between learning how to freehand, figuring out what the fuck to purchase, what the difference between an arkansas stone or japanese whetstone is, and taking the time to set up and take down my sharpening set up in those two years, I'd go for the shitty electric sharpener. It wouldn't be worth my time to think about it if my only goal is to rough chop 1/2 an onion and butterfly a chicken breast 5 times a week.
I think you've lost sight of why most people sharpen their knives, (or send their knives out to be sharpened), which is simply to cook. Anything that takes helps achieve that goal and takes away unnecessary distractions should be welcomed. The "shitty," "ruined" edge produced by the electric sharpener will still cut an onion or carrot well enough that the final dish would be indistinguishable. I bet you throw fucking tantrums when you watch gordon ramsey absolutely destroy his ingredients in his multiple restaurants and TV shows by even attempting to cut them with his shitty wusthof knife "sharpened" on a steel.

I just got the same one OP. How are you taking care of it?

I don't know why you would try to knowingly and blatantly try to deceive people.

The ability to pushcut newsprint across the grain at 90 degrees itself is empirical proof of a clean burr free apex. An apex with any microscopic burr remaining will catch and tear the newsprint rather than pushcutting it crossgrain cleanly. It is also hardly as if I don't have an endless supply of USB microscope image at ~250x magnification showing quite clearly the absence of any microscopic burr on my sharpened edges. Pic related.

Since you did not bother to read the link I posted referring to metallurgical research conducted into the effects of grinding steel without lubricants, I will summarize it to say that when surface temperature sensors are embedded in steel and that steel is hand ground on diamond abrasive plates and dry sandpaper, surface temperatures in excess of 2000C were briefly recorded. This is more than enough to de-temper the first few microns of steel thickness,which in the entire thickness of a knife apex.

The effects are, of course, worsened by any sort of power sharpening (such as a diamond electric pull through sharpener). The major effect of such de-tempering is to soften the apex. Since the primary mode of wear for kitchen knives is blunting by apex chipping and/or rolling from repeated cutting board contacts, any softening of the apex will be catastrophic to edge retention.

You would be far better off buying a new, cheap, thin kitchen knife and stropping it on a balsa wood block with 6 micron diamond paste on it and just replacing it when the strop no longer brings it back to an acceptable level of sharpness than you would by actively damaging the edge with an electric pull through sharpener.

The Edge Pro, of course, doesn't have those issues, but it is a totally unnecessary expense since angle control is not the most important factor in learning to sharpen properly

In that case the home cook would be even better off buying a $20 Dexter and stropping it on a balsa wood block with 6 micron diamond paste applied to it until that doesn't bring back the sharpness anymore and then buying a new Dexter.

At least that way you'd get a much stronger apex that would be trivial to keep touched up between uses and which will not accumulate metal fatigue like you would get from steeling, or de-tempering you would get from an electric pull-through, both of which will be catastrophic to edge retention in a kitchen knife.

>restaurant and butcher shops are wrong because my autism
saying "catastrophic" doesn't make you right

Actually, that's exactly why you see butchers steeling their knives between every single use in a butcher shop, literally dozens of times a day. It's because the more you steel a knife edge, the worse the edge retention gets, therefore the more frequently you need to steel, and so on.

The reason that this occurs is that steeling bends the apex back and forth with enormous pressure (since pressure is force x area, and the contact area against a steel is tiny), and the repeated bending back and forth fatigues the metal at the apex through plastic deformation.

A great home analogy to see the effect in action is to take a wire coat hanger and bend a section back and forth repeatedly. You'll find it eventually fatigues and snaps.

Since kitchen knives primarily blunt from cutting board contacts causing the apex to microscopically chip or roll, the metal fatigue induced by repeated steeling seriously impairs edge retention by making the apex directly more susceptible to both.

Stropping on a pasted leather or balsa wood strop avoids these issues because it is actually abrading the apex rather than burnishing it, and because a flexible stropping surface avoids causing excessive plastic deformation of the apex.

As a practical example: I have a gyuto in Aogami Super that can still pushcut newsprint across the grain at 90 degrees after having been kept touched up on a balsa wood strop for 3+ months since the last time it was fully sharpened. The edge retention hasn't been degraded in any meaningful way compared to being freshly sharpened.

Since it is cheaper to make such a strop than buy a steel, I don't see why you would advocate the inferior option?

>tl;dr
I never said a word about buying a steel. unless you think an idahone is the same thing

A ceramic honing rod would have most of the same issues, in particular the tiny contact area creating enormous pressure at the apex and causing the apex to deform, though at least the ceramic rods sold by idahone appear to have an abrasive which will help lessen the effect.

What I would say if you really want to use one rather than a strop is to use the lightest possible touch. Like, barely touching. Literally a few grams of force at absolute maximum when using it to try and minimize plastic deformation of the apex.

>unless you think an idahone is the same thing

Functionally, they are. It's an abrasive rod that's harder than the blade in question.

I have no idea why this myth persists, but many people seem to think that a "steel" isn't abrasive. They are. They have teeth on them just like a file. If you look at old carving sets for sale it's very common that the blade will actually have a concave profile due to repeated use of the steel having abraded the metal from the edge, like pic related.

Here's another example of the abrasive action of a "steel"

you keep arguing points put out by no one but yourself. who said a ceramic rod was not abrasive? the point was that you brought up rods in a discussion of electric sharpeners. you are now bringing up a debate about abrasives that exists only in your head. for your next trick you'll post a youtube link where you spin a knife for 20 minutes while mumbling about full tangs

chefs choice is a good purchase for the average home cook, to return to the issue at hand

>you keep arguing
That was my first post in the thread.

>who said a ceramic rod was not abrasive?
Post seems to suggest that.

>>chefs choice is a good purchase for the average home cook,
I'm not disputing that at all. I'm just curious why seems to think that an Idahone is somehow fundamentally different from a steel. I'm also wondering why people are blabbing about plastic deformation when abrasive action is far more significant.

What do you recommend for a strop? I've heard people say cardboard from a cereal box and other things, but what do you think the best is?

Could I just buy a cheap leather belt or is that treated and not as effective?

I just learned the effect of stropping when I tried it on my shitty Buck 110 knockoff that I have carried for the last 10 years. I sharpen it frequently but am never really happy with the edge, but considering the mystery blade material I never thought much of it. I was at a blade store and mentioned it to the guy and he stropped it, and the thing was suddenly like a razor.

I didn't want to buy one of their expensive stropping straps though, seemed overkill and more for the style.

He's providing some interesting info. I'd rather hear from people who know a bit about knives than those who argue essentially from emotion.

it depends what you mean by "fundamentally different" and "a steel"

most people understand "a steel" to mean a grooved butcher steel, which effectively is used to create micro-serrations, which consist of weak, fatigued bits of metal that quickly collapse under use

an idahone performs as a round medium-high grit ceramic stone, the purpose being to shave off a microscopic amount of metal same as a flat stone. the difference being that no setup time is required

obviously both can be used to "realign" a rolled edge but to suggest they have the same purpose in real life use is wrong

knowing "a bit" about knives is the problem here

it's funny you should be worried about arguments from emotion when the autist screeching about how machines are a scam to ruin your knives permanently is doing exactly that

it's worth remembering that this is a cooking board and doing hand to hand. combat with a piece of paper is of little relevance compared to chopping vegetables

>I bet you throw fucking tantrums when you watch gordon ramsey absolutely destroy his ingredients in his multiple restaurants and TV shows by even attempting to cut them with his shitty wusthof knife "sharpened" on a steel.

That is who brought up steels first in this thread. I just took the opportunity to point out that honing rods aren't a very good idea, etither.

>chefs choice is a good purchase for the average home cook, to return to the issue at hand

No, it is not. The average home cook certainly doesn't have the experience required to use an extremely light touch and make quick passes to try and salvage a minimally perceptible result from an electric sharpener. They are at a very high risk of totally mangling the edges on their knives due to their inexperience.

Even then, the edges produced by such are a sharpener are going to be inferior to what a home user would have gotten by just stropping a Dexter on a pasted strop, an approach much less detrimental to edge retention and which requires a negligible amount of user skill. Even better, they could buy two $20 Dexters and send one out to be hand sharpened by a pro every 3-6 months and never have a dull knife in their kitchen again.

Of course, they could also buy a Norton India coarse/fine oilstone, some light mineral oil, and actually learn to sharpen themselves. As I've said repeatedly, it isn't that difficult to learn if someone learns the right approach. If anything, a chef's knife is probably the single easiest type of knife to learn how to sharpen.

>it's worth remembering that this is a cooking board and doing hand to hand. combat with a piece of paper is of little relevance compared to chopping vegetables
clearly testing a blade against paper is a method to judge sharpness

you seem quite upset

>They are at a very high risk of totally mangling the edges on their knives due to their inexperience

Alright, im a random user who hasn't read anything past the first ~10 posts in this thread.

Are you ACTUALLY so fucking retarded to think that an electric knife sharpener is EASIER to fuck up a knife than sharpening by hand?

For the average person this is so fucking far from the truth I am literally laughing at you. Is hand sharpening better? Yeah when done properly of course it is, but the average person would literally have to spend dozens of hours just to get competent, let alone "good" with sharpening by hand.

Decent electric sharpeners however are dead fucking simple, and pretty difficult to destroy a blade with unless you're taking some $400 single bevel japanese blade and trying to sharpen it in there or something equally retarded.

Plastic deformation is always an issue with honing rods of any kind because of the microscopic contact area compared to other types of abrasives. Since pressure is equal to force times area, its incredibly easy for a rod to end up exerting hundreds of PSI on a knife apex, which is thin enough to both be bent back and forth by that force, and be essentially squished into an apex (i.e. by burnishing rather than abrasion).

It's a reasonably well studied phenomenon that steeling of any kind dramatically reduces edge retention for these reasons. These issues can fairly easily be avoided by using a strop pasted with a diamond abrasive compound instead.

>mfw people are defending electric knife sharpeners
Well, this is the McChicken board after all.

>Are you ACTUALLY so fucking retarded to think that an electric knife sharpener is EASIER to fuck up a knife than sharpening by hand?

It is. The worse a person is likely do while learning to hand sharpen (if they learn from a good resource) is fail to get the edge sharper from the dull starting state. They are unlikely to make the knife more dull than it was when they started sharpening, unless they do something self evidently silly.

The electric sharpener is the hands of a novice is likely to consume far more steel than necessary and to leave a ragged, heat damaged edge that will have terrible edge retention in use. This is worse off than they were to start.

People think learning to hand sharpen is hard because most of the guides to learn about it online are TERRIBLE. Hand sharpening is not hard if you learn the right way, it just takes a little time and practice to learn, just like any useful life skill.

I mean, not everyone has $150+ knives.

For a $150+ knife, I'd say get it professionally sharpened over buying an electric sharpener, or spend the time to learn hand sharpening if you have several knives of that price range. But for the average home cook who barely has $200 in knives TOTAL? Fuck off, a decent electric sharpener is more than good enough.

Get your pretentious autism and go elsewhere. Not everyone is spending $1000+ on 3 or 4 blades.

By far the best choice is balsa wood blocks. Balsa wood is compressible enough to work as a strop material without having nearly as severe a risk of rounding over the apex if used incorrectly compared to a leather or fabric strop.

Get some balsa wood, then head to Lee Valley Tools and get a tube of DMT DiaPaste in 6 micron and apply several dots to the stop surface and use a plastic card to spread it around until you have a nice thin even coat.

Ah yes, the populist argument. Of course that was coming next.

This thread is called /knifeporn/ and is posted in a board about cooking you fucking moron.

You'd be better off with a $20 Dexter, a coarse/fine oilstone, and a pasted strop than the overwhelming majority of people using butter knife dull knives or using knives with damaged edges from power sharpening or steeling.

This isn't a matter of money, its a matter of taking a little time to learn a useful life skill instead of focusing on all the wrong aspects of things first, like buying expensive knives when you can't maintain them properly, or throwing away money on an electric sharpener and then having to replace your knives yearly because the sharpener ate them.

I don't understand why you are so angry at the idea of people learning to hand sharpen? Why does that make you feel so threatened that you haunt Veeky Forums knife threads like a ghost, trying to derail, bait and shitpost them to death for YEARS at a time? That doesn't seem very healthy.

>I don't understand why you are so angry at the idea of people learning to hand sharpen? Why does that make you feel so threatened that you haunt Veeky Forums knife threads like a ghost, trying to derail, bait and shitpost them to death for YEARS at a time? That doesn't seem very healthy.
Next he'll tell us he's too busy and has too much of a life to sharpen his knives by hand lol

>throwing away money on an electric sharpener and then having to replace your knives yearly because the sharpener ate them.

LOL, guess I should tell my grandparents to throw away all of their wusthofs that have been electrically sharpened for about 15 years now.

They cut just fine by the way, I dont use them often, but they're not terrible.