Smith's Consumer Products, Inc. 9001794 Smith's Axe & Machete Sharpener Coarse

Product Information

Handheld manual knife sharpeners are designed to keep your blade fresh, and you should use them to top up the blade after every few hours of use. An electric knife sharpener or whetstone would be your best bet for a fully dulled knife. Keep knives in a covered, safe environment when not in use," says Hartley. "Do a weekly light hone with steel or stone, always wiping away particles with a clean dry towel. Don't feel like you have to work fast—with a process like this, form is everything. Work out the proper form first, and then the speed will come." Can you sharpen kitchen shears with a knife sharpener? A brand-new knife has (in theory) a perfectly straight blade, ground down to a precise cutting edge at a specific angle. As you use it, the metal on the edge gets damaged on a microscopic level, causing uneven spots that can get caught on foods and create a ragged tear rather than a clean cut. A sharpener does for a metal knife basically the same thing that sandpaper does for a wooden board: It shaves off a layer of uneven material to make the surface smooth and even again. Different models of sharpener use different materials and methods to remove metal, along with different methods of holding the knife in the correct position while doing so.

How well the sharpened knives performed: We examined their ability to slice through paper, tomatoes, and carrots both before and after sharpening. For models that claim to accommodate serrated knives, we tested their slicing performance using a baguette. If the stone hasn’t got a base secure it with, fold a tea towel and set the stone portrait in front of you with the coarse grit side up. Even if you have a base, a fair bit of water comes off the stone, so a tea towel is a wise choice anyway.

We then sharpen the knife with its dedicated knife sharpener according to the manufacturers' instructions. We receive your knives and endeavour to sharpen them within one working day before returning them to you.

The very nature of the processes performed in a sharpening and repair service reduces blade material.

Stroppy Stuff 4,1,0.5 and 0.25 Micron Mono Diamond Suspension High Concentration Stropping Compound Spray

We respect your knives and always perform our service to achieve best possible outcomes applying our century’s worth of knowledge and experience underpinned by our 360 care plan for each sharpen. Each knife sharpener will have its own specific directions, and you should always follow those, but in general, you insert the blade into the slot and pull it through with even pressure several times. It's important to make sure the full blade passes over the abrasive, all the way from heel to tip. Then, you repeat the process on the other side of the blade (though some sharpeners work on both sides at once), first using the coarsest slot and then each of the finer ones. The flexible belt helps accommodate knives of all different sizes, though we found that it also leaves a lot of wiggle room for the blade, making it somewhat difficult to keep knives at the exact correct angle through the entire sharpening process. The Easy Edge theoretically can sharpen a serrated knife, but it only sharpens the flat edge and not the serrations themselves, so we recommend against it. This knife sharpener is simple to use and sharpens very well, but with its high price, it's probably best for someone who spends a lot of time in the kitchen or is a professional chef. Carrie Honaker, who updated this roundup, is a food writer who has wielded many knives over the years. As a restaurateur and avid home cook, she knows the importance of caring for your knives to maintain steady, sharp edges. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Bon Appetit, Allrecipes, and Wine Enthusiast. This process is essentially the same with both a manual and electric sharpener, but the motorized abrasives in an electric model will do more of the work for you. The most important thing is to try to use the same amount of pressure and the same angle with each pull through the slot—different models of sharpener make this easier or harder, depending on their design. Unless the directions specify otherwise, it should take three to five pulls through the coarse slot, and then just a couple through each finer slot, to sharpen the knife. If it's not as sharp as you like, try a few more pulls through the finest grit slot, and if that doesn't work, try the whole process over again.