Maintaining Professional Knives

How to Keep Knives Sharp Longer

The steel characteristics of your knife affects lifespan, however, it is the way you maintain your knives that has the biggest impact.

Keep out of dishwasher

  • Completely dry knife after washing
  • Store in a sheath or a block when not using
  • Use plastic or wood cutting boards – glass/granite will wear done the blade quickly
  • Do not leave in water
  • Use respective knife for its designed use…do not use a chef’s knife to cut through bones
  • Hone your knife regularly
  • Use a sharpening service that has the correct tools to limit metal elimination, uses the correct angle to sharpen your knife at the optimum degree angle and places the knife in a protective guard to ensure the integrity of the sharpening.

Should you sharpen your knives yourself? We suggest that you limit your efforts to regular honing. Many people believe that honing is sharpening….it is not. The main issue with self-sharpening is twofold:

  • Knowing the optimum angle of your blade prior to sharpening
  • Maintaining the angle consistently throughout the sharpening process.

Electric Knife Sharpeners: while they will generally maintain an angle throughout the sharpening process, it may or may not be the correct angle for your blade. In addition, the burr must be removed after sharpening and stropping is an important finishing process that should be completed after proper sharpening. In addition electric sharpeners remove much more metal than necessary(which shortens the lifespan of your knife).

Sharpening with Individual grid blocks: There are a few issues with utilizing sharpening blocks to sharpen your knives.

-Which grids of blocks should be utilized to sharpen your knife to its optimum sharpness?

-What type of grids should I use for my specific knives? Grid Ranges on blocks are from 250-8,000. Should they be whetstone (used with water or oil) Should they be diamond coated? For example, we utilize various waterstone wheels that allow for 220 grit to 4,000 grit (Japanese waterstone). In addition, the knives we sharpen are measured for the correct angle and our calibrated clamps maintain this angle throughout the sharpening process

In addition, we provide our customers with BESS sharpness measurements pre-and post sharpening.

A professional knife sharpener with the proper equipment will provide a sharp edge with minimal removal of steel.