Work Sharp

I’m a knife nut.

I have a ritual before holidays, but often before cooking where I sharpen my knives. I use water stones to sharpen them, then a steel to finish them off. Some time ago, I got a Cuisinart pro sharpener. It had two grinder wheels – course and fine, and two hones, fine and finer that went back and forth over the blade.

It worked OK, but I wasn’t happy with what it was doing to my good Henkels and Wustof blades. The pampered chef knives my wife uses aren’t as sharp as the Henkels, and the steel is different so that sharpener worked decent for them.

At least until I dropped it the first time. That kicked it out of alignment. Then somewhere along the way I dropped it again and it was done. Back to the stones for all for me.

Then I saw a Wranglerstar video on youtube where he extolled the virtues of the worksharp system. Looked a little complicated. Months later, I saw one on Amazon and picked it up.

This is the regular one, with 1/2″ belts. Had I known it would work so well, I’d have bought the Ken Onion edition, with wider belts. It comes with a set of six – three each course (100 I think), 240 grit, and 8000 grit. For a normal sharpen job, you run the blade ~2x at 240, then 5x per side at 8000. Then, if your a geek like me, you use a strop with the green compound to finish it off.

Holy Mackeral, my knives are razors now. Incredibly sharp. So much so, last Friday I was in a hurry cleaning up as I was cooking and I ran the blade of my Wustof boning knive over my thumb. I grabbed a paper towel and rummaged through the first aid for blood clotting stuff.

Damn, that stuff works:

Boy oh boy does that stuff work. Worth every penny and needed in any first aid kit. Honestly, I probably should have gotten stiches. I didn’t look real hard, but I’m sure the cut went to the knuckle. But the blood clot powder killed the flow and even numbed the pain. Not even a week later I’m typing this with with no bandaid.

Gonna have yet another scar on my hand, added to the collection. Hell, I’d have a scar with stitches, so at the end of the day I saved some dough and spared hours in the ER.

That said, I’ve been enjoying the edge on my Kershaw daily carry knife.

So I’m a fan. Huge time saver, does the same job that I’d do fussing over water stones for hours, all for about $80. You oughtta get you one.