Knife Sharpening

Without getting into too many details, I have a wide variety of second hand knives that were in the kitchen at one point then ended up thrown in the kitchen utility drawer at the lake cabin. I would like to spend a smallish amount of money to set myself up to put an edge on all those knives and breath a little life into the “collection”. I want a decent working edge, sharp but durable. I would think I need to reshape quite a few to make them usable again. What do the fine folks here do to bring those old knives back? Specific angles that work best?

I have been able to put a good edge on many old kitchen knives with my Work Sharp. I’ve brought back old filet knives and new cheap dull knives. I use it on everything and have been very satisfied.

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I just bought a Work Sharp and sharpen several knives that sit in the back of the drawer also. I’m very happy with the results.

Love my Worksharp! A good investment and will pay for itself. This has been discussed on here before and the knock on Worksharp is that they take a lot of steel off the blade. So if you have really nice or expensive knives, maybe look to a professional or do it by hand with a stone.

But if these are surplus cabin random kitchen drawer knives, you probably wouldn’t sharpen more than one or twice a year and the Worksharp will really extend the useful lives of them. Only takes minutes and they’re pretty foolproof.

I love my work sharp. Also enjoy my 3 stage chefs choice.

Has anyone sharpened their electric fillet knives on the worksharp? Is the cheapest worksharp “good enough” for general lake cabin knives for a non-enthusiast in the sharp knife scene?

Adam Steffes wrote:

I want a decent working edge, sharp but durable. I would think I need to reshape quite a few to make them usable again. What do the fine folks here do to bring those old knives back? Specific angles that work best?

How much do you want to spend?

For 20 bucks, you can get a perfectly good sharpening system like this one. It will put a good edge on any knife, easy to use, no power tool required. It takes about 3 minutes to do even a really dull knife. I’ve used a similar one for years, can’t read the brand on mine but they’re all the same anyway.

Seems like anything else is swatting a fly with an elephant gun. I mean yeah you could spend a few hundred on a professional sharpening system and then you’d be able to sharpen the same knives you could for $20 using the system above.

Way too much fussing is done regarding angles. If using stones, match the angle the blade already has. If using a sharpener, the angle is set and the knife simply gets reprofiled in the process of sharpening from coarse to fine. For a bunch of old utility knives, I wouldn’t think about it any more than that, a sharp knife with the “wrong” angle is still a sharp knife and a lot more use than a dull one.

If you need to sharpen tools beyond knives, now might be the time to invest in a good basic set of water stones and learn how to use them. Again, for some reason people want to massively overcomplicate sharpening by hand with stones. It takes about an hour and a couple of videos to learn to sharpen by hand using water stones. Once you have learned the basics, there’s nothing you can’t sharpen.

Got this as a wedding gift:

It put a ‘paper cutting’ edge on even my crappiest knives. Having sharp knives again is a game changer. I am sure the same can be achieved with a ‘3 stone’ system as well.

Screw water stones. Use adhesive backed 3m micro-mesh sheets on a proven flat surface (like a thick pane of glass) then maintain your edge on a quality strop. If your blade steel isn’t crap, a strop will save you a lot time by honing your cutting edge instead of removing more and more and more steel every time you run it through a cheap rod sharpener. Or any sharpening system for that matter. Also, don’t forget to remove the burr before stropping.

Nobody ever seems to strop their blades anymore. Ever seen a barber sharpen his razor? Probably not. Ever seen a barber strop his razor? I mean, the imagery is iconic so I’m betting more than likely.

Works awesome for chisels and planes too.