Thursday, January 4, 2018

Kuh-Niff-Uh

So, a perrennial problem for folks, myself included, is keeping a plethora of kitchen knives adequately sharp.

I do hand tool woodworking, I do gunsmiffing, I HAVE the equipment.  Multiple methods.  Diamond plates, ceramic stones, slow grinders, sanding belts, granite tiles I an glue 12 different grits of wet-dry paper to, jigs, guides, and years of practice....  I can make a 3 inch wide benchplane blade so scary sharp that you can read the fine print of your marriage license through the wood shaving it produces.

But that takes time.

My father has had the same trouble for decades.  Trying to get kitchen knives sharper, faster.  Steels, those electric sharpeners on the side of the electric can opener, ceramic rods...

Not satisfied.

So, Christmas gift idea.

I have a stiff felt wheel on a 3/4 HP AC motor.  It is charges with Chromium Oxide.  It's a buffing wheel with less chance to round over the blade edge.



So, my Christmas gift to Dad this year was this wheel, some buffing compound, and a link to this video.  He already had the grinder, and one side is never used.  The course stone side is worthless anyway.   And a link to this:


I used it my own self on my own set up.  6 to 10 passes, zip-zip-zip, with a decent angle and these old cheap $3 kitchen knives are much more satisfying, again.  Fast and easy and adequate quality.

Wouldn't do that with my razor, tho.

3 comments:

B said...

Or buy kitchen knives made from good steel and hand sharpen about 3 times a year.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

buy?

I got dozen of knives. Hand me downs over the years. few worth a tinker's damn, but the price was right.

Docgmt said...

My wife is a meat cutter ( butcher) learned from her grandfather and we raise most of our own meat. She mostly uses Victorinox knives, Cabela has them for around $20 each and I am in charge of keeping an edge on them. I have all of the gear, diamond, stone and strop but when I got a worksharp for Christmas a few yrs back everything else went into a drawer. Since she is real picky about how the knives cut they don't get very dull before it set aside. A few passes on each side of the blade w a medium belt then finished w a fine puts a razor edge on and once every five or six sharpenings ill us the strop to finish.