Overall agree it seems cool, and maybe interesting.

"People spend hundreds of dollars and many hours sharpening kitchen knives,"

The former, totally agree - i've seen people buy a tormek to do basic knife sharpening (not grinding), which is like swatting a fly with an $800 hammer.

The latter, do you mean overall, or in a sitting or what?

I've certainly seen people on various forums go nuts, and then you have hertzmann staring at knife edges with an SEM, but even if i did it completely by hand with shaptons, it takes like 15 minutes, max, to sharpen 10 knives, through an entire insane grit progression (which i do for plane blades when i need to cleanly slice end grain without going to a super high-angle plane or something. For knives, i was just trying to get a comparison point, i use electric sharpeners in practice).

Or approximately 2 minutes with an electric knife sharpener.

While sure, there is a difference when i put them under my digital inspection microscope, either can slice paper towel cleanly and easily (slicing paper is easy, slicing paper towel ends to be hard because any burr catches really easily)

Are there really even semi-normal people out there spending hours to sharpen knives?

If so, like, why?

(Obviously, again, if they need to be reground because you knicked it really badly, sure that takes a bit, but beyond that)

None of these steels are tough enough to require all that many strokes (it's pretty easy to test it with a marker and see when you remove the marking), and if you are using super custom steels (RIP Crucible :(), carbide, or ceramics, you need CBN or diamond anyway, but the same is still true - given the correct abrasive material, sharpening knives is just not that slow.

I actually travel with an electric knife sharpener if we are going to be staying in an airbnb somewhere for >1 week and are cooking most nights. It's the most consistent thing about airbnb - no matter what level of luxury, etc, they always have many knives, and all of them are dangerously dull. It still doesn't take more than a few minutes to sharpen them all.

▲

gommm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Since you seem knowledgeable about knives, Do you know any great knives makers? And are those custom steels or carbide blades worth it?

So far, I mostly sharpen my knives on the back of a plate. So definitely could be doing more :)

▲

iterance 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most people can buy an opinel and be happy for decades. You don't need anything fancy for a general purpose knife. $50 max, and that's if you're feeling like getting something special.

Expensive steels are, by and large, incremental progress over cheaper knife steels, provided it got an appropriate heat treatment and has good edge geometry. In almost no applications will an end consumer notice the difference.

▲

chneu 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Knives get stupid beyond a certain price point.

I've been using the same thrift store knife I picked up 15 years ago. It gets sharpened maybe once a year, honed every so often. It was like $20 i think? Most chefs I know have a similar story with their knife/knives, something cheap that does the job.

Spending more on knives is just status symbol nonsense, which unfortunately has infected absolutely everything. It's like spending $300 on a spanner wrench. Who in the hell spends that much on a wrench? Why would you spend that much on a knife? lol. It's what you do with it that matters.

	▲	bigiain 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I remember seeing a comment by a local "celebrity chef" where he said he never sharpens cleavers - he just buys a specific inexpensive brand 5 at a time for $8 each and throws them away when they become dull. While I don't agree with externalising the manufacture/disposal costs with that sort of disposable consumption, I do see the economically-rational decision making behind it. If you're running a restaurant in Australia, your lowest paid kitchen staff get $24 an hour during weekdays, 30-35 and hour on weekends, and as much as $55 an hour on public holidays. And if they work more than 8 hours in a day it's 1.5 times those rates for the first 2 hours of overtime, and double those rates for anything more than 2 hours overtime. https://www.fairwork.gov.au/find-help-for/fast-food-restaura... While spending 15 or 20 seconds honing the edge with a sharpening steel during use makes sense (and I'll bet he does that just out of reflex), once the edge gets damaged enough to need more that what a steel can fix and you start needing a whetstone, it's probably not cost effective to have kitchen staff spend time doing that.
	▲	scarby2 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'd take issue with your price point but agree with the sentiment I've seen victorinox fibrox knives in Michelin Star kitchens, they get the job done and are very reasonably priced ($60 for a chef's knife). Admittedly the knives I have at home are significantly more expensive largely because the knives I have at home are on display so I want something that looks good and I actually enjoy using them. On one level it's a little silly but then on another level people spend thousands on art/sculptures which has no useful purpose.

▲

john_minsk 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I admire you. You are a minority, you know that, right?

I don't have time in my schedule at the moment, which says "sharpen the knifes". So for me - it would be amazing if someone solved this problem in a radical way.

Sporadically I would sharpen the knives and since I don't have it in my "skills" section of the brain, I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.

▲

citizenpaul 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You know you can buy a <$5 gadget you drag the knife across a few times for 10s that gets it about 95% as sharp as a professional job? Zero skill or attention required.

Dont have time in your schedule...jeeze. Sounds like learned helplessness to me. That or spoiled rotten. The comments in this thread help me understand the general animosity towards the tech industry from much of the population.

	▲	bigiain an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I have one of those "roller" sharpeners, in theory a "good" one, it's from Global (the Japanese knife brand) not just an AliExpress knockoff. It works reasonably well and is definitely quick. But its not even close to "95% as sharp) as when I spend 10 mins with my Lansky sharpening kit (which is really just a small set of graduated whetstones with a jig to keep the angle right while using it). Would I recommend everybody spend $70 or so for a bottom end Lansky kit or similar? No. Not even close. But if cook a lot, and you're going to buy "nice" knives that you intend to keep for decades, and you notice and care about the difference between sharp and dull knives - then I'd suggest you at least consider it.

▲

xdfgh1112 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In Japan I could just drop my knife in a nearby house's box with $6, they'd sharpen it and phone me to pick it up within a few hours. Cheap enough that I never bothered to do it myself.

▲

bsder 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I always have to "figure out" sharpening process.

Get the Worksharp fixed angle sharpener for about $70 (about the price of 2 decent stones). If you're really interested, get the leather strop add on for about $10. Get on with sharpening your kitchen knives. Put it in your closet until next year.

Is it "great"? No. If you want to be a knife nerd, it's not for you.

If you have a couple of kitchen knives you need to sharpen once a year, it's absolutely fine. And you don't have to "get the feel" of sharpening again before you can get sharp kinves.

Even with the stones and equipment I have, it is way more mindless and a lot less messy to simply use a fixed-angle sharpener. Sure, you won't get "The Ultimate Hair Whittling Edge(tm)", but your knives will quite readily Julienne your vegetables.

▲

chneu 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Reiterating that any sharpener with the ability to set the angle is really all anyone needs if they don't want to invest in the time of learning how to sharpen.

I have the ruixin version and it works fine. I like that I can use the stones without the system.

	▲	bsder 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure. Most fixed angle sharpeners work to some degree, I just recommended one that isn't sold by "Random Letter Chinese Shop" and that I have bought and know personally works. In addition, for the moment, the stones used in the system I recommended are reliably decent and have been analyzed by a bunch of the YouTube knife nerds. The other fixed angle systems can be hit or miss with the stones. If someone is sufficiently interested that they want to use the stones without the system, they've started down the path to being a knife nerd and have outgrown my recommendation.