Knives: staying sharp

PRESERVING THE EDGE

Every edge, no matter how sharp it originally was, will eventually get completely dull. Every time you are cutting with your knife, the knife get duller and duller, as it’s edge is being worn down both by the object that is being cut and by the cutting board as well.

Why some knives become dull faster than others? Well, the main factor that affects the “life” of an edge is not the steel, that the knife is forged from, not the structure of the knife and not the skills of the sharpener, who has crafted the edge. The main factor that affect the speed with which a knife becomes dull lies in the skills of the end user, who is cutting with the knife. Therefore if you want your knife to stay sharp for longer, then you should use it with care.

Use the knife only with the appropriate foods, that the knife was designed for. Avoid the use of excessive force during cutting and try to generally handle your knife with care. Use only soft cutting boards, preferably made from natural wood. Try to develop a better cutting technique, that does not quickly wear down the edge.

TRIMMING THE EDGE

To keep the knife on staying sharp, you can regularly “hone” (or re-touch) the edge of your knife. For that task you can use several different honing tools. The most common honing tools are ceramic honing bars, diamond honing bars and various honing bars made from steel.

Diamond is a very aggressive abrasive, so the edge from a diamond bar will be on the rougher side. Ceramic is more gentle and will produce a more finer edge, but it has less abrasive power than diamond does. A plain steel honing bar does not generally have any abrasive power and for the most part is almost useless with knives made from harder steels, like Japanese kitchen knives.

One efficient yet gentle way to hone a dull edge is to use a specially prepared denim strop. We are selling our own handmade 今 Kon Denim strops, that are perfect honing tools and can be used with virtually any edge. Our 今 Kon Denim strops are loaded with high quality honing compound and are handcrafted in our workshop in Helsinki, Finland.

In our webshop we are offering 今 Kon Denim strops, Kyocera Ceramic Honing bars and diamond honing bars. You can see our current selection of honing tools through this link.