Over the years we’ve tried all manner of methods of sharpening – both as professionals and as home users. In the workshop we use three systems (in the main); a professional machine costing several thousands of pounds that uses cubic boron nitride-coated wheels, and a fair amount of skill, to give a wonderful edge on almost all standard knives. For small knives, or where extra polish or control is needed, we use our venerable Tormeks, and for big cleavers and other over-sized esoterica then it’s freestyle time at the grinding belts.
All of this is very well when you need to sharpen dozens of knives a day, but for when we’re at home it’s a different kettle of fish.
Before we leap in to the different bits of kit out there, let’s just go over what we’re trying to achieve. We’re not trying to (literally) split hairs, we’re trying to chop tomatoes, slice green peppers and dice onions with ease. We’re not hugely interested in whether our blades will hack through a 3″ rope after you’ve dived through a burning window with the knife between your teeth – we’d just like to carve chicken gracefully, not make a mess of Beef Wellington and cut carrots as quietly and neatly as possible.
To achieve this – in the main – we hone our knives. The gentle and frequent use of a honing steel is to a blade as coolant, lubrication and fuel is to an engine. It keeps your edge straight and cutting true, and a good one will leave tiny micro-serrations that aid the natural cutting rhythm of a good chef’s knife.
If you have a nice, sharp knife and you don’t have a honing steel, then I suggest you invest in one straight away. There’s very little point in going to the lengths of really sharpening a knife well if you don’t have a honing steel – even the best edges will decay over the course of only a few hours work, and so then back to sharpening you go. This tedious repetition can be avoided almost entirely by honing – and the less you have to sharpen, the better, as there are far better things in life to be doing – such as nice walk in the sunshine or doing a really easy crossword and feeling smug.
But the time will come when sharpening is required, when entropy ensures that honing will no longer do the trick, and that’s what we’re looking at here.
Every single sharpening method is wrapped up in a bundle of trade-offs – cost vs time vs skill vs results. There are those amongst us who love a bit of ‘kit’ – for whom setting up and calibrating is akin to Christmas coming early, while for others it’s anathema.
So let’s have a look at various systems, but always bear in mind that the result is the thing. If you can get an edge you’re happy with by using the back of an old dining plate and your leather belt then crack on. We always recommend having some tomatoes and peppers around when you’re first using a sharpening system – once they’re being cut with ease then you’re probably where you want to be. Sharpening more is just a bit of a waste of time, and one could also suggest detrimental to your edge’s longevity; polished edges may cut more smoothly, but probably not more efficaciously and certainly with less durability.
At the largest end of the spectrum is the Tormek. We’ve always struggled with the more domestic versions – or those with diamond wheels – but the original T8 does an absolutely brilliant job of getting a marvellous edge. However there’s a steep skill and practice curve here, and you’re definitely advised to be well up on the theory of sharpening before mangling your favourite knives. Their ceramic polishing whetstone is a thing of beauty and will give an amazing edge, but it’s big dollar. The standard edition T8 will give a very good edge, but is let down by being big and cumbersome and requiring a fair amount of maintenance. There are a number of add-ons that will make your life easier, but again they add up. Expect to be parting with around £750 to get everything you need.
The Wicked Edge system is very good for smaller knives, and the learning curve is less steep. However, we’ve never found it to be satisfactory for long or slender blades (or indeed most non-chunky chef’s knives) even with all the suggested attachments. It also has the extremely annoying habit of not really – even when you’re spending nearly a grand on the top-end base model – giving you all the grades and gubbins you need to sharpen all your knives to the highest level. If you like kit, love buying accessories and have only a small selection of hunting knives then go for it. Otherwise, we’d suggest you give it a miss.
The Apex Pro suffers from the same base model inadequacy of the Wicked Edge, and so back off to the ‘You Might Be Interest In..” bit below your basket you will go. Once you’ve got through that pain barrier though, it’s a lovely little system. It’s definitely best for reasonably-sized knives as trying to sharpen a paring knife with one is akin to trying to pick your nose while wearing boxing gloves, but it will give you an absolutely splendid edge – even if doing too many knives in a row gives you terrible cramp (trust us, we know from painful experience…).
We’ll quickly skip over The World’s Best Knife Sharpener (I kid you not…) and we generally like to give a very wide berth to any electric sharpeners that come in under a grand or any sharpeners that see you pulling or pushing your knife backwards and forwards over little ceramic wheels. Our point here is that clearly these cheap and simple solutions don’t actually deliver – if they did then why on earth would all the other options exist? They will make your knife slightly not blunt, but definitely not sharp, and some of them are truly abominations unto the eyes of the Lord.
The pros and the old hands like to reach for their whetstones, – we really like Naniwa – and there’s a huge amount to be said for them and the edge they produce can be a thing of absolute splendour. However … they require a lot of skill and a really thorough understanding of how an edge is achieved – otherwise hours can be lost going round in circles without understanding what is going wrong. While we don’t generally suggest going much above 3000 grit (and even then only for removing the burr) it’s possible to head quite quickly in to 5 figures with a concomitant and almost exponential price increase. Again, there’s also kit-creep; water bridges, levelling stones, strops and all sorts start appearing on the essential shopping list.
And so we come to the last sharpener on our list, the HORL. There’s a bit of a cost (but a not unreasonable one we feel), and it also hugely benefits from buying the various upgrade packs, but it’s still significantly cheaper than any of the options above (less the mass produced rubbish we’re avoiding like the plague). There is a bit of trial and error required to get the hang of it, but once you do – and using your honing steel like a good knife-owner – you should find it quick and easy to put a new edge on every 6 months or so. It’s also compact and made in Germany, much like Albert Einstein, and he knew a thing or two.
Now that we’ve decided to try and provide a cradle-to-grave support structure for our knives (from storage to boards, honing to sharpening) it fell naturally to the HORL to take up the mantle of edge establishment. We think it fits in well and is by far and away the best at trading the various trade-offs in your favour – and (as with everything) buying it from us means always having an expert on the end of a telephone if you have any questions whatsoever.
And the icing on the cake? Buy any knife from us, along with a HORL system, and we’ll use a HORL to put your first edge on – so saving you a hell of a lot of time and effort when the time comes to re-sharpen.