Where to buy knives and sharpening supplies

Where to buy knives and sharpening supplies

Customers always ask me if their knives are good and where to buy them and sharpening supplies. I covered the basic about buying knives in this post, in this Santa Monica Knife Sharpening post I will talk about where to buy your knives and sharpening supplies.

First buy your knives online, it will save you a lot of money. Second never buy your knife from someone that machine sharpens knives, they will definitely have a conflict interest, and they will not be able to give you a good advice. Because their business is to ruin knives, making a fast buck machine sharpening your knives, so I would say they are not qualified to give you a good advice. They will have arguments like, all knives are made on machines and are machine sharpened in the factory wish is a fact. The difference is that in the factories, all knives are grind and beveled with tons of cooling, and the final sharpening is done on machines that use even more cooling too so the heat treatment stays intact or they actually do the final sharpening by hand on water stones. If your local knife store or sharpening service uses a belt grinder and sparks fly when they sharpen, go somewhere else for sharpening and knife purchases. Here is a YouTube video that shows how knives are made in the factory.

For buying a knife I would recommend you to go to a place like “Sur La Table” or other place that actually let you test chop and dice with the knife, and not just holding it, to make sure if it works for you. When you find the knife that works for you, buy it there if you feel that you want to support them or buy something else to be fair, and buy the knives online when you get home. If it is common knife brand, Bed Bath & Beyond might be a good option they often have sales and they always honor their monthly 20% coupons, if not you might find it cheaper at Amazon or Ebay. I usually buy my knives from www.chefknivestogo.com that have a great selection of knives and have fair prices. If you are looking after amazing Japanese knives, I would recommend www.japaneseknifeimports.com or http://japanesechefsknife.com, and for rare Sabatier nogent carbon knives check out http://thebestthings.com/knives/sabatier.htm they selling some new nogent carbon knives that are made from 60year old forgings.

Personally I love Japanese knives and they are the best of knives, but old French chef’s knives like old carbon steel Sabatier is a true pleasure to work with too and much more affordable.

For sharpening supplies I would recommend the following places:

www.chefknivestogo.com

www.leevalley.com/US

www.toolsforworkingwood.com

www.bestsharpeningstones.com

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.

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Great super cheap knives for food preparation

Great super cheap knives for food preparation

Santa Monica Knife Sharpening test good super cheap prep knives

Cheap, thin, light and sharp Kiwi knives

Well I have seen these cheap Kiwi knives from Thailand many times in the Asian food markets, but never though of picking them up. I ran into someone writing about them online that really enjoyed them, so I though I would check the knives out. They are super cheap I think I paid $2.95 for the paring knife, and $4.95 for the larger ones, and I’m sure it is possible to find them even cheaper.

The finish is rough and they do look cheap and it is far from quality steel. Over to the good stuff, the knives are super thin, ultra light, sharp and the knife handle works well. I would have no problem doing prep work, chopping and dicing with them all day long. They don’t stay sharp for very long, but are super easy to sharpen, and get back in working shape quickly. I think they would be a great option for a cheap knife to practice your sharpening skills on, together with one of those tiny $4.95 400# sharpening stones they have at the Asian markets.

I have given these Kiwi knives away to several of my friends, and many of them love the knives, and have stopped using their other knives. As for me, I have tons of knives in all sizes, shapes and quality, and I many times grab the Kiwi’s when it is time to chop and dice those veggies. I don’t really know what it is, but they are super pleasant to work with, but I think it is the combination of the light, thin blade that really makes any prep work so easy and fast.

Pros: Super cheap, thin blade, light, sharp and a comfy handle.

Cons: Feels and look cheap and dulls pretty fast.

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.
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How you could keep your knives sharp.

How you could keep your knives sharp. 

1. Use the right knife for the job: Slicer for slicing, Chef knife for chopping and dicing, Paring knife for pealing and delicate stuff, Bread knife for bread and a Cleaver for heavy duty cleaving and chopping. Never use them for anything they are not meant to be used for.

2. Always use a soft cutting board: end grain wood board or a soft plastic board. Never use ceramic cutting boards, plates, counters and so on for cutting.

3. Always store your knives in a knife rack with the edge up or use a magnetic knife holder. Never store your them in a drawer with other knives unprotected.

4. Hide your grooved steel so you can’t find it, because it is a 99.9% chance that you are doing more harm than good with it to your knives. I don’t care what your butcher or celebrity chef on TV says or do, go and hide that steel now. I would say that half of the knives I sharpen; I do because the client has steeled them dull. Instead buy a leather strop, or use an old leather belt loaded with some strop dressing. Done regularly a few strokes on each side should be enough, and it will keep your knife sharper much longer.

5. Always rinse and dry your knives after use and never put them in the dishwasher, not even if they say that they are dishwasher safe.

6. Get your knives sharpen before they go really dull.

Best knife sharpening in Santa Monica shows how to strop a knife

Stropping knife on a leather strop

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

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Best knife sharpening in Santa Monica shows how to sharpen a knife

First you need to make sure that the knives are straight and determine if they have chips or other damages. You also need to check if the edge bevel is correct for the knife, all this need to be corrected before sharpening could begin. Straighten and do all repairs, for repairs I recommend a really coarse DMT plate wish makes it fast and easy, and for rebevelling something in the 500# grit range depending on how hard the steel is.

Before starting the sharpening, prepare the stones and make sure they are flat and have them soak if needed. Find the right bevel angle check my post about “What edge angle to use on different knives” for a general idea what angle to use. For an easy way to find the angle is to measure the height of the blade at the heel, let say that your knife is 2” high at the heel as the knife in the picture bellow.

best knife sharpening in Pacific Palisades measuring knife blade height at heel

Measuring knife blade height at heel

In this case you could just divide the height of the blade, to get an estimate height that you need to hold the spine above the stone. Bellow I have a large heavy duty knife of bad quality so I decided to give it an dull edge angle of 30°. I divided the height of my blade with 2 and that tells me that I have to hold the spine one inch above the stone, see picture bellow.

best knife sharpening in Brentwood measuring knife spine distance from stone

Measuring knife spine distance from stone

Here is a table of rough estimate of values to divide the blade height with for different angles.

For 30° divide by 2

For 24° divide by 2.5

For 20° divide by 3

For 15° divide by 4

For 12° divide by 5

When you have fixed everything you need and the angle is right you could start sharpening. I usually start with a coarse stone 700# grit till I get a smoth straight edge with a burr, and continue with a medium stone in the 1000# – 2000# grit range making sure that I keep it tight and have a light burr. I usually holding the knife diagonal over the stone to avoid wobbling, see picture bellow.

best knife sharpening in Los Angeles Hand sharpening knife diagonally to avoid wobbling

Santa Monica hand sharpening knife diagonally to avoid wobbling

After this I deburr with some light edge trailing strokes on both sides, and a few strokes on a cork or a piece of wood, before moving on to the finishing stones. See pictures bellow.

best knife sharpening in Santa Monica using edge tailing strokes on fine sharpening stone to deburr

Edge tailing strokes on fine sharpening stone to deburr

best knife sharpening in Venice carlifornia deburring knife edge on cork

Deburring knife edge on cork

I usually start the finishing work with a fine stone in the 4000# – 6000# grit range and using lighter and lighter pressure, this stage it’s a lot about feel and sound and if the ground work is done on coarser stones 10-20 strokes per side should be enough. This should be enough for most ordinary kitchen knives, just deburr on a cork. At this stage you should be able to shave with the knife with a little bit of pressure.

If you want you could continue with super fine stones all up to the 30k# grit, but I most often only use a 8k# and 12k# stone to get that shiny finish. Of course you could continue even more, with lapping films and strops with different dressings until you get that dark deep mirror finish.  On my own knives I usually do it in this order, depending of what knife it is.

Fast sharpening: 2000#, 6000# and leather strop with blue magic. For a more over excessive way: 320# DMT, 500# Bester, 1000# Sigma, 2000# Bester great feel, 2000# more like a  4000# Unknown brand, 6000# Nubatama, 8000# Kitayama, 12k# Shapton, Balsa with polishing cream, Leather strop with Autosol or Mothers and finally horse butt leather strop without dressing.

Things to remember

  1. Make sure stones are flat and clean.
  2. Don’t use to much pressure, let the stones do the work.
  3. Avoid doing it to fast, so you don’t wobble.
  4. try your best to keep the angle, after a while it will come naturally.

 

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.




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Knife repair, giving new life to a broken knife

Santa Monica Knife Sharpening
old broken knife with chipped edge

Unsharp broken knife before regrinding

This knife was given to me by a good friend, at first look it doesn’t look to bad except for the big chip right there the heel starts. After a closer look I realized that the primary bevel was concave and parts of the edge was folded over, I also realized that the secondary bevel was way wider in the back and at the tip. Look at that tip I could have folded it by hand, it was thin as aluminum foil. At the moment I just saw two different ways to fix it, one was to leave the primary bevel concave and try to give it a new edge on the side of a sharpening stone, or regrind a new flat primary bevel and give some sort of compound edge. I decide to give it a new primary bevel to get rid of all edge damages and big scratches on shinogi.

illustration of edge before and after regrinding

Illustration of edge before and after regrinding

Above is a little illustration what it look like before and after, and what I would like to achieve. First I went to work with a large blacksmith file, because of the amount of material that I needed to take off, just to realized that it didn’t give me much precision, tried a bunch of different coarse stones, the one that eventually seams to do the best job was Beston #500. With this stone I worked until I got an even flat primary bevel all the way to the edge, I also used it to set the secondary bevel. After that I changed to King #1000 to smooth both bevels out and did some initial sharpening. After that just a fast brush with Bester #2000, before starting with my favorite stone it’s a man made blue Aoto rated to #2000 but feels much finer. This blue Aoto gives that perfect mist to the soft steel on the primary bevel, its super soft and have great feedback; the only thing is that if you don’t want your hand to look dirty for days after, use glows. For final sharpening and finishing on the secondary bevel I use Kitayama #8000 also a great stone, after this just some light stropping, before setting the micro bevel with Shun #6000 wish gives a nice bite to the edge.

I also did some clean up and light polishing just to make it easier to clean, I’m using it daily now, and its one of my favorite knives. I realized that I’m not good at always cleaning and drying the knife after use, so it started to get some stains/rust on the pretty mist on the primary bevel, so I gave it a light polish with #2000 sandpaper and all is good now. Yes of course its sharp, not hair popping sharp, but sharp enough to shave with or to slice cigarette paper into small strips. Pictures of the knife after regrinding below.

Knife after repair, regrinding and polishing

Knife after repair, regrinding and polishing

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.




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What edge angle to use on different knives

What edge angles to use is really subjective, because it is really a matter of personal preferences. The steeper angle the sharper edge, but it will also be more fragile. There is a few other things to take in to consideration though; how will the knife be used, the quality of the steel and blade thickness.

Western kitchen knives are traditionally of softer steel and take an edge angle of 19–23°, while Japanese kitchen knives are traditionally of harder steel and take an edge angle of 13–18°

Here are some rough guide lines, for what edge angle to use:

Thin flexible high quality slicing knives; thin fillet knives and roaster slicers that seldom touches the cutting board 13°

Thin high quality kitchen knives, that gets light use like slicing fish, meat and tomatoes and that needs to be extremely sharp 15°

Medium and heavy duty kitchen knives 18°- 23°

Very thick blades like cleavers 25°- 30°

Small thin pocket knives 20°

Medium pocket knives 23°

Big thick pocket knives 25°

Thin hunting knives 20°

Hunting knives 23°

Heavy duty hunting, camping and utility knives 25°- 30°

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.



Kitchen knife, a really good cheap slicing knife

Great cheap kitchen slicing knife from Marukai

Great cheap kitchen single beveled Japanese slicing knife from Marukai

A while a go I went shopping at Marukai (Japanese Costco) in Gardena.
I found this single beveled Japanese slicing knife in the store, it was really cheap less than $20 so I thought I would check it out. Compared to all other Japanese kitchen knives I own, it looks and feel really cheap, anyway I thought I would put it to test. It was really sharp out of the box, and performed way better than I thought it would. After a week I decided to give it a fast sharpening job, wow the steel was way harder than I thought and I was able to get it extremely sharp. It’s is super light, stay sharp and actually perform as good as some of our 20 times more expensive Japanese slicing knives. So if you don’t mind the cheap feel and look it is a great bargain.

Close up of great cheap Japanese single beveled slicing knife

Close up of great cheap Japanese single beveled slicing knife

Next time I visit the store I will definitely buy a few of the other knives in the line and check them out, I’m hopeful that they also will be great bargain performers.

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.



Fixing reverse bow edge and sharpening a Global knife

Reverse bow edge on Global knife

Reverse bow edge

As you see in the image of the knife, the edge just make contact at heal and tip, with a big gap between the surface and the edge in the middle. This is a common damage for knives that has been sharpened on small electrical counter machines. The easiest way to fix this is to grind the edge down till it makes contact all the way on the side of a coarse sharpening stone.

The bow edge is know fixed and in contact with the whole edge

The bow edge is know fixed and in contact with the whole edge

This is after the edge grinding, as you see the edge makes contact with the surface all the way. Time to start to recreate the bevel, for this I used a coarse DTM (steel plate with diamond particles embedded. After that I started the sharpening on Beston #500 until I got a good burr, to follow up with a no name #1000 stone, #2000 Bester, #5000 Naniwa and finally Kitayama #8000 stone.

The edge is straight, shiny and sharp on the Global knife

The Global knife once again has its edge straight, sharp and smooth

The edge is straight, smooth and shiny, and you could see that it make contact all the way after the sharpening job.

The edge in  x15 magnification after the sharpening job

The edge in x15 magnification after the sharpening job

Well the edge doesn’t look to shiny magnified x15 in real life it looks mirror polished.

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.



When to have your knife hand sharpen and when to buy a new one

Santa Monica Knife Sharpening blog explains, when to have your knife hand sharpen and when to buy a new one.

A lot of this will be my personal opinions. Usually if you don’t have extremely high quality serrated knife, I would recommend buying a new one instead of getting it sharpened. Example if you have an old 8 inch bread knife, like the one in the picture below. Pro sharpeners would charge around $9 plus $1 per inch of serration, so the total fee of the sharpening job would be around $17

Old serrated bread knife

Old serrated bread knife

For $11.95 you could buy J.A. Henckels International Fine Edge Pro 8-inch Stainless-Steel Bread Knife in the picture below. That I’m sure has both higher quality and a better, sharper edge than anything a pro sharpener could accomplish on your old cheap serrated bread knife and it would save you a few dollars.

New cheap serrated bread knife

New cheap serrated bread knife

Old stainless boning knives, like the one in the picture below. Many times they have been along for a long while, sharpened down to a stick, beaten, sharpened again.

Old boning fillet knife

Old boning fillet knife

I’m sure they might have been ok knives once, but after all that abuse and wrongful sharpening, they are not very useful for anything. You will do better in investing in a new knife, like Victorinox 47513 6-Inch Flex Boning Knife for $17.41 bellow.

New cheap boning fillet knife

New cheap boning fillet knife

It will have better edge geometry, better harder and more flexible steel and have way better edge retention. As for buying both boning/fillet knives and serrated knives I actually recommend to buy cheap decent quality knives, and save the money to buy a better chef knife and paring knife.

Small guide to buying new knives

1. Don’t buy a knife set, you will probably just end up using 2-3 of the knives any way, use the money to buy better quality chef, slicing and paring knife instead.

2. Most important, make sure the handle works for you. It should fit well in your hand, not being to slippery and give a sense of stability.

3. Choose the right length for your chef knife, your wife wife might prefer a 6” knife and you a 10” knife, an 8” inch would work okay for both of you.

4. Think of how you cut, I’m a rocker so I prefer to have a good bow on my knife, my friend is a push cutter and prefer straighter edge.

5. Choose a knife with high quality steel, high carbon steel knife if you don’t mind some stains and are good on keeping it clean and dry, or a high carbon stainless steel if you are less careful with your knife. Usually the harder steel they sharper the knife could be and softer steel will take a little more abuse. I personally prefer extremely hard Japanese knives.

6. Think about if you prefer a bolster on your knife, some people like the heft it gives the knife. I personally don’t like it and have removed it from the knives I have that had it. Mostly because it makes the knives to front heavy, hard to pinch properly and a real pain to sharpen. Most German knives have bolster, and it is rare to see on Japanese knives now more.

7. Avoid Cutco knives, they are a rip off, they are $25 knives that they sell for a $100, no wonder they could give great warranties with that mark up. Good and affordable knives brands are; Global, Shun, Tojiro and Mac. If these are too much for your budget I would recommend Forschner knives that a great knives for the price.

How to maintain your knives

1. Use the right knife for the right duty, slicing knives for slicing, chef knives for chopping and dicing and paring knives for light duty.

2. Always use a good end wood or nylon cutting board, no cutting on counter, plates and ceramic cutting boards.

3. Always rinse them and dry them off right after use, don’t run them in the dishwasher, don’t let them lay in a dirty sink and so on.

4. Don’t use any kind of electric home knife sharpener, they ruin your knives.

5. Don’t steel your knives if you don’t know how to steel, you just make the knives duller.

6. Keep your knives sharp, and sharpen them before they go dull. If you keep on working with a dull knife you just use more and more force and damage the knife more.

How to sharpen you knives

Get a Japanese combination water stone #1000/#5000 grit, and practice using it on some cheap knives first. There is tons of information online how to do it right, watch a few you tube videos and read up on some of the theory behind sharpening. After just a few hours I promise you will be able to do an ok sharpening job, the knives will be far from razor sharp and will not stay sharp for very long, but will be good enough for kitchen use and with time you will get better and better. If you don’t have the time or feel like sharpening your knives yourself try to find someone that do hand sharpening.

What kind of knives you need

I can’t answer what knives you need, it is rather personal, but for a start I would recommend.

1. A medium size chef’s knife, as a Global G-2 or MAC Superior 8″
2. A decent paring knife like Tojiro DP or Calphalon Katana
3. A good single bevel Japanese slicing knife (Yanagiba) they are great for precision slicing any meat.

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.



How sharp is sharp?

I many times hear people that they want their knives super sharp, and I always ask them how sharp is that? So I have decided to make a sharpness scale from ridiculous sharp that I give sharpness number 5 down to dull that I give number 0. Let’s start with sharpness 5 that is the hanging hair test (HHT).

Hanging hair test

Hanging hair test

As you see this old knife that I in my household call “The bacon slicer” doesn’t pass the test, because the hair is hanging on the edge. The pieces of cut off hair on the paper, came from that I had I little to much tension while trying to line the hair up. Next up is sharpness number 4, which is to smoothly slice a cigarette paper from heel to tip.

cigarette paper slicing

cigarette paper slicing

cigarette paper cutting with knife tip

cigarette paper cutting with knife tip

cigarette paper cutting with knife heel

cigarette paper cutting with knife heel

As you see the old knife passes this test, the only thing was that I felt a light resistance at the back and of the heel starting. Anyway, this is crazy sharp, it’s actually sharper than an ordinary surgical scalpel new out of the box, their are scalpels like the ones that are made for eye surgery that I’m sure would pass the test though, but I don’t have one. This is to sharp for any kitchen knife, except for maybe the most delicate fillet knives, and it wouldn’t last very long. Over to sharpness number 3, which is that it should be able to push-cut Para-cord without a problem from heel to tip and being able to shave arm hair.

Push cutting paracord easy 1

Push cutting paracord easy 1

Push cutting paracord easy 2

Push cutting paracord easy 2

Shaving hair

Shaving hair

These tests are passed easy; sharpness number 3 is a good sharpness for most thin kitchen knives like slicers, fillet knives and so on. Sharpness number 2 is to be able to slice magazine paper from heel to tip, slowly, smooth without any snagging.

Slicing magazine paper easy and smooth

Slicing magazine paper easy and smooth

This knife is almost too sharp for this test, I’m pretty sure the paper will dull it. Sharpness number 2 is good for most medium and heavy duty kitchen knifes and I think this is the sharpness most people are comfy with on their kitchen knives. Over to sharpness number 1, this is to be able to slice ordinary printing paper, cutting into the side of a tomato without slipping and slice paper thin slices of lemon.

Slicing lemon paper thin

Slicing lemon paper thin

Slicing printing paper smooth for heel to tip

Slicing printing paper smooth for heel to tip

Well this is still a good sharpness for your heavy duty kitchen knives and cleavers, but if you don’t pass sharpness number 1 test, your knife is dull and need sharpening. I call this sharpness number 0.

Sharpness:       Test:                                                    For:

5                      Hanging hair test                                 Straight razors

4                      Slicing cigarette paper                         Delicate slicing knives

3                      Push cut Para-cord, shaves                 Thin kitchen knives, fillet knives

2                      Slicing magazine paper                       Most medium kitchen knives

1                      Slicing printer paper smooth               Heavy kitchen knives and cleavers

Magnus Pettersson hand sharpener, now serving the whole Westside with free pickup and delivery: Santa Monica, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Culver City and West LA.

For free pickup and delivery on the Westside, call/txt 310-486-6068 or email.