Knives: Keeping the Edge

A sharp knife is a cook’s best friend. A dull knife is actually a danger in the kitchen. A dull edge forces the cook to do the work instead of the knife and accidents can happen. Blade material and quality means as much to keeping the knife’s edge as how it is maintained.

Forged vs. Stamped
I’m a Wusthof fan and own over a dozen different Wusthof knives. The Wusthof forged knives are some of the very best in the world. Henckels is another high quality brand of forged knife. A “drop forged” knife of good quality steel is a knife that has been created by hammering a piece of hot metal into a mold of the knife blade. You’ve seen “forging” in movies where the blacksmith is making horse shoes or swords on an anvil. Drop Forge is the same thing except with a mold and it not typically done by hand. Forging creates a hard steel and a hard edge that keeps its sharpness longer. Wusthof forged knives are created from a single piece of steel. The Henckels knives are created from three seperate pieces.

Stamped knives are cut from a piece of sheet metal using a template. Using a stamp process for knives is done to keep cost down. Stamped knives aren’t necessarily bad, but they aren’t as hard as forged and will need to be sharpened more often. Below you see two different types of Wusthof knives. The top chef’s knife is a drop forged Wusthof Classic. The bottom slicer knife is a stamped Wusthof Gourmet. You can see that the blade of the Classic knife comes to meet the handle. It is heaver and very balanced. The stamped Gourmet knife is sandwiched by the handle. This is the easiest way to identify a stamped knife vs. a forged. Even though it is stamped, a Wuthof Gourmet is quality knife. It is still made from a high quality steel and is one of the best stamped knives in the world.

Maintanence
Keeping that edge is important no matter what quality of knife you have. A sharpening steel is a good way to keep a knife sharp. A few strokes of the steel smooths out those little nicks and fine grains of the metal’s edge. A 25 degree angle of the blade to the steel will keep the proper bevel of the blade’s edge. The easiest way to determine 25 degrees is to hold the knife edge to the steel, while resting the top of the blade against the steel’s handle. The manufacturer sets the height of the handle to be 25 degrees when you rest the blade against it. The harder the knife, the harder it is to sharpen. The best type of sharpening “steel” is ceramic. It is harder than any grade of steel. I have a couple of Wusthof sharpeners that have a ceramic option.

A steel can keep your blade sharp, but sometimes you have to recreate the edge all together. Every new knife I buy, I first have it professionally sharpened. The factory edge just isn’t the same as one that a professional can put on their for you. I personally don’t bother with sharpening stones or wheels which is what you need to true up your blade’s edge. Instead, I use my steel often and bring my knives in once a year or as needed to my local knife shop. They will sharpen my entire block of knives in a few days for $35.