How do you keep your Q knives sharp?

[K Kruger]

Well, yes and no--but mostly yes.

It depends on the functions as you note, but also on the thickness of the blade and the hardness of the steel used in its manufacture. E.g., you might want to try a 15/20 on your Wust and Chicago chefs and, say, a 20 or maybe an 18 single bevel on your boning and meat slicers and an 18 single on your straight parers, a single 15 on your bird's beak. These are just suggestions based on the hardness of your knives and my assumptions of how you most likely use these types of knives. Other numbers mgiht be better but I think these are good starting points. You can cheat one way or the other (less acute, e.g., if the edge doesn't seem to hold long enough) as you use your knives and get a sense of what's what.

 

[DavidD]

After starting this post, i was inspired by the responses so I did some reading and reviewed a few of the products out there. The Edgepro is attractive, but i have resisted based on the price, at least for now. At my hunting camp, i have a Lansky that was a gift which i never used. I decided to pull it out and work on a few hunting knives that have become very dull (for all the right reasons, lol). With patience, the system provided a very sharp edge, substantially improved, even garnering comments from fellow members on the sharpness. I brought it home and worked on the Chic Cutlery and was equally impressed. Not a bad little system at a reasonable price. I did tend to bump my angles to 20 and 25, but have read Lansky's perform better this way as angles may be off. Not sure, but it worked.

 

[Guest]

If you read the user opinions at knifeforums and bladeforums I believe you’ll find most would supplement the EdgePro with the Spyderco Sharpmaker (yeah I know another $50). I was able to use a 220 grit stone and the Sharpmaker for some time, but for reprofiling I needed something more foolproof (i.e. more skill than I had) at keeping an angle, so I bought an EdgePro. However the Edgepro can’t do everything 1) despite opinions to the contrary an extreme recurve would be messy at best 2) convex blades couldn’t be done and still maintain the convex shape 3) although the EdgePro claims it can sharpen serrated knives I still prefer using the triangular rods of the Sharpmaker. Number two above could be an issue with those crazy Japanese kitchen knives. For number 3 I would maintain that with the EdgePro serrated knives aren’t needed, except for bread, but explain that to my wife.

But the main reason to have the Sharpmaker is speed. Obviously it can be set up far quicker than the EdgePro. If you don’t need to reprofile and the edge is in reasonable shape, perhaps by using the EdgePro a month ago, you can get a great edge with the Sharpmaker.

The main disadvantage of the Sharpmaker is it has only two set angles, so this would have to be considered as you reprofile with the EdgePro. Finally if you had to sharpen a bunch of knives at once every time the Sharpmakers time for setup would be diminished by the quicker sharpening.

Don’t take my word for it – do a search for Sharpmaker in the aforementioned forums.