Sharpening knives

Last week I bought 2 Japanese sharpening wet-stones at Dean Fujiya Japanese supermarket. And I was beyond believe, how much I had to drop on them [you will not find one stone below AED 220!!!].


Bought a combi stone - 220 / 1000 [this is the grain fineness] and one around 6000.

My long serving Wusthof Trident Santoku

Yes my Ken Onion knife is that pretty!!!

Why? Because I have great knives, one Wüsthof GrandPrix Santoku knife and one Ken Onion by Shun chef knife. But over the time, the knives really suffered - and looking on the blades, they looked more like serrated knives, than normal chef knives.

The Ken Onion knife was also quite disappointing, when it comes to the blade strength. The steel of the blade edge looks really soft, much softer than the German knife - even after only a couple of months, it had a lot of grooves and dents...

Yes - it is still a beauty - and if sharpened properly, one of the sharpest things around.

Inspiration was the amazing youtube video of Chefsteps. Love these videos:

Well - in the video, they just took 10 minutes to sharpen a knife [even with reshaping the tip] - in reality, I needed a bit longer... for both knives I needed 2.5 freaking hours, to get them perfectly sharp.

But now I am proud again, on my jewels in the kitchen. I even tried the neat trick of shaving some hair of my arm with the my Santoku and it worked without problem!

In future, I will use much more often my new sharpening stones, that my knives are never getting in such a bad shape ever again.

And: while the stones were expensive: to buy a new knife is much more expensive: My Santoku is no more produced [in absolutely the same configuration] - however similar knives would cost definitely AED 700 and more... and the Ken Onion by Shun sets you back also more than AED 600 [and it is for the moment no more longer available - bought it at Barrel & Crate - but they don't have this exact knife anymore].

So my advise: Sharpen your knives yourself with a wet stone. Yes, it will take time, and it is definitely quite a mess [I didn't mentioned, that the whole kitchen floor was wet, due to the consistent wettening of the stone - my better part freaked out, when she came home and saw the mess]. But it is so worth it. My knives cut now better than when they were new. And: if I see my German knife, which is already older than 10 years, I think, that I can keep my two main knives for the rest of my life. I just love this idea!