Comments on How can I best sharpen dull knives?
Parent
How can I best sharpen dull knives?
I have some pretty common knives at home that I use for cutting vegetables, fish, meat and everything else that needs cutting. I don't have specific knives for specific kinds of food but rather use all knives for everything depending on what is quickly available.
Some the knives have become dull over time. I can still cut stuff with them but food that's a little bit more squishy like tomatoes can't be as precisely cut as before.
The knives were bought in a local supermarket and are just kitchen knives, nothing expensive or special.
How can I most effectively sharpen these knives? Does it even make sense to sharpen them again or should I just buy new ones? If I were to use a any additional equipment (whetstones, etc.), how do I best use them from a technical point of view (sharpening in a certain degree, etc.)?
Post
The Scary Sharp system is, in general, the cheapest reliable method of getting blades sharp. It consists of getting a solid, flat work surface, adhering abrasives (sandpaper, to begin with) to the surface, and working your blade over it with the cutting edge as flat as possible. By using progressively higher grits (harder, finer abrasives) a blade edge can easily be worked to a mirror polish.
Wikipedia has an article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scary_sharp
Although there is a kit sold as Scary Sharp, it is entirely a manufacturer picking up an idea other people had.
As for the knives themselves: there are a lot of terrible knife-shaped objects out there, but also a lot of reasonably-priced good knives, and of course a large number of expensive knives -- which might be good or bad. While you can assume that the very cheapest knives are not high-quality, above that level quality is not directly associated with price.
1 comment thread