Boston area cooks

[dancerjodi]

Where do you get your good knives sharpened? The yellow pages or google is finding me nothing (and since Chesseapeke closed their MA locations I don't know where to go).

Comments

[ahaseurus.livejournal.com]

I have never seen a "professionally" sharpened knife that hasn't lost -huge- amounts of steel unnecessarily, thereby losing its shape. They use old-fashioned (obsolete but traditional) grinding wheels and work freehand. Without real toolmaker's jigs to hold the knives precisely this will always take off way too much steel.

Get a nice diamond sharpening stone (preferably a two-sided one with fine and coarse grit). The knife shop in Burlington Mall upstairs has them. So does Stoddards in Chestnut Hill. Call me and I'll show you how to do it yourself. You should have a steel (sort of a file-in-the-shape-of-a-stick) to refresh the edge.

With a good diamond stone you can put a truly fine edge on a knife in 5 minutes. You will take off less than a tenth of a millimeter of steel so the knife will retain its shape for decades. All you need to do is re-form the last tiny bit of the edge into the correct wedge shape. The steel then puts a "tooth" - a microscopic roughening - on that edge so that it saws through almost anything effortlessly.

Of course, once your knives are really sharp, don't let anyone use them to cut on the countertop or on a hard plate. A wood or polyethylene cutting board is essential.

[fidgetmonster.livejournal.com]

seconded. as someone who cooks alot and likes a sharp knife, there's no way i could deal with having to take knives someplace to get them sharpened. for some chefs, sharpening is a near daily pre-cooking process. maintenance only takes a few swipes on the stone, so isn't time consuming.

knives

[dancer.livejournal.com]

"Without real toolmaker's jigs to hold the knives precisely this will always take off way too much steel."

This is the kind of person I'm trying to find (i.e. the one with the right tools). :)

Re: knives

[ahaseurus.livejournal.com]

Bring them by this afternoon & I'll get them nice and ssssshhhhhhharrrrp!

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

sometimes if a knife has never been sharpened, or abused, removing more steel than just a touchup and/or maintainance might be required...

i have everything from ceramic flats, sticks, diamond enhanced doo dads, and stuff, and i agree that a well maintained knife takes mere minutes, but then sometimes the ritual takes hours when you have a *few* working knives. enter the machine - on of the common 3 stage deals, the rough stage is almost never needed, nor hte medium. the fine buffing stage pretty much does the job, except on friend's horribly mutilated knives, or sometimes camping knives that get a lot of tree chopping done to.

plus i figured with kitchen/etc going out of biz sale, the machine was on super markdown anyway. seems to do a nice enough job.

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