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

[xany.livejournal.com]

chesapeake knife and tool closed its MA locations?

well fuck. that's awful news in-and-of itself. first Kitchen, Etc. now this.

that said, there was a place on Newbury St that offered a knife sharpening service. I can't for the life of me remember their name though.

[cris.livejournal.com]

Kitchen Arts on Newbury Street are a little spendy, but they'll sharpen knives for you. You might also want to try Stoddard's, either in Downtown Crossing or Copley.

[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.

[grendel.livejournal.com]

I sharpen my own with my diamond bit grinder.

[protogeek.livejournal.com]

I have one of these and I love it. I don't have the patience or interest to learn how to do it by hand, and I'm way too lazy to take my knives somewhere. And like others said, once you've had your knives sharpened you'll want to do it a lot more often, so being able to do it at home is a Good Thing.