Sharpening

I cook a lot, and consequently use knives a lot. When you use knives a lot, you have to do something to retain usable edges. Some people buy cheap knives and just toss them when they get dull. Some people buy sharpeners, or systems with jigs and stuff that hold some sort of abrasive plates at specific angles. Some people send them out to professionals. I opt to use whetstones, freehand.

I get into this argument with Jean sometimes. He prefers to sharpen his knives on a belt sander, with some not terribly fine grit, so the knife ends up kind of serrated. He prefers this to the polished edge I aim for on my knives.

Generally speaking, I see serrations as a crutch for poor steel, and poor sharpening technique. It turns your knife into a saw, which is suitable for hard materials to be incrementally chipped away at, like wood, or a very crisp crust of bread, but should be unnecessary for most food breakdown tasks, and will actually degrade performance for fine cutting tasks, like mincing garlic, slicing chives or scallions, etc.

You end up with a rough edge, which haphazardly hacks food apart on the cut surface. Lots of unnecessary cell rupture. Lots of extra surface area for oxidation. Lots of extra surface area on the blade to oxidize as well.

Serration's inherent issues aside, using a belt sander every time you need to touch up an edge takes way more material off than is necessary to restore the edge. It takes years off of the life of the knife, and wastes a lot of good steel (assuming you started with good steel). You also risk overheating and screwing up your temper, undoing the work of the metallurgist and/or smith.

I prefer freehand use of stones because I feel it gives me the greatest sense of control. I can feel the drag when I'm abrading, and I can feel the resistance decrease as the edge surface flattens out, so I know as soon as possible when I've reached my goal, and I do the least amount of work and damage to my blade.

I use forward pushes (edge away from me) while I'm developing the primary edge, and only do reverse strokes (either pulling with the edge away from me, or pushing with the edge towards me) from that point on, to minimize edge irregularity. Imagine pushing a shovel along the ground in front of you and hitting a rock, vs, dragging it behind you over a rock. Rocks in this case are any debris that accumulate on the surface of your stone.

Jig systems that clamp onto the spine of your knife with slots to control the angle of the abrasive surface tend not to account for the blade geometry, so you'll get totally different angles depending on how wide your blade is, which will usually vary in one knife as you go from heel to tip.

Sharpeners tend to only have one angle, which doesn't account for steel hardness (i.e. harder steels can be given a more acute edge, which they'll retain longer), and doesn't allow you to service single bevel edges, and won't put the standard compound V geometry on the edge (a very small angle for the secondary edge, and a wider angle on the primary edge, for strength).

Sharpeners and jig systems also fail to account for the fact that as you take material off the edge, and decrease the width of your knife, you also need to be thinning out the rest of your knife, or else you have something more like a chisel or an axe, instead of a knife. The sharp edge transitions too abruptly into the thickness at the spine of the knife, and you end up having a hard time cutting through harder things like fresh potatoes, turnips, butternut squash, etc. You're splitting, instead of cutting.

One last thing is that I think that learning to use the tool that gives you the most control also forces you to understand the principles of sharpening better. Consequently, I could sharpen a knife on basically anything. Bricks, paving stones, terra cotta pots, large rocks, cardboard, newsprint, etc. I've field sharpened on the unglazed underside of plates at friends' houses.

If you're going to cook (and I think you should), you should have a good knife, and if you have a good knife, I think it's worth learning to sharpen.

I'll just elaborate on why you should have a good knife, because I feel like I have to after making that statement:

A good knife (you can get away with just one), saves time, effort, and helps prevent injury, because a good edge and well practiced technique requires very little force to cut, and it's better to learn to do that right from the start than to use dull knives and develop bad, dangerous habits that you'll have to unlearn later.

A good knife is a great tool, and a great tool makes work a joy. I think they're the number one thing I give to people as gifts. If you find yourself outgrowing a good knife, please donate it to a friend learning to cook. It could save their life.