Assuming you have kitchen knives made with quality steel, and you always cut on a board, you can sharpen a knife in 15 seconds per week. And by this, I mean steeling with a fine diamond coated butcher’s steel. The one we use at home for our kitchen knives is the DMT DS2F 12-inch diamond steel, which is a smooth steel rod coated with 600 grit diamonds. There are many designs of diamond coated steels in different shapes and with different grit coarsenesses, but we find this one offers a perfect balance between edge straightening and ultra-gentle material removal. End result is a straight and sharp working edge that just stays that way and makes cutting consistently satisfying. Use it as you would any steel for about 5 strokes per side alternating and then rinse under a tap. If you do this regularly, every week, your edges will stay sharp.
Brian B
What are your thoughts on the effectiveness of using the DMT diamond steel vs a leather strop with DMT diamond compound for those weekly touchups?
John Gudmundson
It does not hurt to have both, but if you only have one, I’d have the steel. The role of the steel is to straighten a rolled over edge and secondarily, in the case of diamond or ceramic steels, to remove micro amounts of material. A strop generally will struggle to straighten rolled areas. However, a strop with diamond compound can most likely get the edge a bit sharper than the typical diamond butcher’s steel. As always, the devil is in the details, such as the quality of the knife steel.
Victor Nishimoto
Hello,
What steel type are you using?
Thank you
John Gudmundson
We are now using Magnacut on all our models.