Happiness is a sharp knife

Tools of the trade

I’ve just got my knives back from being professionally sharpened and I am a happy man. I mostly use my 10inch Wusthof classic for most of my chopping, julienning, chiffonading, and the odd COMPLETE AND TOTAL ANNIHILATION of meat, vegetables, and/or herbs. I also use my Wusthof paring knife on a daily basis for peeling, and tidying up the knobby bits on veges and the like. Then there is also an 8 inch Furi East-West (Santoku) knife that I’m trying to get Sharon to use so she doesn’t have to use my Wusthof… but it’s not really working.

Needless to say they get quite a workout at times, and although I keep them pretty sharp with my diamond pronged sharpener and honed with a steel… they still get dull after a while.

So driving along through the city yesterday I happened to be stopped at the lights behind a van that said “Professional Mobile Knife Sharpening !” (actually I added the “!”, because it seemed appropriate). I called the number on the van and talked to the very friendly Ken, who said he’d swing by my work the next day and sort me out.

Ken does all the sharpening for a number of the “King Of Knives” stores in Perth, so if you drop your knives off there, it’ll probably be him who does them, as well as numerous hotels and restaurants throughout the city. He is a busy man.

So in a very Proverbs 27:17 way (except it was man sharpening steel this time), Ken swung by in his van today and went through the process of sharpening my knives. The Furi had a couple of small dents that needed to be ground out on a stone, and then it was onto the grinder with three grit levels taking the edge back to razor sharpness before a finishing buff and polish. The whole setup runs off a small petrol motor in the back of his van. All up, it took about 10 minutes to do three knives and cost me $18… which I was more than happy with.

For a while I’m going to have to stop my normal routine of running my fingers over the edge of the blade to test how sharp it is, because even across ways I’d be scraping my finger prints off…they’re that sharp… or else I could take up burglary… hrmm.

Anyone wanting to get some knife repairs done, or to feel the love that only a razors edge can bring should give Ken a call. Now I just need to find something to cut.

Ken Powell – Professional Knife Sharpening
0418 916 947

11 thoughts on “Happiness is a sharp knife”

  1. little edit coz I hate stuff ups….. drop knives off “there”

    perhaps then delete this comment to make youslef look good?

  2. Done… and instead of deleting your comment i’ll just highlight your typo while spelling “yourself”… Although im sure there is some dude called Youslef out there thinking… “Oh yeh…I do look good!” .

    Thats how I roll… uhuh… yeh :)

  3. I do that too- run my finger over the blade. I have no good knives to speak of, just doable ones- can’t quite yet justify the expense of fantastic knives (and no counter space, anyway, with a long story about why I can’t put up a magnet strip…). The above picture is making me yearn though.

    And, I suppose I could look it up, but what’s the exchange rate like? How much is $18 Australian dollars to US, if you happen to know off hand? (If not, I’m probably leaving this page to look it up anyway!) :)

  4. Yvo… a magnetic strip might not be the best place to store them anyway. Mine sit in a draw on their own inside plastic knife gaurds, and I have a knife wrap to put them in when I need to take them with me. A good chefs knife is one of the best purchases you’ll ever make… doesn’t need to be expensive, but will do your cooking a world of good.

    At current exchange rates $18 Australian is about 5c US. Incidentally, for $18 US I’m sure you could buy most of Australia.

  5. I know exactly what you mean. I make the constant mistake of leaving my baby (9″ messermeister classic french) at the restaurant. The fucking cooks and dishwashers steel it until there is no edge to be seen. Not to mention the occasional trip through the dishwasher.

    Anyway, we just had the knife guy come by yesterday and do all the knives. I was a happy boy when I came in today and found my knife in perfect condition…

  6. Dan…that is a crime… I would not be leaving my knives in the hands of anyone… let alone people who would throw them in the dishwasher…gah… so many… elipses… Fight the power man.

    Brilynn, my knives are all about the raw materials, so it’d be whole scotch fillets and a garden full of fresh vegetables. But I do concur, the joy in the cutting is the food that you get to eat. Although I think I made about three times too much last night just because I wanted to keep cutting stuff, and throwing tomatoes at my knives… it was all very informercial.

  7. Yeah, happiness is a sharp knife. I think that for my stepdad’s next b’day I’ll get his sollingen set sharpened for him. Personally, I can’t justify forking out money (pardon the pun) on a fantastic, classic cook’s knife that will last my whole life when I can just use my stepdad’s, but the minute I move out … I have gone and picked up a chinese cleaver-style knife, though. It’s a thin piece of relatively soft steel, nothing like a western-style cleaver; more like a giant razorblade with a handle. Needs to be oiled and looked after, but I can reduce an onion to pieces that you can read a newspaper through faster (and more safely) than using a mandoline-type gadget!

    Cheers,

    Luca

  8. Hey Luca,

    Your cleaver sounds more like a weapon than a cooking implement… I like it :) If I were to trade my Wusthof’s in for anything it would have to be a custom knife. I was literally drooling over some of the knives from Thomas Haslinger
    (http://www.haslinger-knives.com/gallery.html) recently… but at $500US plus, they’re a bit out of my league for now… and realistically, it’d just be a vanity purchase… not that that has ever stopped me.

    Also found a great article on eGullet about custom knives and modding stock knives to fit better which sounds really interesting.

    http://www.egullet.org/tdg.cgi?pg=ARTICLE-chadknife

  9. The happiest moment of my life over the last few weeks was when I acquired a 10″ wusthof classic after comparing it to my 8″ grand prix in a knife skills class…I love my knives.

  10. hey Sid, I think you’ve discovered that the way to a mans heart is directly through his chest :)

    Welcome to the 10″ club… Feel free to scoff at anyone who uses a smaller and by definition wimpier knife than you… and moan loudly at the state of disrepair of the knives in all of your friends kitchens… It’s every knife freaks god given right :)

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