Old Scarface
I have always believed that sharp kitchen knives make the chore of cooking a good bit easier, so I have tried always to keep my kitchen knives sharp. Back in the 1960s I learned to sharpen knives using an Arkansas stone. I still have that stone, and it has ground the edge of innumerable knives. One side of the stone is a bit coarse, and the other quite fine. But I learned a few years ago that technology had passed the Arkansas stone by.
The grit equivalent of the course side of the stone is about 1200, while the fine side is probably in the 2300 to 2500 range. On the other hand, the Japanese water stone I bought a few years back has a “coarse” side with a 5,000 grit and a fine side with a 10,000 grit. This stone gives a very fine edge to any knife.
Putting a blade to the stone is a time-consuming business, so I tend to use alternatives when available. My son once gave me a Kitchen IQ knife sharpener which suffices for daily use in touching up a blade. It contains V-shaped ceramic pieces, one coarse and one fine, and is very simple to operate: one just drags the blade through the pieces and, voila, the blade is sharpened. When the blade is in too rough a shape for the Kitchen IQ sharpener, but not bad enough to need stoning, I use a similar device that I keep on my workbench. It is a Zwilling V-Edge sharpener, which has longer ceramic pieces that can be replaced when they are completely worn. These devices keep my blades sharp. If I ever neglect a blade to the point where it needs stoning, I begin with the Arkansas stone, working my way up to the Japanese stone, and then finishing it off with the Zwilling. I no longer use the pressed silica rods I mentioned in a prior blog post.
In 2019, when I switched to shaving with a straight razor, I added the leather strop to my list of knife sharpening devices. I generally use a powder or paste stropping compound on the rough side of the strop, and nothing but knife or razor on the smooth side of the strop.
These devices generally keep my blades in good shape.
Last summer we took a cruise to Alaska. The cruise left from Seattle, and since we had to fly to Seattle I decided that perhaps I should not bring my straight razor with me, to avoid problems with the airline. And then the thought hit me: I would be away from the house for a couple of weeks. Why not use this time to have Cutco do a professional (and free) job of sharpening my kitchen knives? By the same token, why not send my straight razor off for a professional (but not free) sharpening? At that point the Cutco knives were three years old, and the razor was four years old. So I sent them all off, and took my trip.
I have been very pleased with the results, and I have made an effort to keep all the knives and the straight razor as sharp as they were when I received them back from the professionals. But there is always a hazard associated with very sharp cutting instruments. I discovered that hazard with my kitchen knives back in October, when I received four stitches in a finger. This week I was reminded why the successor to the straight razor was named the “safety razor”.
It does not pay to get careless when shaving with a straight razor. Five years ago, while learning to use the straight razor, my face suffered a variety of (usually painful) cuts. With practice I got to the point where I could shave without looking like a victim of the Jets or the Sharks. But yesterday my concentration slipped, and I managed to cut myself. The odd thing is that I didn’t bleed, so the cut did not go very deep, but it is there.
Since this cut is not as deep as the ones I suffered in my early days, it should heal very quickly. In the meantime, just call me Old Scarface.