Hacker News Reader

Comment by mikkupikku | Hacker News Reader

I had a hell of a time buying a new whetstone for my kitchen knives recently. I didn't want to buy online and I also didn't want to get ripped off. Walmart and Target had nothing but those shitty little widgets you pull a knife through to fuck it up. Home Despot and Lowes only had those and also bizarre sharpening contraptions that included wetstones but also other nonsense to justify bumping the price to north of $50. I finally found what I was looking for, just a regular whetstone with no bells and whistles, for about $3 at harbor freight.

My conclusion is that very few normies care about edge quality and most of those that do are making some sort of hobby out of it and want to buy something excessively fancy. See also Japanese knives; I'm sure they're very nice but two minutes with a whetstone will get any shitty piece of metal sharp enough to cut some chicken. There's no reason to overthink this stuff.

View on HN

You need to look at professional chefs supply for stuff like this, not Walmart or Amazon.

If there's a local community college or trade school with a culinary program, they might sell stuff like this or at least be able to direct you to suppliers.

All I wanted was a flat rock though, not some expensive specialty thing. I've concluded there is no longer any market for simple practical things like that; the market got bifurcated between people who want some expensive bit of hobby kit and people who don't care about sharp knives at all.

My no-frills set of two large whetstones (4 grades) cost me north of $70 in a pro restaurant store like 20 years ago. They are still in a good shape, and can make my knives razor-sharp with little effort. Even the knife I bought for $5 in a local supermarket.

Curious what your techniques are to keep the angle consistent. I've been sharpening manually by always using the same thumb position under the blade but there is always a little wiggle that bugs me.

You can buy an angle guide like the one below to keep the angle consistent while sharpening.

https://www.amazon.com/Accurate-Whetstone-Sharpener-Effortle...

I've tried simple whetstones, and haven't yet got the knack of not dulling knives on it. The bizarre sharpening contraptions take the knack out of it, same as the pull-through knife mutilators. It may not be the best, but it is better than it was. Unlike a whetstone where you may very well end up with a knife duller than when you started, if you don't have the knack for keeping an angle or removing the burr or any number of other ways to mess up.

I sharpen my kitchen knives the same way I sharpen my lawnmower blades: out front on the curb (mine is concrete). Grind until it's sharp. Once I was out-of-pocket but luckily my host had a rock garden.

Normies DO care about edge quality but they DON'T care about fiddling with fancy "whetstones" and "diamond sharpeners" and such. Sharpen it, clean with soap and water, dry and burn it (to remove the rabies and typhus) and wipe it down with olive oil, mmmmm!

> ...and burn it (to remove the rabies and typhus)...

Elaborate? You heat your knives after every sharpening?

Sure! Who knows what's on that concrete curb! I'm clean if nothing else with my kitchenware. Just pass it over my natural gas stove's burner. Treat it the same as you do your pocket knife before/after you remove a bullet or shot from a wound. Sterile is best!

no need to overthink is the truth I make a wide assortment of edge tools and sharpen them,including damascus, and regularly sharpen whatever is dull, drill bits, lathe tools, planer blades, etc etc, by hand or with power equipment. And in moments of need, like not having a long enough wood bit, I have hand ground a long bolt, into a wood bit, no thinking, just doing.

> bizarre sharpening contraptions

https://www.tsprof.eu wants a word

You didn’t want to buy online but then were happy with the poorest quality stone harbor freight had to offer? That’s an odd choice.

There are many quality whetstones to choose from and a lot of debate on the absolute best. But TLDR, KING is generally highly rated:

https://www.hocho-knife.com/king/

Harbor Freight has random decent stuff. Maybe the whetstone was one of them.

That's like saying Goodwill has random decent stuff.

Technically true, but rarely true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com