Cooking For Engineers

[Tritone]

I recently bought a Global G-2 8" chef's knife. This is the first quality knife I have ever bought. I love the feel and the sharpness of the knife, and I want it to stay in my kitchen for many years to come. To this end, I'm going to need to hone it on a regular basis. Which brings me to my problem.

Global recommends not to use a standard honing steel, saying their blades are "too delicate"; they instead suggest using a ceramic rod. This is kind of confusing to me and presents a couple problems.

First of all, I've read it's BAD to hone with steels that are harder than the knife itself, because you'll end up shaving off a lot of material from the knife, instead of just aligning the edge. I thought this is why most people don't recommend using a diamond-dust sharpening steel.

The second problem is that at 95 USD, Global's ceramic rod costs more than the chef's knife itself!

So how important is it not to use a traditional honing steel on a Global knife? Any first-hand experience or advice by other Global owners would be much appreciated. Thanks

[jagstyle]

Personally, I use a leather hone to realign my edge as it is the final step in my sharping process after the polishing stones:


http://www.handamerican.com/flatbed.html

btw, using a steel that is harder than your knife is a good thing! A softer steel will fail to align the edge as effectively. People advise against using those diamond coated steels because they are too aggressive (coarse) and can harm a delicate edge. The right choice is a steel/rod that is either super fine or completely smooth.

Forget about that $90 global rod.

Here is a $35.00 smooth steel or $25 ceramic rod that will mostly surpass the build quality of the global:
http://www.handamerican.com/steel3.html

I would buy the smooth steel to perform maintenance in between sharpenings if you also plan on getting waterstones as it will not remove any metal.

I would buy the ceramic rod if you intend it to be the only tool resharpening your knives because it will actually remove a tiny bit of metal which will help to keep your knives sharp in the long run. However, the sharpness will never be as good as if you mastered using stones or micro abrasive paper.

[GaryProtein]

Use a steel. Global is giving you a lot of bunk. Besides, if their blade is so delicate, why buy their knives?

[Guest]

[GaryProtein]

If a person has a bad technique with a steel, they will use the same bad technique with a ceramic rod.

The hardness of a kitchen knife is NOT the most important thing in the world. If I were doing eye surgery, I would make sure to use a very hard, sharp blade, and I would throw out a few of them during one procedure. When I buy kitchen knives, I do not plan on throwing out two or three of them during the preparation of a meal. I expect the knives to work as well for twenty to fifty years as well as when it was new with normal maintenance, i.e. periodic steeling and very infrequent professional sharpening, every several years. People on this board will tell you they have knives fifty years old that are wonderful. Toughness and resilience, in addition to sharpness, are important characteristics in a kitchen knife. A knife blade with a modulus of elasticity in the TeraPascal range (okay, I'm exaggerating) would produce a knife sharpenable to an extremely fine sharp edge that would break immediately with use, rendering it useless.

My main complaint with the Global knives is their handles--too small, too strangely shaped, and just uncomfortable for my hands, which are about a 7 1/2 glove size.