I'm a professional chef, and I absolutely agree with everything said in this video. Very important information for anyone who cooks at home. A good knife with a good edge makes cooking so much easier and less frustrating. If you can glide through the prep work, you can enjoy cooking much more easily.

That was really cool...I never knew about not putting knives in the dishwasher. Or the difference between sharpening and honing. Good post.

Cool.. good eats is a great show. I picked this vid because the magnetic desk gadget is such a fantastic visual aid.

Nowan, do you agree that for actual sharpening, you have to get a pro to do it?

I bought an awesome chef knife for my friend recently, and while cooking over there I was just amazed at the ease of cooking simply because the knife was sharper and better designed... Really great clip!

alton brown rocks!!! cool van too!!! i never seen the back of one that looks that like!! *whistles*

Interesting that he uses that machine to sharpen the knife while all the butchers I know sharpen their own knives by hand. I know my local butcher quite well and his blunt blades are sharper than anything you can buy in the shops

Good video, though I find it hard to believe that this information isn't just common sense.

I will say though, one can sharper a knife at home or work easily and with no trouble with a whet stone. Of course, if you are like me and actually care what your knife looks like, then you have to take extra care.

Abort! Abort! Mission Abort!

Attention everyone watching this video! Beware of mister edges and other hucksters like him. The belt sander that he is using to sharpen that knife should NEVER, I repeat- NEVER touch your steel. Any process of sharpening that produces SPARKS is far FAR too harsh for your precious metal.

For the sake of our knives please please PLEASE spend some time reading this article: Knife Maintenance and Sharpening. Chris Ward gives the best treatment of knife sharpening that I've ever read. He really knows his stuff.

I wish I could downvote this video. While I agree with much of the info in it, the process that he is using shows that he has no respect for the knives. He is only interested in doing as many knives as possible to maximise his profit. We have several grinders like this around town and I campaign to local chefs to avoid them. If you can sharpen a knife in 15 seconds, you are definitely doing severe damage to that knife.

This idiot has just detempered the steel, he may cause microfractures in the blade, and he has taken off way WAY more of the edge than he needs to, all of which leads to a shorter lifespan of the knife.

If he's like the con artists in this city, it's likely that he's put too acute a bevel on the knife as well. Why? Because knives that are too acute SEEM sharp when you first get them back, but the steel isn't hard enough to hold that edge. The result is that the knife becomes dull again very quickly, and the knife "sharpening" service gets called back sooner, which means more profit for them.

This sort of thing really makes my blood boil. It's just close enough to being correct that it is very convincing, but it's all a scam.

I use a whetstone and Arkansas stone to sharpen my knives, but I have had several knives severely fucked up by idiots just like the one in this video.

Interesting, but nothing new to me. Expected they would explain how to actually sharpen your knives yourselves.

lol, love when kids like djsunkid come along and attempt to show how smart they are. If he were so smart he wouldn't have blown everything he said above by stating he uses a whetstone...which anyone that knows anything about knife sharpening would tell you IT'S ANOTHER HONING DEVICE NOT A SHARPENER! Follow what this video tells you and ignore djsunkid please.

Sheesh...

But an Arkansas Stone isn't... Sharpening also implies maintanance (hence the whetstone)...

Good post

Um.. I read that whole article. At no point does he say NOT to have professional sharpening, and at no point does he mention sparks or speed or belts are bad.

"Convex edges are generally formed on a slack belt grinder, so they are difficult for the home sharpener to achieve."

Goofball, I hate to be the one with the bad news, but whetstones indeed sharpen knives and not just hone them. A typical whet stone is simply oiled or watered for lube, you then grinde on the rough side, then work your way turning the stone to finer grits. Finally you have sharpened the edge, you then use a steel to get and keep a true edge.

While djsunkid may be blowing the whole thing out of proportion, he is right about the whetstone.

Make sure you have a good blade to slice your holiday ham, or turkey, or duck, or whatever...!
*promote

Re-promoting this video to the front page as a VideoSift Classic. Originally published on Monday 2nd October 2006 (promotion called by gold star member firefly)

Turkey this year. great post cheers for re promote firefly.

*howto *geek *cooking

Adding video to channels (Cooking, Geek, Howto) - requested by looris.

*nochannel *geek *howto

I am still a moderator of the cooking channel, and I hate this video. So no cooking. Dammit.

This video has been removed from all channels (Cooking, Geek, Howto) due to invalid channel assignment - nochannel invoked by djsunkid. Please review the FAQ to learn about appropriate channel assignments.

Adding video to channels (Geek, Howto) - requested by djsunkid.

*dead

This published video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by eric3579.

Awarding kronosposeidon with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.