Knife Sharpening for Restaurants and Home Chefs

[John_B]

I have been reading through a number of old threads on this topic from a few years ago. https://forum.tormek.com/index.php?topic=3240.15 is an example There is much discussion of polished vs. toothy edges, cutting tomatoes, steel hardness, etc. One thing I did not see (I hope I did not miss it) was a process for producing a knife with a sharp edge that will last a reasonable time in a kitchen where a chef may be cutting 50 pounds of onions, carrots and tomatoes a day using the Tormek system. Home cook's knives should last longer as they do not see the use. It is funny that most of the knives I see that are quite expensive made from quality steel are in the hands of home cooks. Your local eateries seem to have Victorinox or similar NSF approved less expensive blades. Some places are different the chefs have their own knives that they bring in each day.

[RichColvin]

John,

Wootz at KnifeGrinders in Australia has a method his team use for this.  The details are at :

     http://knifegrinders.com.au/Home/issue4_article.pdf

He has some more information on their site such as this article

     http://knifegrinders.com.au/17ProprietaryEdge.htm

where they show the results of their approach working with butchers.

Not exactly vegetables, but certainly fellas who earn their living with their knives.

Hope that helps.

Kind regards,
Rich

[Ken S]

Well done reply, Rich.

Ken

[John_B]

Thank you for the information Rich. I need to read these articles a second time before I start implementing their recommendations. The sharpening angle of 12 DPS is less than I would have imagined. I would be interested to hear others experiences.

[wootz]

No knife will last a dayload of intensive cutting without maintaining the edge with steels, would it be a meat plant or a busy commercial kitchen.

Analytically-minded may want to read Experiments on Knife Steeling on our website http://knifegrinders.com.au/16SET.htm, but simply put the typical steeling technique is on a polished (smooth) rod afer every 10-20 cuts for as long as it helps. Where comes a time when the edge apex gets weak from repeated realigning with a smooth steel, you will use the grooved (ribbed) steeling rod, and then again just the smooth steel is doing the upkeep.

The difference between the mainstream knives like Victorinox/SWIBO and high HRC knives revealed in our experiments is that high-end knives do better with polished steeling, while the mainstream require more frequent grooved steeling.

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