Faamaʻaina naifi: faʻafefea ona maʻai se naifi. Vitio
Every housewife knows how inconvenient it is to cook using a dull or poorly sharpened knife. Some people try to sharpen knives on their own, but only high-quality sharpening, performed according to the instructions of a professional, will preserve the steel of the knife and make its blade perfectly sharp.
Sharpening knives: how to make a knife sharp
It doesn’t matter what brand or quality your knife has – sooner or later it will become dull, and without certain knowledge you can hardly return it to its former sharpness. To begin with, you must know the hardness of the steel – its optimal value should be in the range from 45 to 60 HRC. Hard steel will crumble easily, and light steel will wrinkle.
You can check the hardness of the steel by running a file along the knife blade. With light pressure, it should slide freely, and with strong pressure, lightly cling to the surface.
It is almost impossible for the hostess to determine the quality of the blade by eye, since it is associated not so much with the characteristics of steel, but with the technology of its manufacture and the conscientiousness of the manufacturer.
Today there are many tools for sharpening knives – bars, grinding belts, musats, electrical and mechanical tools. Professional sharpeners are not cheap, but remember that an inexpensive block will not sharpen your knife and may even completely ruin it.
When choosing a whetstone, look at its price. A good tool will set you back at least twenty dollars. The number of abrasive grains per cubic millimeter must match the number on the label. For a good sharpening, you will need two bars with which you will sharpen and subsequently grind the knife blade.
Musats are designed to straighten the cutting edge and maintain the sharpness of the blade without sharpening. They look a lot like a file and are most often used to sharpen heavy-duty knives.
Musata is only suitable for knives that have not yet lost their original sharpness; otherwise, high-quality sharpening is indispensable
Grinding belts and machines with abrasive (or felt) wheels are professional tools that sharpen and grind blades in knife factories. They are also used by craftsmen who sharpen in private workshops. If you have never dealt with such tools, do not even try – you will damage both the machine and the knife blade.
Mechanical and electrical sharpeners
Mechanical knife sharpeners are used to process scissors and kitchen knives. Among their advantages are low cost and ease of operation, however, the quality of sharpening and they are appropriate. A quickly sharpened blade will dull pretty quickly, so, apart from kitchen attributes, nothing else should be sharpened with them.
Remember that a high-quality sharpening of the blade can take as much as 30 minutes or 30 hours – depending on the shape of the blade.
Electric knife-cutters are becoming more and more popular due to their high-quality sharpening and grinding of blades of any purpose. These tools automatically select the optimal turning angle and are designed for straight, wavy blades, as well as screwdrivers and scissors. An electric sharpener will quickly restore even the dullest blade and polish its surface with high quality.
The correct way to sharpen a knife blade starts with using a coarse block, which you need to sharpen the knife until a strip of metal (burr) appears on the cutting edge of the blade. After that, you should replace the block with a finer-grained tool.
It is advisable to place the sharpening bar on a flat, stationary surface in order to better control the process
Walk the cutting edge of the knife along the bar (direction – forward), positioning it perpendicular to the direction of travel. In this case, the angle of inclination should be as close as possible to 90 degrees – this way you will sharpen the blade evenly along the entire length. The angle between the working surface of the whetstone and the plane of the blade should be 20-25 degrees. To reach it, slightly lift the handle of the blade until you reach the area where the blade curves.
Having brought the movement to the end of the bar, at the same time reach the edge of the knife, making sure that the blade does not break off and does not scratch its side surface. Repeat the manipulation for both sides of the blade many times without pressing hard on the block: you will not speed up the sharpening, but you will lose its accuracy. You need to guide the blade along the sharpening bar carefully and evenly, while trying to maintain an exact angle, this is the only way your knife will acquire good cutting properties.
At the end of sharpening, the knife must be sanded to maintain its sharpness for a long time. Also, in the process of grinding, the burr on the cutting edge of the blade is removed, after which the forming surfaces of the knife become impeccably smooth and allow you to use a sharp knife for a long time. The movements are the same as for the sharpening movements, but the sanding block must have a very fine abrasive grain.