I was looking for a good kitchen knife sharpener, something simple and something that would look decent sitting out on the countertop. After looking at quite a few extensive reviews, I didn’t really want to get anything that was electric just because those can be very taxing on knives.
I have some decent chef’s knives and I just wanted something that I can get a quick sharpen with. I don’t really let my knives get that dull anyway, but I don’t need to resurface my blade, I just wanted something that would be fast, quick and easy.
Every time we cook, we are supposed to sharpen our knife a little bit, at least before you cook, so I thought something easy, fast, couple straps right through it and it’ll give me a nice hone.
So after doing a lot of research I came across that everybody seemed to say this Brod & Taylor is the best kitchen knife sharpener.
I checked it out and let me tell you – this thing is nothing short of amazing, when it comes to knife sharpening!
It doesn’t hurt that it looks nice. I mean you can leave it right on the counter and it’s a conversation piece.
The nice thing about the best kitchen knife sharpener is the way it’s made and the way it’s angled. You just put your knife through it a couple times, you get a nice razor sharp hone on there, without getting any burrs, anything like that in your knife, which is really nice.
It’s heavy, this thing weighs like two pounds of solid stainless steel. It’s Austrian made, it’s got a tungsten carbide sharpener and it lasts a long time. People say over 10 years for the the carbide sharpeners and of course you can get replacements if they ever wear out. That’s with daily use.
Nice thing about this is I can use this on my serrated knives. It works with both regular smooth and serrated. A lot of the electric ones will not work with a serrated knife. This one, serrated, no problem. So that’s really nice for your bread knives.
Now the angle is adjustable on this, which I really like. You can go from a standard 20 degree, which is like a cleaver kind of heavier knife all the way to a 12 degree edge, which is even beyond what a lot of razor-sharp knives are. Some go to 15 but this will go even to a 12 if you want a super disturbingly sharp fillet knife.
All in all, it’s a really good kitchen knife sharpener and it works. It gets your knives exceptionally sharp and it’s fast and it looks nice.
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Table of Contents
More About The Best Kitchen Knife Sharpener
Even with all the knife sharpeners that are out there on the market, people still struggle in their kitchen everyday with dull knives. It’s a pretty big problem.
Brod & Taylor is fast and easy to use and works with any kind of knife, even serrated knives.
There are two steps of the process.
The first is a sharpening phase where you have the tip down and that gets a new edge on it, it cuts the new edge, just like you’d have with the factory.
The second step is to have the tip up and so this is a honing process just like what a chef would do with a professional steel, but you can do it at home really easily. So that maintains your knife and keeps the sharp edge on it without having to put a lot of effort in.
Most people, once you have a serrated knife and it gets dull, they just throw it away, because it’s hard to sharpen, you have to have it a professionally done. But with the best kitchen knife sharpener all you have to do is just put it in, turn it at an angle and pull it right through and this little spring-loaded action will keep the edge pressed.
Great thing about this little product is that it actually accommodates any type of knife, European, Japanese, doesn’t matter, it can be single sided bevel. It can also do knives that are half serrated. So if you got the steak knife that’s got the serrations halfway down and then double bevel, you can do each part, you can just sharpen the tip.
The great thing about this is you’re never gonna damage your knife. I mean some home knife sharpeners are just intimidating people. For example, the electric knife sharpeners, it’s an appliance and people are afraid to put their knife into it and they’re always taking off metal.
This product a real deal. I’ve seen a guy went out on the sidewalk, he scraped the knife on the concrete, come back in and sharpened it with three quick strokes!
About different knife edges.
European knives are about 15 degrees. It’s 15 degrees on each side. You put such a knife down the center opening (sharpener’s spring-action bars) and you just gently press. You are gonna be at 15 degrees. Again, you just moderately press down and that’s gonna be 15 degrees.
If you’ve got a knife that you want to use to fillet fish and it’s that thin knife and you want it super sharp, you just gently press, you’re gonna be at 12 degrees and you can put a really sharp edge on that.
If you’ve got a chopping knife that you want to be very strong, that goes down to 20 degrees. All you do is you push down hard and now you’re putting a very strong edge on it that won’t break.
Life expectancy on the best kitchen knife sharpener is 10 years in home use.
This is a knife sharpener for dummies!
Even if I didn’t own a knife I would still want this on my kitchen counter just because it’s so pretty. It’s gorgeous, they’ve done an incredible job styling this knife sharpener for you.
But it is exactly that. It’s a very functional knife sharpener that will even do your serrated blades. It’s very hard to find a knife sharpener that’ll do that and it does it safely.
It’s very robust so when you pull your knife through, it’s not moving around on the counter and it’s certainly not one of those sticks that always come with every knife set and that takes a college degree to learn how to do it properly.
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Even More About Top Rated Kitchen Knife Sharpener
Brod & Taylor kitchen knife sharpener quickly sharpens and hones any metal knife, even serrated. If your knife is very dull, restore the bevel with coarse sharpening, by pulling the knife through with the tip down. Three to four pulls through the precision tungsten carbide sharpeners is usually enough to restore a bevel.
A light downward pressure will create a finer and sharper edge, while heavier pressure will create a sturdier chopping edge.
For most knives, press down enough to move the sharpener bars about halfway through their range. Once your knife is sharp, you’ll rarely have to coarse sharpen if you hone your knife regularly.
Hone the edge by pulling through with the tip up until the knife pulls through smoothly. The number of pulls may vary, normally about six to twelve. This can be done every time you use your knife because no metal is removed.
Honing the knife straightens and realigns the cutting edge in the same way as a chef’s steel but the Brod & Taylor kitchen knife sharpener provides a more precise and even result that anyone can do easily.
If you need that extra degree of sharpness, polish the edge with a few strokes back and forth, hold the sharpener bars fully apart, let the sharp edge glide across the smooth flat surfaces of the sharpener with no more downward pressure than the weight of the knife.
Now about your serrated knife.
The scalloped bevels are formed into one side only, usually the right-hand side. With the knife blade parallel to the counter surface, move the handle of your knife to the right 45 degrees and draw the knife toward you. The tungsten carbide sharpener will only contact the serrations on the right side of the blade.
The Brod & Taylor sharpener is able to hone the entire serrated knife edge because the spring-loaded sharpening surface hugs the contour of each serration, both curve and tip. If you have a knife with serrations on the left, use the same technique but angle the blade to the left.
If you need a reminder on any of these techniques, the directions are conveniently located on the bottom of the sharpener.
After sharpening, wipe the blade clean with a damp cloth and get ready to enjoy using a truly sharp knife.
Chef’s Choice, Professional Knife Sharpener System
I’m going to give you a review of the Brod & Taylor professional knife sharpener.
It’s a beautiful tool, ruggedly constructed, almost two pounds of solid stainless steel and it does a wonderful job of sharpening all types of metal knives.
I’ll start by explaining a little bit about the sharpening technology.
It doesn’t use any abrasives. The sharpening is based on two tungsten carbide sharpeners mounted on the patented spring-loaded system.
If you take a closer look at these tungsten carbide sharpeners, you can see there’s a small rectangle precision ground, one side on the inside of the sharpener is ground to a sharp edge and the outside is beveled so that the corner is smooth.
In order to sharpen a knife, you really don’t need to take off any metal. What you need to do is just realign a blade which you can do just by coming through the sharpeners with the tip up. Just six or eight times, just to straighten that blade back out.
It’s the best way to keep your knife sharp so that you’re using a sharp knife every day and you don’t actually need to grind metal away to sharpen it after it gets really dull.
Just letting the weight of the knife run back and forth at the bottom of that V and burnishing right on the edge and that’s really all that’s required to get a knife sharp again.
Another great feature of the Brod & Taylor sharpener is how easy it is to sharpen serrated knives. It’s a difficult task and most people at home never have the ability to sharpen these knives at all.
As you may know, the great majority of serrated knives are beveled only on one side, almost always on the right and the left side of the blade is flat. So you never want to put this through any type of a standard pull through sharpener because you’re going to end up grinding away metal on left side and you need of course to be able to sharpen all along the edge.
Now there are some sharpeners they claim to do serrated knives and generally what they do is just grind the tips off of serrations which is really not the best thing to do.
It’s very easy in the Brod & Taylor sharpener.
To sharpen the whole side, all you do is pull the knife over to the right and just pull it straight through. You will see that sharpener, the back corner, that bar wiggling as it goes along. It’s actually going in and out of each one of the curved scallops on the edge of the knife.
So you’re not only honing and sharpening the tip but you’re getting the whole edge sharp and you end up with a super sharp serrated knife.
Let me talk for just a minute about blade angles.
When you press the bars down on their springs, the angle between those two sharpening surfaces, they actually changes. When we’re at the top, we’re actually at a 12 degree angle measured from the center line and we go all the way to the bottom that’s a 20 degree angle.
So when you are cutting a bevel on a knife, it’s actually possible for a knife, say really delicate filleting knife, to just press down, just barely and pull through and you’ll be cutting a 12 degree bevel.
If you wanted to make a more rough and tough chopping knife, you will push all the way down and pull through, then you would be cutting at 20 degrees.
Now for most people just a moderate pressure somewhere in the middle, getting about 15, 16 and 17 degrees without much thought, you can just basically push down gently and pull through. It is possible with a little bit more control and thought to be able to vary the angle between 12 and 20 degrees.
So again just a quick review of the three different functions of the best kitchen knife sharpener.
For an extremely dull knife, which you would do generally quite rarely, is to put tip down and pull through for the coarse sharpening.
Tip up is the honing where you’re not taking off any metal and this is what you would want to do every day and the thing that is great for people to know is if you even buy a brand new knife, the best way to maintain it is to keep that blade aligned when it starts to curl over, you can just put it in and keep the blade straight by honing.
And then finally the polishing operation, it’s optional, but if you’re looking for the the sharpest knife, just by burnishing that edge, you can get it razor sharp.
Additionally if you do have a left-handed sometimes called Japanese style blade and has a bevel only on the left side, you can basically pull it to the left and pull it straight through and you should only honing the blade on the left side and not touching the right.
So that’s what you want to do if you had a knife which was flat along the right side but beveled only on the left.
The Brod & Taylor sharpener is really the perfect union of form and function.
People enjoy keeping it out on the counter where it’s easy to use and by maintaining their knives regularly to keep them nice and sharp, you actually extend the life of the blade as well as being able to have the pleasure of using a sharp knife every day.
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