How long do your knives last you?

Floss

mumf said:

... Up to my serious illness,I was a butcher for 41 years. My knives there,just two, lasted one year for the six inch boning knife,and 2 for my steak knife. 

But you were using those 8+ hours a day 5/6 days a week as against household use which would be a lot less.

Longwalker

I think people get confused between honing and sharpening. Honing is best done on a steel, thats what you see the chefs and butchers do constantly during the day. It keep the knife edge smooth

Sharpening is when the edge has gone, it has chips, its worked to one side, its worn down. Thats when you need a whetstone to get a new edge 

Blocks are not ideal storage for knives, just pulling them in and out can result in chipping, but better then a drawer  At work we have magnetic strips . My sister who is a professional chef keeps her knives in a roll. Also dont be using your knives on the work top or those glass boards. As a trainee butcher ( many moons ago ) we used rubber blocks ( so the top layer would be scrapped off end of day ) and I personally only use wood although in work our work table were topped with that acrylic (?) chopping board material 

There are some good home use tools on the market but usually only suited for double side bladed

YoungBlueEyes

I keep my knives in a knife block. I put them in upside down (sharp edge upwards) so they don’t dull as you pull them out or put them in. I know is only a tiny bit but still. 

beckstar1975

Ours are in a block, one is a bit skewwhiff, another has a chip so I think we may be best of getting new ones, but will need a magnetic strip not a block

mumf

Floss said:

mumf said:

... Up to my serious illness,I was a butcher for 41 years. My knives there,just two, lasted one year for the six inch boning knife,and 2 for my steak knife. 

But you were using those 8+ hours a day 5/6 days a week as against household use which would be a lot less.

Indeed . Which is why our last domestic set was changed after 10 years or so. 

PipneyJane

beckstar1975 said:

We splashed out on good knives 20 years ago, have had them professional sharpened a few times and sharpen them (badly I expect) at home too.

I bought a new knife at the weekend (cheap £3 thing) and am amazed at how well it cuts, ie how bad our current knives are.

How often to you change knives, and if it's a long time how often and where do you sharpen them? And with what?

The OS thing to do would be to try and restore our current ones, suspect we may end up buying new ones and then making sure we get them professional sharpened regularly to keep their condition.

We have a "pull through" steel and I sharpen my knives every couple of days on it.  The knife I use most is 33 years old.

There's definitely a left-hand:right-hand bias on our knives, probably because of how they are sharpened.  I'm left handed and DH is right.  He struggles to cut things with my favourite knife, insisting it is blunt, and always uses a different knife.  When his best friend sharpened my knife - another right hander - he spent ages getting it to his ideal level of sharpness but, when I went to use it, I found it blunt.  

In your shoes, I'd buy a good knife sharpener.

- Pip

Wraithlady

I think my oldest knife (from when Safeways were doing a  rip off of the Kitchen-Devil product) is from 1990 or thereabouts. It's a good wide blade, kind of a hemi-mezzaluna shape, and stays sharp with the occasional honing.

Wish I'd bought more but I had little money at the time and hindsight is 20/20

Gers

Interesting thread. 

My oldest knife has been passed down in my mother's family and is at least 100 years old. It's very worn in the middle, doesn't like being wet and can rust easily. I use it very sparingly, only if I'm feeling nostalgic.  The next oldest is a serrated knife given to me as a free gift from butcher's shop in the small German village where my uncle lived, it probably dates from the early to mid'80s. The handle is worse for wear though the rest is perfectly good, mind you it doesn't get used much apart from for tomatoes. 

My assorted everyday others are sharpened with a pull through or sometimes on the bottom of a mug. Everything is kept on a magnetic strip. Those blocks seem, to me, to be unhygienic and prone to providing a home for spiders. 😀