Zwilling J.A. Henckels TWIN Four Star 8" Chef's Knife German $50 8 piece block for $200

Thanks for the heads up! Henckels are not my favorite knives, but they are unquestionably solid knives. I'll gladly spend $50 to have it lying around as a back-up knife.

Being a woodworking for me sharpening is a hobby within a hobby and it is a huge rabbit hole. I have used everything and finally have ended up with a Tormek but they are far too expensive for just sharpening kitchen knives. Out of everything I have used over the years the easiest and best bang for the buck method I have found is the Ken Onion belt sharpener by Work Sharp. While I don't have it I have the belt sharpener conversion for their WS3000. I used it for a while before getting the Tormek and it is very good and the Ken Onion version is just a stand-alone version that only does knives. One thing I would tell you is you can get the sanding belts from Amazon for a lot less money than the Work Sharp branded ones and they work just as well.

Quality water stones are great but the average home cook that only sharpens their kitchen knives are not going to do it enough to get really repeatable edges freehand. It is a skill and like any skill it takes practice to get good and stay good.

If the Ken Onion solution is more than you want to spend Americas Test Kitchen (and many more) have done reviews on sharpening solutions available on YouTube and their manual pick IIRC is ~$50.

I will say that sharpening is a very personal thing and if you ask 10 woodworkers what their favorite method is you will get 11 answers, it is probably the same with knive aficionados.

a lot of kitchen sharpening issues have to do with the knife. My main chefs knife is a cheaper Chicago cutlery 8” that dulls quickly but takes a new edge in a flash with a cheap plastic angle sharpener and a couple passes with a steel.

I steel it before every use as well

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Ace Hardware. Most of them have a sharpening machine there in store that laser measures the knife and then grinds a perfect bezel on it

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what do they charge per knife?

There seems to only be two in South LA. One in Lake Charles and one in Hammond. But this is a great tip, thanks.

LINK