Why you should not use pull through knife sharpening devices

We literally get hundreds of knives of all shapes and sizes every week through our workshop taking advantage of our mail sharpening service. All too often we see quality knives such as Wusthof or Dick.de that have been damaged by pull through sharpening devices. These devices are designed to remove material from the blade at the correct angle, however typically more pressure is applied at the start of the process beginning near the bolster to the middle of the blade resulting in a concave shape to the cutting edge. You’ll know you’ve fallen victim to this when you are chopping food and it doesn’t cut all the way through leaving millimetres of food uncut – very frustrating! The image above was a knife we recently had in for sharpening from one of our Brisbane clients which depicts the issue perfectly.

The good news is we can reshape the knife by carefully grinding back the bolster of the knife and recreate a flat edge removing the concave shape from the knife for as little as $20 over the usual sharpening fee.