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How to care for your knife |
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Written by Mike Plaia
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Originally Published in Nor'east saltwater Magazine One question I often hear asked on the docks, especially at the cleaning table, is "How do you keep you knife so sharp?" The truth of the matter is that caring for you knives starts long before you ever approach the cleaning table.
To start off my quest for this vital information, I talked to Jim Bellerose of Dexter-Russell, Inc., the company that makes the knives that can found on virtually every fishing boat in the northeast. Jim explained that the majority of the knives found on fishing boats are one of two types that the company manufactures. They are typically either from the company's "Sani-Safe" line, which features white plastic handles over shiny stainless steel blades, or the company's "High Carbon" line that mainly consists of wood handles over a duller colored knife blade.
Aside from the feel of a wood handle versus a plastic handle, the big difference between the two lines is their ability to take and hold an edge. The stainless steel knives will be harder to sharpen, but retain their edge longer than the high carbon steel knives. Conversely the high carbon steel knives will sharpen more easily but will not stay sharp as long. Regardless of which type of steel you select, Dexter-Russell suggests that you follow the following tips to keep you knives sharp and ready to go.
1) Knives should be hand washed in mild to medium strength detergents and immediately towel dried.
2) Knives should not be washed in the dishwasher
3) The knives should not be soaked for long periods or submerged for cleaning.
4) High carbon knives should be washed and dried immediately to prevent rusting.
5) Bleach will discolor and possibly pit both high carbon and stainless blades and should be avoided.
It is interesting to note that Dexter-Russell does not recommend or sell products to sharpen their knives. Instead they recommend that you have your knives professionally sharpened, when needed.
Using Steels: Everyone has seen the knife steels, but do you know what they really do? They are not sharpening tools, rather they are tools used to align the edge of the knife, so that the edge is at a 180-degree angle to the spine of the knife. When knives are used, the edge typically bends a little so that it becomes less than optimally aligned with the back of the knife. The steel is used to bring the knife back into alignment with the back of the knife. Some of the diamond-impregnated steels will also serve to sharpen the blade a little, but they are no substitute for a real sharpening. To properly use a steel on your knife, you need to know the angle of the edge. Dexter-Russell grinds all of their fish knives at and angle of 22.5 degrees. So to use a steel on one of their knives, the easiest way to judge the proper angle to hold the steel in relation to the blade of the knife is to first position the blade at a 90-degree angle to the steel. Then adjust the angle to cut it about in half from 90 degrees and then cut it in half again to get to the proper 22.5-degree angle. Once you have the proper angle, stroke the blade along the steel, while at the same time drawing the blade, from the base to the tip across the steel. This action will straighten out the edge so that it sits exactly opposite the back of the knife blade. Although this action will not actually sharpen the blade, it will seem to be sharper due to the fact that the edge is all pointing in the right direction.
While using a steel will make your knife seem sharper longer, it will not actually sharpen the knife, which is a much more tedious process. To really sharpen your knives you will need a stone, or more accurately, several stones. With knives that really need a lot of sharpening, the normal procedure is start off with a coarse, hard stone. This stone will remove a relatively large amount of metal and get the edge back to the correct angle. Next comes a medium grit stone, which will start to work the edge to the optimum angle. Finally the knife is sharpened on a soft very fine-grained stone, which will produce a razor like edge.
While all of this sounds relatively easy, let me assure you that it is not. The key to sharpening a knife, aside from using the correct stone, is to keep the knife at the proper angle to the stone. Keeping the knife at the correct angle is extremely difficult without some sort of a mechanical device. Some knife makers, like Buck Knives, sell a holder, which clamps onto the back of the knife and will hold the blade at the proper angle to the stone. Other knife sharpening tools, like the Lansky tools, hold both the knife and the stone at the correct angle.
| Also remember that when selecting a stone, bigger is better. It's much easier to be able to hold the knife at the correct angle and draw it across a stone that is as wide as the blade than it is to try and draw the blade across a relatively narrow stone, where you have to rotate the blade in a cutting motion to bring the stone in contact with the entire length of the blade. It's no accident that the stones used by sushi chefs to sharpen their knives can be very wide, up to fourteen or fifteen inches.
Another nifty device I use to "touch up" my knives when the catch has been very good and we are cleaning a lot of fish, is one of those tools that holds two ceramic rods at the correct angle in a plastic base. They don't have to be big and long. The one I use is about two inches long, but ten swipes of the knife through the rods will both align the edge and restore a little of the sharpness. They also have the added benefit of being cheap enough that you can keep several on the boat, so you can find one when the time comes. They also come in handy for sharpening your bait knives quickly.
Most electric knife sharpeners are not well suited to the task. They tend to remove too much metal from the blade and, if the blade is not allowed to cool between passes through the machine, it will heat up and remove some of the blade's temper. There is one machine that I have found to be acceptable for the fish cutting knives I keep on the boat. It's the Chef's Choice brand, which uses diamond-impregnated wheels to grind the edge. What is somewhat unique about this machine is that, rather than trying to adapt itself to the many variations in blade angles used by the various knife manufacturers, the machine regrinds the blade to its own, preset angle. The machine has three separate sets of wheels, set in slots. One set of wheels, which is only used the first time a knife is sharpened on the machine, is very coarse and resets the angle of the blade to the angle of the machine. Once the angle is reset, the knife never has to pass through this set of wheels again. The other two sets of wheels are fine and very fine grades. The knife is sharpened on the fine wheels and then finished off on the very fine wheels. While I can get a better edge using my stones and angle holding tools, knives sharpened on this machine are acceptably sharp. I would only use this machine on the less expensive knives that I use on the boat. For the better cutlery that inhabits our kitchen the machine is verboten.
One technique used by some of the old time fish cutters is to use a wide coarse stone and sharpen one side at approximately the correct angle. The other side is sharpened at a much shallower angle than the first side. This will yield an acceptable sharp blade at the expense of quickly wearing out the knife.
So now that you have an idea of what a long and tedious process it is to properly sharpen your knives, you can better appreciate the importance of properly caring for you knives to prolong their edge as long as possible. In addition to the tips from Dexter-Russell mentioned above, I would offer the following:
1) Never use you fish cleaning knives for anything other than cutting fish. Don't use them to cut bait, line, etc. Keep another knife or knives on board to use for those tasks.
2) When you are cleaning fish, do so on a wood or soft plastic cutting board, this will minimize deflection of the knife's edge.
3) Never use you filet knives to cut through bone. Keep a heavy serrated edge knife in your kit for just that purpose.
4) Always clean you knives and dry them as soon as you are done with them.
5) Keep you knives in a sheath or other suitable protective case. I use a chef's canvass knife case that I picked up for about $10 in a kitchen supply store.
6) If you are using high carbon knives that can rust, wipe them down with a little food oil, or spray them with food grade silicone, before putting them away.
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