Best At Home Knife Sharpening Tools

A professional sharpening service will always give you the best results when sharpening your knives, however, there are a few tools and techniques that can be applied at home in between those sessions. 

Stropping

The safest way to maintain a knife at home is to strop it. Stropping technically doesn’t sharpen a knife, it realigns the edge burrs. Magnus recommends the HUTSULS double-sided strop paddle, which retails at $24.99. Bear in mind though that stropping only works for blades that are impeccably intact, i.e. no chips, bends, or broken tips. 

Ceramic Rod Alignment

Using a honing rod in between professional sharpening sessions to get the most out of your knives is essential. It is also the cheapest way to maintain your knives at home. Honing rods align a blade more than they sharpen them, but with some skills and practice, it is possible to get really good results and prolong the time before you will have to hand your knives over to a pro again. We recommend the Green Elephant Ceramic Sharpening Rod, $31.65 at Amazon. 

Pull-Through Sharpener

When choosing a pull-through sharpener, Magnus recommends going for one with angle adjustment, e.g. this ZWILLING sharpener at $29.99. Those manual sharpeners are known for doing a ‘fast and dirty’ job, they shouldn’t be used on damaged knives or super dull knives, which need to be professionally thinned first. They can, however, extend the time span between professional sharpenings if used correctly. 

Whetstone Sharpening

While whetstone sharpening is one of the methods that are preferred by the majority of pros (and it is a service we offer), it also requires time and patience to learn it. To start with, the King 1000/6000 ($28.20) is among the stones our Master Knifesmith recommends.

Electric sharpening Wheel

Another tool that takes practice and patience to perfect, the water-cooled Tormek T-8 combines a lot of the different belts and techniques you would find in a professional sharpening workshop. Among all the electric knife sharpening tools, this one is one of the safest that - if used correctly - will sharpen all your edged tools extremely well. At $750, it is the most expensive among the above options, but if used correctly, can last a lifetime. 

Mail-In Knife Sharpening

And, if all of the above sounds like too much of a hassle to go through - our professional knife sharpening service is only a click away.