A sharp knife is the chef’s best friend and keeping your knives professionally perfect is now super easy. 

‘It’s not the sharp knife that cuts you, it’s the blunt one,” I was told when, as a student, I worked for a month in a restaurant kitchen.

The logic seems flawed until you think about it. A sharp knife won’t skid off that onion and then into your hand. A sharp knife will fillet a fish with ease and without a struggle. Blunt knives slip.

Many of us are guilty of blunt knife syndrome. We buy some nice kitchen knives, super high quality and expensive, and they are as sharp as the proverbial razor. Then we use them every day and don’t notice that they are becoming dull, not that is until we slip and cut ourselves, or fly into a rage trying to trim some meat and making a mess of it.

Steel V Pull through V Whetstone

Of course at that point we might remember we have a ‘steel’ in a drawer sometime.  The correct name is a ‘honing steel’ and they certainly make you look cool when you use them.

Unless they are ‘diamond’ though they don’t actually sharpen the knife, they can only ‘hone’. Their job is to maintain your knife’s edge between being sharpened on a whetstone or pull-through sharpener. And you must never use a ‘steel’ on your fancy Japanese knife, as those fine blades are brittle and you could easily chip them

Classic whetstones are very good, but fiddly. Pull through sharpeners are popular, they’re simple and effective, but use one and you will see they take a lot of metal off, which weakens the knives and shortens their lives.

Which leads us to the Tormek T-1 Kitchen Knife Sharpener.

A professional choice for the home chef

This is a professional grade sharpener that’s small enough for the home chef, it sharpens the entire bevel of the knife, not just the outer edge. And it has a built in honer.

We got ours out of the box and were immediately wowed by the design and obvious high quality. Seemingly made out of the sort of metal used to construct Klingon warships, it’s reasonably heavy with a cool industrial design and an aura of indestructibility (it has an eight year warranty).

Although it is mostly powder coated grey zinc, apart from the fine-grained diamond wheel and the honing wheel, it also has a cool red integral carrying handle made from oak. It’s designed and produced in Lindesberg, Sweden, which explains its beautiful yet practical looks. A rather smart black coloured version is also available.

Cutting edge tech

Getting down to business we got out a selection of decent knives from our stock – a couple of classic Sabattiers, a Global, and some from John Lewis. Some big and some very small.

I also went round the neighbours like some kind of turn of the century tinker asking ‘Any knives to sharpen?’ There were.

Now armed with enough knives to be a star turn on Crimewatch, I began work.

Getting grindy

There are two wheels, one to sharpen and one a honer to remove the burr afterwards. The machine turns on with a barely audible hum (45dB) and both wheels rotate at a brisk, but not insane speed, so as not to overheat the knife’s metal or throw metal dust in all directions

Cleverly the machine has a felt lined holder for the knife so that you get it exactly at the right angle to the diamond wheel.

You can set the angle yourself, 17° is recommended to start with. A small angle will give an edge that will cut more easily, while a large angle will give a stronger edge. You can take out the holder to get in larger blades, such as a cleaver.

Most top knife makers will tell you the recommended angle to use and the machine’s stepless adjustment means you can set it precisely. You can also use the included felt pen for the The Tormek Marker Method

You slide the blade in and draw it back and forth with some slight downward pressure. A magnet catches the steel dust as it comes off the blade, avoiding mess and dust in the air. Very clever.

That done, move to the honing wheel and remove the burrs and polish the knife. You can also use the honing wheel between sharpens to maintain the edge.

It takes just minutes and the result is remarkable. You can see the new edge glistening and dragging your thumb sideways to the blade you can easily feel the sharpness.

As I progressed I got better at it. It’s not hard, you just need to get a feel for it and then you’re away.

The final cut

Within a short while I had sharpened about fifteen knives of all sizes. A test on a tomato proved the sharpness, no squishing only fine slicing. It was a revelation, I simply did not realise how dull my best knives had become over time. The neighbours were equally impressed with their ‘as new’ knives when I handed them back.

Now the downside. It is rather expensive at £330. So perhaps it would be a good idea to charge your neighbours, it could make you a tidy sum

The quality of the machine is superb though and easily justifies the price, it looks great in the kitchen and it performs to a very high standard.

Cut along and buy one for Xmas. You’ll be carving the roast like a pro and not hacking it like a rube.

Buy the Tormek T-1 here.