Chef'sChoice 250 Diamond Hone Hybrid Electric + Manual Knife Sharpener Expired

Lots of these "experts" will tell you that electric sharper is bad, blah blah blah whetstone blah blah blah...

I run a 4 star restaurant in SF, and we all use electric sharpers. They are just fast and efficient enough for 99.5% of the cooks out there.

I only know of a few freaks (sushi chef, and seafood) that will sharpen their knives with a stone, others have better things to do than running a knife over a stone for an hour.

If you're not a professional sushi chef or a butcher, this will work just fine for you. If you're not a professional sushi chef, you shouldn't be buying $300+ knives anyway.

I'm not an expert, but I do believe that generally speaking, Japanese steel knives are 15 degree whereas European/American style knives are 20 degrees. I read somewhere that it's because Japanese knives are made of stronger steel and can hold the edge better, so if you have 15 degrees, the knife is sharper (but don't quote me on that)

I don't own this particular Chef's Choice sharpener, I own the Chef's Choice AngleSelect one for that reason: I have both Japanese and European knives. However, I paid almost 4x the price for it. However, I am starting to think that the "angleselect" version is kind of a scam....I could have bought the "Trizor" edge one (I think a "trizor" edge is a combination of a 15 and 20 degree angle that gives you the sharpness of 15 but with some of the durability of 20).

Put it this way...if I owned only European/American knives, I'd buy this one for 35 bucks in a heartbeat. I might even buy one anyway to use JUST for my Euro/American knives.

And yes, there are some out there that believe that a good stone and lots of elbow grease is the only "proper" way to sharpen a knife. I don't have time for all that. I'm willing to accept the fact that these electric sharpeners take off a little more metal than a stone when making the edge in exchange for convenience and time.

There is a TON of misinformation on this thread.

As the chef said, electric sharpeners are the better choice for most users. I'd go further and say they are better for all users. Here's why:

Myth: Metal loss. Advocates of hand sharpening say you lose more metal with an electric sharpener. This isn't the case. If you know how to use the sharpener, you know when you need to use the coarse wheel and when you can skip it. If you only use the fine sharpener, you don't remove much steel at all. With either stone OR electric, a novice user can remove too much steel. With practice BOTH can be used to sharpen equally efficiently.

Myth: stones produce sharper edges. One of the big knife gurus did an electron microscope test AND an actual cutting test pitting a professionally stone sharpened knife against an electric sharpener. The electric sharpener produced a sharper edge. This is well accepted in the sharpening community. I am trying to find the link now.

Myth: serious knife owners don't use electric sharpeners. Shun recommends an electric sharpener. Cooks Illustrated recommends a electric sharpener. The chef above recommends one. The convenience and results are better.

Myth: you can't use an electric sharpener on a Japanese knife. Japanese knives use a harder steel that can hold an edge better than Western knives. The benefit is that they can keep a 15 degree bevel sharper longer. The trade off is the hard metal is much more brittle. If you look at your buddy's Shun knives, count the number of chips in the blades. If you sharpen a Japanese knife to 20 degrees, it is the best! It stays sharp even longer and resists chipping. If you want, you can sharpen it back to 15 degrees later. There are many electric sharpeners that use a 15 degree angle too. Some allow you to do both 15 or 20.

I hope that is helpful to clear up the misinformation. Stone sharpening is fun, but it simply is not better as many claim.