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Electric Sharpeners Explained

Electric sharpeners are one of the easiest ways to sharpen your knives. Electric knife sharpeners work the same as a sharpening stone, except that the machine does all of the work. Particularly useful if you do a lot of sharpening or have to remove a lot of material to expose a sharp edge on your knives, an electric sharpener is a good choice to make the job go much faster.

Most electric sharpeners have an adjustable angle guide, with removable sharpening stones or ceramic plates to polish the knife using a desired grit. The adjustable angle makes it easy to ensure that your knife will be sharpened using the correct angle; knives are designed to have a particular angle on the blade. When sharpening a knife manually, it is easy to sharpen to an incorrect angle. The angle guide on most electric sharpeners makes this next to impossible.

An electric sharpener can be used to sharpen both straight and serrated knives, as long as they fit in the knife guides. Many electric sharpeners have two or even three stages so that the same machine can be used for sharpening and honing the blade, going from coarse to fine grit in just one stroke. Only sharpen serrated knives in the "finishing" side of a two stage sharpener. Some also include a pre-sharpening stage, useful when you are beginning with very dull knives.

There are several different kinds of electric sharpeners. Some are in the form of a spinning wheel. This wheel, often referred to as a “wet wheel”, is usually used with oil or water. To use this type of electric sharpener, hold the knife at the desired angle against the spinning wheel. Some electric sharpeners also have a clamp to fix the knife blade in a set angle against the spinning wheel. Be aware that depending on the grit of the wheel, the sharpening process can go very fast. Be careful not to over-sharpen your knife, which is possible especially if your knife was relatively sharp to begin with.

Most electric sharpeners, however, are a pull-through type. To use an electric knife sharpener of this type, simply hold the blade straight while it is in the mechanism. These types of sharpeners have a guide to keep your knife in exactly the right position to create a perfectly sharp blade.  The electric sharpener will do all of the work for you. It will only take 2 to 3 passes to sharpen most knives, with the total sharpening process under a minute in most cases.

Diamond stones are the best quality stone used in electric sharpeners because their properties will not change due to heat. Due to their hardness, electric sharpeners with diamond blades will sharpen your knives very fast, making it possible to over-sharpen them in a short period of time.

Although electric sharpeners can be a little more expensive than manual ones, they are very convenient to use, and produce a nice, sharp edge with minimal effort. A top-of-the-line knife sharpener can last for years and extend the life of your knives.

James Shaw,
Friday, February 6th