Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener
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List Price: Our Price: $21.95 You Save: $3.05 (12%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $17.95 (click here) Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener
Customer Review: What A Great Tool!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wow - I read an article in Family Handyman about sharpening your own knives. They recommended starting out with the Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener, then finishing with a sharpening steel.
So... We've had knives that I've tried to sharpen before but didn't know how. Was a pain in the butt. So we kept getting new knives. Now we have a drawer full of them.
I bought the 2-stage sharpener and the Wusthof 10-Inch Sharpening Steel, pulled a dull knife out of the drawer, and about 5 minutes later the thing was SHARP! So I kept going, and now we have a drawer full of super sharp knives that are a PLEASURE to use.
The secret here is to use the carbide part of the 2-stage sharpener for really dull knives. Run it through enough times 'till it "catches" on your fingernail when you slide it down (perpendicular, not parallel...). Then go to the ceramic part and slide the knife 10 or so times. Both are set up so the knife is held at the correct angle.
Finally, pull out your steel, place it TIP DOWN on a cutting board. Position your knife so it's at about a 25 degree angle to the steel. Easy to do if you start at 90 degrees, then cut that in half to 45, then cut in half again. Then firmly but gently run the blade down the steel, pulling it toward you as you slide it downward.
Do that a few times on each side, and you're guaranteed a sharp edge.
The way to keep it sharp is to run it down the steel a few times each time YOU FINISH USING IT. Cutting with the knife will cause very fine deviations in the edge of the blade. Running it on the steel straightens the edge back up.
i love things that make my life easier. This does so, and at a good price. And it even works on scissors - - with even greater ease.
Customer Review: Have you really thought about this product?
Summary: 1 Stars
I've owned this product for some time. Today I threw it away. Let me tell you why.
The Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener will ruin your expensive Wüsthof knives. But how can this be?
The answer is simple.
The Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener does what it does by dragging two sharp, hardened surfaces the entire length of your delicate cutting edges, delicate cutting edges that were originally sharpened and honed by grinding them most carefully at 90 degrees across their tip.
In other words with the Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener, you're actually tearing your edges.
You read that right: The Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener operates on a principle that makes it a requirement that you gouge out tiny bits of metal from the factory-sharpened, precision-ground edges of your Wüsthof knives in order to restore something that only roughly and approximately resembles the edges you actually want - the fine edges you originally paid all that money for.
If you want to really sharpen, and if you want to protect your investment, finely grind the blades in precisely the way they were created. Think about it: dragging a hard edge at some variable angle - in all three axis! - and pressure along the entire edge will only damage it. It's guaranteed to because that's how it's supposed to work.
In the trash goes the Wüsthof 2-Stage Knife Sharpener and back I go to a proper edge sharpener. How Wüsthof agreed to brand and promote this horrible thing as suitable to sharpen their own edges is a mystery.
Customer Review: Great sharpener at a great price
Summary: 4 Stars
We've had other sharpeners that cost more and didn't work nearly as well. We tried a DMT W6FP 6-Inch Diamond Whetstone Sharpener we found in a kitchen supply store for about $35. It never seemed to sharpen our knives enough. It takes a bit of skill to use a stone correctly, and maybe we weren't always doing it quite right, or it just wore out over time. We tried the Chef's Choice Multi-Edge Diamond Hone for $24, but it never worked well from day one. We threw it out once we tried this Wusthof. We happened to see this sharpener at Williams-Sonoma, so we bought it there, but it's almost the same price on Amazon. The Wusthof is a far superior sharpener, and I highly recommend it over the Chef's Choice, especially for high-quality knives. It is also light and easy to use. A sharpener removes metal from your knife, so you shouldn't sharpen knives after every use. Use a steel (that textured rod that comes with most knife sets) instead to re-align the blade edge, and only sharpen after the steel no longer helps the edge stay sharp (maybe once a week or every other week). One slot is for coarser sharpening, and the other is for finer honing. There's also a sharpener in it for scissors. We tested our kitchen knives for sharpness by holding a piece of newspaper up and running the blade down into it from the top edge. This didn't work with the other devices, but with the Wusthof, it did! I don't know yet if this sharpener works on every kind of knife, but we're thrilled with the improvements to our kitchen knives.Customer Review: My first sharpener
Summary: 5 Stars
I badly needed a sharpener and was tempted by the expensive Chefs Mate ones, but then I saw this one and read all the glowing reviews. For the price I thought I would give it a try. It arrived quickly in the mail and I couldn't wait to try it out on my dull Wilksinon knife that I know has not been sharpened in over 4 years. It was a useless knife basically. For those that say there aren't instructions, there are some printed on the cardboard that the sharpener comes packaged in. It just basically tells you to put your knife in either the coarse or fine slot and pull it towards you. It isn't too difficult to figure out. Just don't slide the knife back and forth.
So I put the dulled out knife through the sharpener probably only about 3 times on each setting, coarse and fine. Have no idea if that is too much or not enough. I also purchased at the same time the Wusthof 10-inch Sharpening Steel, and ran the knife across that 2 or 3 times. Later I cut up chicken and the knife worked, it actually cut the meat without sliding off of it. That has sold me on the sharpener. I even tried some hair trimming scissors in the scissor slots, and the edge definitely got better on them.
I read that this sharpener is like going to the dentist for your knives, you do it a few times a year, whereas the sharpening steel is like a toothbrush for your knife, you use it each time after using your knife. For the first time in my life, I just might have sharp knives.
Customer Review: Wonderful for knife maintenance
Summary: 5 Stars
Before this product, I had gotten the Furitech Diamond Fingers sharpener for my own knives, as I'm silly and am not sure how to use a sharpening steel properly.
However, I wouldn't mind getting this one for myself soon. I had gotten this for my mother as an easy-to-use product to go along with nice J.A. Henckels knives. This Wusthof sharpener is nice because it has both a "coarse" side, for first stage sharpening (when they're really dull) and a "fine" side for finishing (when it's not that dull, or it's been through the coarse side already). It gets the knives nice and sharp.
Secondly, there is a scissors segment---although my mother doesn't have kitchen scissors, this would be nice if I had it as I have a knife set that has kitchen scissors. I'm actually tempted to just switch our sharpeners, as my mother actually uses hers so infrequently.
Handy lil tool to keep your kitchen armament sharp and at the ready!
***UPDATE JUNE/JULY 2010***
After using it for a while, the Furitech Diamond Fingers is rather annoying, and not as multi-purpose, as this one. The Furi one does not seem to sharpen my knives as well, or as easily, as the Wusthof one, nor does it have the ability to sharpen scissors if you need to. Additionally, the plastic cover on the Furi broke off oddly, whereas the Wusthof one is how it is. I will need to get one of these sometime for myself.