11 Aug 2025
How I'm turning cheap kitchen knife sets sharp, and keeping one really good knife.
I’ve got a fairly cheap Farberware knife set in the kitchen. It’s got a good smattering of knives and has served me pretty well when I’m cooking. Those knives though, they got dull quick. They’d refuse to cut through veggies easily and I’d have to pull out the portable knife grinder slash fridge magnet just to get it somewhat usable. I knew there was the honing rod that came with the set, but it never seemed to do much for me and I didn’t know exactly how it worked, so I just never touched it.
Aside from that, I got some free (and cheap) MasterChef knives which are probably the same metal quality as the Farberware set, and a pocketknife that desperately needed help after years of opening packages. I didn’t want to keep buying more and more knife blocks and throwing out old knives, so I finally sat down and looked up how to do some good and proper knife sharpening. If I had a cheap set of knives, then it wouldn’t hurt to learn how to get them sharp.
One name pops up for a whetstone that’ll last forever and give nice results, and that’s Shapton. Each of their whetstones comes with its own case that you can place the stone on top of as a stand and even has rubber feet, it’s wild how well designed these are. You might get tempted by cheap dual whetstones on Amazon, but those are going to lose material fast and not give good results. Trust me, try one of these. The orange 1000 grit’s a great starter.
For the first test sharpening with one I tried my pocketknife, which might not have been a good pick. I think it might be made of a harder steel, at the time it didn’t seem like it was losing material when I was running the knife edge along the stone. I then grabbed one of the kitchen knives, and after about 30 or so passes on each side of the knife I could start seeing results! The part of the knife blade I was keeping in contact with the top of the stone was getting visibly shinier. One paper test later (easily cut) and I had a renewed chef’s knife that hadn’t been that sharp since before the day I got it.
That wasn’t enough for me though. I want to get deeper into the weeds. I’ve got some other kitchen knives that are reeaaaaaallly fucked up. Big gouges visible in the knife edge. So, I did the responsible thing and grabbed a few more Shapton blocks.
And on top of these, I also picked up a leather finishing strop with 25000 grit diamond paste. Warning: Not the green clay-paste shit!! A knife blade that runs the gamut of all these sharpening stones will be able to slice through most anything with ease. Sure enough, I tried cooking with a few of the knives after and I was slicing stuff paper thin. If I had tried that before any of this sharpening, every veggie would’ve been smooshed flat and the only solid slices would be thick ones. Shapen your knives, it will change your life and make cooking way more fun.
Whose child is this? Get them out of here.
So, no, I’m not using those knives all the time. But they still have their uses and come in handy when those uses come up and they require a sharp knife. No, recently I got myself a daily driver knife that is precious enough that it needs hand washing and wooden cutting boards. Ironically, it also comes with free knife sharpening so I never need to do it myself.
This thing is amazing. It’ll quickly chop through veggies, cleave heads of cabbage in twain, and easily slice through meats. The less effort spent preparing a chicken thigh, the more time you get to spend cooking it and smelling good cooking smells. I got lucky and scored it on sale, this thing is extremely durable and easy to handle, and the regular price reflects it. But if you can get one knife that does a large bulk of the work, you won’t have to worry about keeping a full cheap knife set sharpened all the time.
No no, do! I still use those other knives, and they’re cheap enough I don’t mind running them through the dishwasher when I’m just fuckin’ tired and lazy. The nice knife, that thing gets babied with a hand washing. If I just need to quickly cut one thing in two right now on a paper plate, give me the sharp cheap knife.
Having that skill to sharpen knives well means that you can have good quality knives at your disposal without having to drop $200 on one good one. If you can afford a good one, it doesn’t hurt to make that investment because it will last you a long time.
If you want some video recommendations, OUTDOORS55 has a video review about the Shapton Kuromaku 1000 whetstone (and a follow-up about getting more Shapton grits), and he also has other videos about knife sharpening techniques like walking through the sharpening process in real time. Look into getting a jeweler’s loupe too, it’ll help you see how the blade’s progressing as you advance along the different grits.
