We Sharpen The Dacha Knife Correctly

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Country kitchen knives and cutting objects also require sharpening, like those that are in our city kitchen. Well, and most importantly, a properly sharpened summer cottage knife will shorten the time for cutting vegetables, greens for salad, help to quickly prepare fruits and vegetables for canning. How to properly sharpen kitchen knives used in the country, when the sharpening specialist is, alas, far away?

Where did he come from in our kitchen?

Our ancestors presented us with such a tool for cutting food for the convenience of its preparation and use, like a knife - a means for dissecting any material that falls under it. In summer cottages, we rarely use ceramic modern expensive knives, either from some special self-sharpening steel, or requiring professional sharpening.

A country knife is usually a long thin wedge of various lengths. The thinner its edge is, the sharper it will be and the sooner it will cut the required products, and as thinly as the hostess in the kitchen, preparing dinner, or the owner, who decided to cut a tree branch with this knife, wants it.

The modern kitchen knife used in summer cottages is usually made of stainless steel or its alloy. Often, such a knife becomes dull from its frequent use in the kitchen and then the time comes to sharpen it.

It's time to act

What are the knife sharpeners, and what are the pros and cons for an unknowing person? Each of the knife sharpening methods has its own specifics. Without knowing it, you can ruin the knife, speed up the sharpening process, ruin the cutting side.

Typically, the farm has used and continues to use whetstones for sharpening steel knives. A sharpening stone is an abrasive stone with varying degrees of grain size.

There is another type of sharpening device that is convenient to use in the field and in the country - musat. It is a round file with a handle for easy handling. It is best for beginner "grinders" of household knives and inexperienced in this matter to use this particular type of device, since the musat quickly sharpens the knife and is not able to spoil its blade. Although, unfortunately, it will not be able to correct chronic knife defects, if any.

An equally interesting type of sharpening devices are special knife sharpeners. They can be mechanical or electrical. You will often have to sharpen knives on such sharpeners, since they sharpen the product quickly, but with their help it also quickly dulls.

The plus of an electric sharpener in this case is that it is able to change the sharpening angle of the knife for its greater convenience in work, that is, to correct the very defects of the blade that were acquired during improper sharpening of the knife on a bar or using a mechanical sharpener.

How to sharpen?

Everything is not so simple in the correct turning of knives as it might seem at first glance. For example, you have preferred sharpening a knife on a block. You will need two types of bar - one coarse grain, the other the finest.

Place the paper on the table so that the shavings from the knife fall onto it. First, the knife is processed with a bar with a coarse surface grain. Moreover, it is not the bar that needs to be moved during sharpening, but the knife itself along it. You need to move the knife along the bar perpendicularly, without changing the angle. It is necessary to sharpen the knife on the first bar until fine chips appear on the surface of its blade.

Then you need to change the bar to one with finer grain size. The principle of operation is the same as in filing nails. First, nails in a manicure are filed with a harder and coarse-grained file, then polished with a fine one.

The knife is also processed with a polishing bar for 10-15 minutes, as with the previous type of bar. And again the block remains motionless, only the knife itself works on it.

After the knife is sharpened, its blade must be rinsed in running water. In general, it will be correct to moisten a dense cloth with alcohol or vodka and wipe the knife over its working surface and handle. The process is over. You have in your hands a perfectly sharpened steel tool for cutting food.

As for sharpening knives on mechanical sharpeners, then this method, obviously, is only suitable for women who quickly get bored of sharpening a knife on a bar. In this case, it must be borne in mind that the knife on the sharpener should move in one direction, from top to bottom, and not progressively - back and forth. Otherwise, its blade will be damaged very soon.