What a rabbit hole that entire knife sharpening business is. WoW! I spent days in that rabbit hole. I bought multiple sharpeners and all junk and tossed my money into the pit of the sharpening business. The worst was the 2 different and from totally different sources diamond hone sharpeners for $40 each. They had them locked in fancy glass display cases at the retailers and made a big deal of them and I actually was made to feel as if this was special, high value, diamonds and the store clerk was really going out of his way opening the glass display case with his huge keychain to get me a diamond stone/hone thingy. I got home and was excited to finally get my chef's knife that came out of the wrapping sharp enough for nothing. They shaped the edge but it was not sharp and could not cut romaine lettuce well never mind a tomato or a cardboard box as a 8" chefs knife should have no issue with. I immediately set upon the task and opened the diamond hones/stones each time I bought one. The result is that I kept trying to get the knife sharp and the more I tried the less it was occurring. the diamonds on each hone/stone thingy had fallen off due to the adhesive failing and after the ~8th pass of the stone over the blade there was no more diamonds to speak of. Then... The retailers both... Treated the situation again like they are diamonds and this is a very special circumstance and no warranty and no returns and blah blah. It was absurd. Total hogwash and I knew it but they kept pretending and shoving the agenda so I decided no more money for you forever from me and I went back to Amazon. So I researched and researched, video after video and read and read. All the fancy various totally different systems and reviewers with various tests and blah blah. So... I decided it can't be plugged into the wall, can't require training and leaning to operate the "system", can't be a diamond hone/stone and it needed to be very easy to operate with no learning curve. So I bought a $30 SHARPAL 104N 5-in-1 Professional Knife & Scissors Sharpener. It took the chef's knife and in the first 3 passes across the "Standard" cutters it literally cut the edge from the blade and metal cuttings where on the countertop from the cutting edges of the knife sharpener. After 8 passes with no learning curve and no training myself to be able to do it I was cutting veggies like warm butter. I tested the chef's knife blade on a cardboard box and never sawed it but pushed the blade and it cut right through cleanly. All those other sharpeners instantly became garbage, wasted money, absurd snake oil and I was finally happy I had a real life knife sharpener.
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