Aside from price and aesthetics, there are 2 important things to consider when buying a new knife: is it simple to sharpen and how hard is the metal?  Remember, all knives get dull and someone has to sharpen them.

If you find shopping for knives perplexing, you aren’t alone.  Knife makers don’t really give the consumer much to work with.  Every maker claims its knives have a “razor sharp edge” or “the sharpest edge made today” but these claims are baseless.  There is no accepted standard for measuring sharpness so they could claim that anything is “razor” sharp.  But whatever the edge was like when it was new, it starts to deteriorate from the first time you use it.  But that’s OK, because we can fix it over and over.

The initial edge placed on a knife that may last a lifetime is far less important than how difficult is to get it back to “as new” condition.  All knives get dull and will need professional sharpening to restore them, but whether you choose to send them out or do it yourself, you should choose one that is simple to sharpen.  Several brands of knives are made with the expectation that the customer will have his knife for a lifetime and that it will be sharpened periodically.  It’s simple to identify.  An easy to sharpen knife is a knife without an extended bolster.  A bolster is the thick chunk of metal that forms the transition between the blade and the handle of a forged knife. (I am purposely leaving out stamped knives that have no bolster because knife makers usually attach cheap handles to these.)  Nearly all forged German branded knives have a bolster that extends all the way to the blade.  This is not a good thing for those of us who have to sharpen them.  Every time your knives are professionally sharpened, the bolster must be ground back to the level of the knife edge.  Some professionals skip this step.  We don’t.  Fixing the bolster can take as much time as sharpening the knife itself and if not done properly it will mar the knife or worse, interfere with it in use.  Brands of knives that haven’t got extended bolsters are made that way precisely because the makers EXPECT its customers to have the knives sharpened periodically.  Those brands include Shun, Global and nearly all Japanese made knives as well as Messermeister, the only German exception, and Ergo Chef in the US.  We sell all 4 of these brands both because they thought about the customer who will want to sharpen his/her knives and because they each represent a good value proposition at their respective price points.

The second consideration is how hard the metal is.  Unlike sharpness, this can be measured with a machine and it is known as the Rockwell Hardness number.  The harder the metal, the longer the sharpened edge will last.  Alternatively, the harder the metal, the more acute an angle the edge will support.  A more acute angle will cut with less effort.  Razor blades and surgeon’s scalpels have edge angles of a few degrees.  They are also quite thin.  These two things make for effortless cutting.  In kitchen knives, using harder metal means you can use thinner blades as well and more acute angles.  Wusthof and Henckels blades test out at Rockwell Hardness of 55-57.  Shun and Global test out at 59-61.  This may not seem like much but it truly is.  The scale is logarithmic not linear.  The German makers put 17-20 degree angles on the edges.  Shun and Global check in at 15-17 degrees.   

So while you are waiting for our on-line catalog of knives designed to last for a lifetime of carefree sharpening and our sensible mixed knife sets, think about the bolster and the Rockwell Hardness the next time you go to purchase a knife.

We are happy to answer any questions about knives at admin@holleyknives.com