Chef's Choice Electrical Sharpeners

[Snaphaan]

Does anyone here have personal experience of any of these models.

I am contemplating one of those, but would like to hear of user experiences first hand. For instance, how good are they on really thick blades, etc?

http://www.sharpedge.co.za/index.php...d=406&Itemid=4

and

http://www.chefschoice.com/page2a.html

[Seneschal]

Hi Snaphaan

I honestly think you should stay away from electric sharpeners when it comes to any quality cutlery. In my experience they quickly strip off a lot more stock than is necessary and they leave a horribly micro-serrated edge. For a cheap 420 stainless kitchen knife that might be OK, but anything you paid good money for deserves better. Rather use quality stones or even one of the sharp-maker/lansky type sets. This allows you to sharpen a knife carefully and to polish the edge with ever harder stones.

As for 'thick' edges - I agree they do present a challenge. I have had a couple of hard use production knives that in some cases amounted to little more than sharpened pry-bars (the SOG Tech 1 for example). I couldn't get that damn thing sharp using just stones. But even here I wouldn't set to work with an electric sharpener - I would rather reprofile the edge using steel-files and follow that up with ever finer grades of water-paper.

My 2 cents worth...

[Snaphaan]

Thanks for your input Seneschal.

Funny that you should refer to the SOG Tech I. With "thick blades" I referred, without saying so, to my 2 SOG Tech II knives and my SOG Tomcat.

I have a book by an American author at home. His name slips my mind now. I think the title of the book is "The perfect hunting knife".

That author shares your sentiments as far as electrical sharpeners, in general, are concerned. However, he distinguishes the Chef's Choice models on various technical grounds, and says that they are very good, even for quality cutlery.

I will post his remarks over the weekend.

Any other inputs?