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I’m quite sure there are very few men around who’ve not had a bloody encounter with a knife at some stage in their lives, yet despite the danger

(or probably because of the danger), we still have a strange obsession with knives. The knife guide feature published in the September 2019 issue was truly cutting edge, and the variety of knives goes to show just how far this obsession has taken us.

A knife is not a knife if it’s blunt, and as a child I was forever trying to sharpen the business end of my ‘penknife’. I used rocks, sandpaper, my mother’s nail file … I even tried on my dad’s bench grinder when he wasn’t around. My quest for a sharp edge helped me progress from concrete pavements to oilstones to fancy multi-stoned, guided, slider contraptions. In my adulthood, I came as far as importing a 10 000-grit Japanese whetstone to create a razor-sharp edge that’s buffed on a leather strop. There’s some sort of meditative pleasure from gliding a blade over a whetstone repetitively and a fetish-inducing pleasure from testing the results of the task by thinly slicing tomatoes and other items left in the fridge or fruit basket.

This sensational pleasure has led me to actually volunteer with fruit and vegetable prep in the kitchen.

I offered to do the same at a friend’s house one day, only to be given a very blunt knife. After a lot of complaining about the knife’s inability to cut through air, I was told to scratch through the kitchen ‘clutter’ drawer and find a knife sharpener. All I could find was a cheap supermarket knife-andscissors-sharpening combo that consisted of a first stage steel ‘V’, which shaves the knife or scissors edge to a certain angle and a second stage ceramic ‘V’ of the same angle, used to hone the edge. Reluctantly, I dragged the blade a few times through each of the stages marked ‘1’ and ‘2’.

The tomato slices were paper thin! I even sacrificed a few forearm hairs for the ultimate sharpness test. After all my years of trying to hone my own knife-sharpening skills with expensive gadgets, I was amazed and surprised at the results of this common, handheld kitchen ‘tool’.

I still bring out the ol’ whetstone and strop from time to time, mainly when I need to pass time and escape from life’s blunt reality, but my newly purchased cheapie combo is my first choice as a knife sharpener, and it really is a cut above the rest.

DAVID VENTER

Hmm, I really enjoyed your sense of humour and sharp wit, David. In fact, it’s what’s probably won you this month’s prize. That, and the fact that I can relate. I’ve also got one of those kitchen combo knife sharpeners, and I’m usually quite amazed at the results.

That said, it’s nowhere near as satisfying as using an oilstone, and eventually a leather strop, to get the sharpest of sharp edges. Congratulations on winning the Makita router from toolcraft.co.za – it’s a fantastic power tool, and I’m sure you’re going to love it. – Mark, Editor