When you’re car breaks down and leaves you stuck on the side of the road, your first thought isn’t to visit to head to a dealership and get a new one. When your lawn is so overgrown it looks like a wheat field, you don’t pick up a real estate catalog and look for a new home. Given that, why would you throw away your kitchen cutting tools when they get dull? Instead, you could save yourself some money and just sharpen them. Of course, you can’t sharpen cutting implements without knife sharpeners. There a lot of different variations of knife sharpeners - there are manual and electric knife sharpeners, and many different subcategories among those.

To sharpen a blade is, on its face, a very basic process that’s been used for thousands of years. To sharpen a knife, all you need to do is grind the knife against a stone or other rough surface. So you may be wondering, why not just go grab a stone from your yard and grind away? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, and in fact if you were to do something like that, you’d likely do more harm than good. While it’s important for a sharpening stone to have a rough surface (measured according to its “grit”), large bumps in natural stone could damage your knife, its important to only use stones manufactured for that purpose.

The simplest way to sharpen a knife is just to grind it by hand using a whetstone. However, to get your blade back to its optimal shape, you may want to consider more involved setups. Some of these mechanisms use adjustable clamps to hold whetstones at a specific angle. The crock stick setup braces two stones against sticks to maintain the angle - all you need to do is pull the blade through the stones.

One key point to remember when sharpening is that the angle of the blade controls its sharpness. Every knife has a specified sharpness determined by the angle of the blade. Grinding a blade at the incorrect angle may end up making the blade too blunt or too sharp for whatever purpose it was originally intended for. Furthermore, such changes may make the knife unsound, causing to break or bend more easily.

For those who use cutting implements of the finest quality, such as chefs or just culinary aficionados, there are some excellent knife sharpeners available. When you’re paying up to $2,000 for a set of knives from a company like Wusthof or J.A. Henckels, you want those blades to last for as long as they possibly can. Investing in top shelf sharpener will keep your cutting utensils sharp and polished for quite a while.

There are two broad categories of knife sharpeners: electric and manual. Manual knife sharpeners, as mentioned before, require manually grinding a blade against a whetstone. Electric knife sharpeners, on the other hand, basically perform the whole task for you. To use electric knife sharpeners, all you need to do is be able to pull a knife straight through the device. Manual and electric sharpeners can both give great results: cutting tools with razor sharp edges. The tradeoff is that electric sharpeners are easier and quicker to use, but much more expensive.

One of the best options for electric knife sharpeners today is the Chef’s Choice 120 3 Stage Diamond Hone Knife sharpener, made by Edgecraft. This top of the line sharpener is multi functional, sharpening, honing and polishing all different sorts of cutting implements, even those used for hunting or sport. The Chef’s Choice 120 will keep your knives looking and cutting superbly for a long time to come. It does come at a price, though - this model is priced at $150.00. Ultimately, if you’re willing to invest in high priced cutting tools, you should invest in a high-quality sharpener too.

If you’re in the market for a manual model, take a look at the Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker. One of the leading designs on the market, this setup includes 4 whetstones with different grits. Using the Sharpmaker is easy and effective, and it makes for the perfect choice for someone who wants to hone edges manually. Regardless of the option you choose, you’ll be extending the use of your knives for a long time.