Spyderco byte March 2023 - EDGE-U-CATION® - Caring for Your Spyderco Kitchen Knife
Caring for Your Spyderco Kitchen Knife
You owe it to yourself to invest in high-quality kitchen knives that offer premium performance in the kitchen. Once you’ve made that investment, however, there are a few rules you need to follow to keep your knives cutting at peak potential for years to come.
Rule #1: Use your knives appropriately—as cutting tools for soft foods.
Quality kitchen knives—especially those with thin, high-performance edge geometry—are meant for cutting raw and cooked meats, vegetables, and other soft foods. If you are used to chopping bones, opening cans, and tightening screws with the thick, soft-bladed knives you got as a wedding gift, you need to change your ways. Buy a big, thick cleaver for abusive kitchen work and learn to use your good culinary knives with proper technique, precision, and control. You’ll be much safer, and your knives will enjoy a long, productive service life.
Rule #2: Don’t put your knives in the sink.
High-quality kitchen knives should always be screaming sharp. Putting them in a sink, or even worse, a sink filled with water, is extremely dangerous. In addition to posing a serious cutting hazard, banging around in a sink with dishes and other kitchen utensils is a sure way to damage the edges and points of your knives. Although the stainless steels used in Spyderco kitchen knives are extremely corrosion resistant, they are not members of our Salt® Series. As such, they are not immune to rust. Finally, putting knives in the sink also develops the bad habit of waiting to clean them. Quality knives should always be washed and dried immediately after use.
Rule #3: Don’t wash your knives in the dishwasher.
Dishwashers are, by design, hot, wet, and unforgivingly harsh environments. While they work great for cleaning dishes, when it comes to premium cooking knives, they do more harm than good. For knives with tool steel blades, dishwashers provide the perfect recipe for rust and corrosion. Even for knives with stainless steel blades, the combination of heat and moisture can easily cause handles to swell, shrink, loosen, or crack.
To get the maximum service life out of your quality kitchen cutlery, always wash it by hand immediately after use. Use dish detergent and a soft-bristled kitchen brush to keep your fingers safely away from the sharp edge. Rinse the knife thoroughly, then carefully and completely dry it to prevent corrosion.
Rule #4: Store your knives properly.
High-performance kitchen knives should never be stored loosely in a drawer. Besides posing a serious safety hazard, storing them this way allows them to contact each other and other items in the drawer, potentially damaging their edges and points.
Instead, use a knife block, slotted hanger, or magnetic strip to store your knives. If you must store them in a drawer, use a purpose-designed in-drawer knife tray, slip-on blade guards, or follow the Japanese tradition of using the knives’ original boxes as storage containers. The sturdy, beautifully crafted boxes of Spyderco’s Murray Carter Collection knives were purposely designed with this storage method in mind.
Rule #5: Keep your knives sharp.
As obvious as this may seem, when you’ve suffered long enough with sub-par kitchen knives, you get used to the idea that you must use your full body weight to cut a carrot in half. Once you experience the difference of cutting with a truly sharp, well-made kitchen knife, don’t ever compromise again. Keep your good kitchen knives at peak cutting performance and make that your standard.
Out of the box, most Spyderco knives target a 34-degree “included” factory angle. That means they have a target angle of 17 degrees per side during factory sharpening. That also means that the combination of 30 and 40-degree included angles provided by our best-selling Tri-Angle Sharpmaker® works perfectly to keep them sharp. For our kitchen knives, however, the Sharpmaker—as good as it is—isn’t the optimal choice.
Spyderco kitchen knives are factory sharpened to exceptionally acute angles. The easiest way to sharpen these knives is with the Spyderco Galley-V™ sharpener. Its method of use is practically identical to that of the Sharpmaker, with the exception that its ceramic rods are configured to create a 20-degree included angle. This narrow included angle is ideal for quickly sharpening premium kitchen knives to a very acute edge that realizes their full cutting potential. Intended for serious cooks, it features a compact high-impact plastic base designed to be permanently mounted to a cabinet, countertop, or similar surface so it is always ready for quick touch ups of your edges. If permanent mounting doesn’t appeal to you, the base can also be clamped to a countertop or screwed to a cutting board.
The fine abrasive rods of the Galley-V feature a “cat’s-eye” cross-section and can be rotated to several positions in the base. For PlainEdge™ blades, this allows you to quickly and easily present fresh abrasive during sharpening. By orienting the stones so one of the rounded edges faces inward, you can also sharpen bread knives and other serrated blades.