I'm a professional knife grinder. My family has been sharpening knives for five generations. I have customers all over the country. I love to put properly sharpened knives in the hands of people who appreciate them, which usually means those who work with them, like chefs or meat cutters.

Now, it makes obvious sense to look for ways to save money. Just as obviously, it's important to avoid false economies. We can easily spend more trying to save than if we just do the normal thing. So, where is the real economy in knife sharpening? What's the normal thing to do here? To find out, we may first ask, "What is the best way to sharpen knives?"

Dexter-Russell Cutlery, America's oldest and largest knife manufacturer, says on page 34 of its customer handbook:

"Ordinary slicing of meat will dull a good edge. However, this doesn't mean that knife requires resharpening. A few light strokes on a butcher's steel will reset the edge and restore the knife's keenness. Eventually this keen edge wears off and the use of a steel will not restore it. The knife must then be reground.

"Grinding is a job best left to a professional grinding service."

So, the manufacturer says clearly that grinding knives "at home" so to speak, is not the best way. Using a professional grinding service is best. So the normal thing to do would be to use a service. But if one can't find a good grinding service, can't afford one, or does not want to afford one because they see knife sharpening as a good place to save money, then they must consider using alternative possibilities not recommended by manufacturers.

Dexter says, "In areas where [grinding] service is not available, careful grinding with a quality hand or motor-driven grinding wheel may be employed." They don't recommend any machines; they just mention them as possibilities when the best way is not available. They also say, "A good lubricated stone can be used when steeling fails to bring back an edge." They don't say just anyone can do it, but only that it's possible; i.e., with enough elbow grease and practice, an edge "can" be brought back using a lubricated stone- if you can't find or afford a professional grinder.

But whether it's amateurs with a machine, amateurs with a stone, or professionals doing it, grinding takes time and skill. It's dirty, dangerous work, and the manufacturer only recommends using professionals. A good professional will provide the required skill and take responsibility for all the dirt and danger. A modern professional grinder uses $100,000 worth of machinery in a sharpening process that takes five steps not one, and which requires better hand-eye coordination and defensive reflexes than most people possess.

The dirt: whenever one touches a knife to a high speed wheel, stone, sand paper loops or whatever, they create a largely invisible but nevertheless vast cloud of microscopic particles that zoom every which way contaminating the person doing the grinding and whatever atmosphere is available. These particles include the material the knives are made of, the material the machine presents and any detritus that may have been on the knives. The particles build up in the area of the grinding. All grinders soon come to smell like pumice and the things they cut up, and they track dust everywhere. The systems grinders have tried over the years to keep their shops clean have not worked. Knife grinding is still dirty, smelly work. Tyson Foods chose to use a knife service rather than grind their own knives because in their words, "It's just too dirty."

The danger: years may pass between events, but all professional grinders get cut from time to time, sometimes seriously. Whenever one puts a knife against a spinning or rotating machine, there's a chance a contacted part will somehow hook a burr on the knife, and the knife will go flying in amazing, unimagined ways, flopping eventually to the floor, hopefully harmlessly. But these flying knives often cut people. This risk brings liability and cost. Perkins Restaurants realized a real knife sharpening economy in the form of lower Workman's Comp costs when they hired a knife service, so their own employees would no longer be involved in this un-safe activity.

So, is eliminating the professional grinder a real saving or a false one?

If we report all the costs, we see that we lose money by eliminating professionals. The apparent savings turn out to be merely functions of hidden costs or uninformative accounting practices, including:

1.) less sharp (or even downright dull) knives, which translate into lower morale and lower productivity in work places where knives are a primary tool,
2.) more time spent on knife sharpening, often un-acknowledged time, including any time spent sharpening by other departments, which expenditures represent real cost to the organization, and should show as sharpening costs, but may, instead, be "hidden" in a surgical service, engineering or maintenance budget.
3.) increased risk of injury to amateur sharpeners and to users of dull knives,
4.) extra loss of morale and productivity in those amateurs who can't sharpen their knives even as well as their peers and/or well enough to facilitate their work,
5.) the effects of grinding dirt and odor on amateur sharpeners and the workplace,
6.) the sharpening gadget purchase price and all recurring maintenance and operating costs,
7.) the cost of new knives to replace any previously provided by a knife service.

To find real savings, we must look past surface numbers to find all the costs in our activities. Ultimately, if we have employees trying to sharpen knives, they're getting paid for their time, and so this time must be counted along with any dollars spent on knives or on sharpening. And however we spread the risk of using amateurs; i.e., whether we use many of them or only one or two of the more gifted ones, their time and risk is still a real cost. However difficult such costs may be to precisely calculate, we must factor them if we wish to know if a given step toward economy is true or false.

Now, there is a "culture" of knife users who say professional knife users should maintain their own knives, meaning don't get them ground. These folks tend to have their knives professionally ground only when they're very damaged. I think they simply misunderstand what "maintaining one's own knives" means. There are things knife users can do to care for their knives, but grinding is not one of them. "Maintaining one's own knives," properly understood, means things like keeping the knife clean and dry, using it properly, using a steel correctly and often, AND getting the blade re-ground as needed. It does not mean a knife user must become a professional grinder to avoid using one any more than maintaining one's own car means one must change the oil or tune the car up themselves.

So, most people can learn to safely sharpen knives with a proper stone and patience. But when we go as amateurs to grind knives in the work place, and in a timely fashion, which is to say, in at least a bit of a hurry, we are choosing a path not recommended by knife manufacturers, and there is no reason to ignore the manufacturers here. Most likely the product of such an amateur operation will not be of high quality; the knives won't be very sharp, properly ground, or hold an edge. Certainly, the process will not be easy, safe or clean. It's hard to find a good reason to avoid using a knife service in the workplace, except for a dire lack of funds or the inability to find a good professional grinding service.

The smartest, most efficient way to maintain knives in the workplace is:

a.) Rent or buy twice as many knives as you need, (this step does not have to be expensive).
b.) Use a steel to keep them sharp as long as you can.
c.) When the steel will no longer bring back a keen edge, put the knife in a box.
d.) When half of your knives are in the box, send the box to me for grinding.

This way, you get all the available sharpness out of your knives and never have to work with dull ones.