The sound of a knife

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This morning I went to have my knives sharpened. After several fruitless attempts at doing it myself I had decided to let a professional do the job. This decision was substantially aided by the fact that Dittmer, the local German butcher, was advertising his knife sharpening guy's services on his website.

I have a set of first-generation Global knives, the ones you saw in American Psycho (unfortunately). They are drop-forged and from Molybdenum steel, which makes them much harder than most regular stainless steel knives. In fact, the knife sharpener thought these were the best knives ever made (and that were available for mere mortals like me).

The knife sharpening guy let me watch while he worked. For the initial grinding, he used an electrically powered rotating stone. He then followed up with several finer stones, honing the emerging edge until it was sharp. Hunched over his stones, he focussed on the knife and the perfect angle with an intensity that made pearls of sweat drop from his forehead onto my knives.

This guy loved knives. The way he worked a knife was amazing. When sliding my main chef's knife of a medium-size stone he made the knife sing. I'm not speaking metaphorically here: Once off the stone the knife sharpener gave the knife to its own sound, a musical note that radially extended from the knife into the environment.

Several years after first using the knife, I had finally heard its voice.

Copyright (©) 2007 Dirk Riehle. Some rights reserved. (Creative Commons License BY-NC-SA.) Original Web Location: http://www.riehle.org