Global knives

Throughout my life I've had a love/hate relationship with cooks' knives.

For my 65th birthday my son gave me Global knives bought from the Cobham shop, which at the time I thought were marvellous.  But like all 'good' knives they duly went blunt and because of the quality of the steel used in their manufacture simply wouldn't sharpen well, either on the product you recommended or on my expensive two-wheel electric knife sharpener (Lord knows how many 'latest' recommended sharpeners I've got through in my time!)

But we do have one knife that I use constantly. This is a steel knife - but NOT stainless steel. It is clearly softer and blunts reasonably quickly but sharpens like a razor by merely using a sharpening stone just as my mother did - even though with age the blade is now getting more and more narrow (as hers always did).   In fact, my experience has been the cheaper the knife the more successfully it sharpens.  Expensive knives simply don't work for me once their edge has gone.

So my question - Can one still buy these rather unattractive looking (non-stainless) steel knives?

Or, I suppose, do you have any recommendations to make for knives that one can sharpen efficiently?   (I should add that I am a regular knife-sharpener.  By this I mean that I 'steel' a knife each time I use it and eventually 'sharpen' it when I feel it necessary.   So repeated sharpening is no problem to me - I'm not looking to save time!   But I guess I should also add that, unlike my mother, my wife is definitely not a knife sharpener.  I don't think she's ever sharpened one in her life.  So although I try to keep my knives to myself I know they are purloined as soon as hers cease to cut anything!  This means I have an even greater need to have knives that respond well to being domestically sharpened.)

Derek

Comments

[Andrew & Babette Bluett-Duncan]

Dear Derek

Thanks for your email although I must admit to being at something of a loss on how to help you solve your problem. If you refer to the Mino Sharp when you say that it doesn’t sharpen the Global knives (the knives for which it was originally designed) then I’m staggered. Unless of course, you have a faulty one or are doing something horrible to it? If there is a knife sharpener on the market that is pretty full proof then the Mino Sharp is it (so long as you always fill it with water).

To take your next point and “the one knife” that you refer to that you use constantly. This will almost certainly be made from carbon steel which is great stuff to make knives out of but sadly out of fashion these days. Carbon steel is good quality steel without the chrome and nickel etc that stainless steel has added to it to make it stainless. The downside of Stainless steel is that it is much harder to sharpen which is of course is reflected in what you also said about not being able to sharpen your Global knives (which are particularly hard to sharpen I think because of the molybdenum that they put in them). Carbon steel has just one disadvantage and that is that it rusts and stains. To sharpen it however is a synch.

Can we still get carbon Steel knives? Yes Sabatier still do a range which we can order in specially for you.

My suggestion however, as you already have a very good set of Global knives, is that you let me take a look at them and I’ll see what I can do with one or two and them. I’ll then tell you my secret and you will thereafter happily sharpen your knives to a standard that you find very acceptable..I hope!

If you’re happy with this idea, would you return the knives and any sharpeners you’ve used on them recently, to Philip in the Cobham shop and he’ll get them across to me in Reigate. I suppose you’ll be without them for 10days to a fortnight. If you’d let me have your tel number I’ll give you a ring when I’ve had a look at them.

Kind regards
Andrew Duncan