"Sharp tools... sharp mind." ~ Mr. Palmer, Elementary School Teacher
Clean, sharp blades have benefitted humankind since the dawn of civilization, but it does take some work to keep them that way. Following are a few tips and tricks to help you keep your blades clean and sharp. We will start with the one that impacts our immediate concerns the most: Travel care.
Before transporting even dull implements, consider wrapping them up in a kitchen towel and then securing them with rubber bands. Folding over the top of the towel just above the tip (for knives and scissors) helps provide extra protection of the fragile and potentially dangerous tip.
This will vary greatly with tool type (knife, scissors, axe, etc.), and blade material (full stainless to high carbon steel), but generally you want to clean your blade with mild solvents (water, mineral spirits) and mild detergents (e.g. dish soap). We recommend never placing your sharp blades in a dishwasher for a number of reasons, first and foremost safety. You never know where a large knife is going to wind up at the end of a dishwasher cycle. Also, dishwashing detergent is rather aggressive, and may significantly dull any polish or finish on the blade.
When your kitchen knives come back from us, we will have applied a food-grade wax/oil polish to the surface. We like to use food-grade beeswax followed by food-grade mineral oil, applied with a clean, lint-free cloth. This polish further helps your blades to “glide” through whatever you are cutting. If you notice your blade not slicing through food as well as it did at first, try polishing them up!
The final piece of blade care is the process known as honing. This is not truly sharpening of your blade, but rather a “straightening-out” of the original edge. Over time and use, your blade edge will inevitably get rolled over or bent slightly. These micro-changes have a significant impact on the ability of the blade to cut through material. Honing straightens out these micro-bends, and can often return the blade to post-sharpened performance. A very informative webpage on proper honing technique, from America’s Test Kitchen, can be found here.