What’s the best way to sharpen a knife at home?

Barry Owen, owner of Columbine Sharpening (he has a stand at the Durango Farmers Market), showed me how.

Most knife sets come with a sharpening steel, an 8-inch straight rod with tiny grooves on a short handle. The fact is, the rods don’t actually sharpen the knife. They straighten the edge of the blade, which in turn makes it sharper.

Chefs use the rod in between cutting tasks to keep their blades super sharp. The rest of us can do it whenever we feel the blade becoming dull.

Hold the steel in your dominant hand and the knife in the other, and slide the rod slowly along the knife’s edge, starting at the handle end. Flip and repeat.

Owen maintains you’ll get the best results if you keep the knife at a 22.5 degree angle – to give yourself a guide, 90 degrees is straight up, 45 degrees is half way and 22.5 is half of that.

Finish by drawing the blade through soft wood like aspen and then through cork, to remove the last of burr, the nicks and grooves that misalign a knife’s edge.