How good are your knives and how good are the reviews? There's nothing wrong with the concept, but a lot of sharpening services don't do anything better than run them through a sharpening gadget like you have in your drawer. If your knives are dull from past fails, they probably need attention and care. What do they claim to do?

I am very fortunate that there is an old time knife sharpener who comes to my farmers market. I drop them off when I arrive, shop and then grab them on my way out. He is very popular!

Knife Aid was on Shark Tank and got a deal.

On the computer now. Looked up their website. They say all the right words. I mean all the right words. And have pictures. Usually the advertising is clueless, so one assumes that someone who really knows knives was providing the info, and therefore someone who really knows knives words there. They say they have a big boss expert and a workshop with 14 trained sharpeners. That sounds good! BS usually is full of flowery coverups not specifics and facts, so I'm assuming a certain level of truthfulness. The number of people working on knives is appropriate for a volume business, and for them to need so many means that they are doing volume. Volume doesn't equate to quality, but it does imply a certain amount of customer satisfaction. Who knows how picky the FB posters are, but most places have 1-3 people.

It looks very promising.

I still remember when a knife sharpener guy would come to our house and sharpen my Mom's knives. He always did a great job. My good knives are dull and so far all the gadgets I've bought at best did nothing. I've had a couple make them worse :-0 so I am really interested in this company. I went to their website so now I'm sure FB will send me lots of ads!

Knife Aid says they do all of their sharpening by hand. Most of my knives are Wusthof, bought in Germany. I also have a Shun Hollow-Edge Santoku with a 7” blade and a cheap Victorinox paring knife ($7 from Amazon) that would be cheaper to replace than to pay to have sharpened.

After further research: Thanks @plllog for asking if I had read any reviews of Knife Aid. While researching that question, I have discovered that Wusthof will sharpen my Wusthof knives for $4/knife and Shun will sharpen that knife for free! I think I’ll send them all back to their manufacturer to be sharpened. I cannot imagine that I could get better service any where else!

I received this as a X-mas gift and used it while we were away on vacation. I had 3 knives sharpened, a chef's knife, a bread knife, and paring knife. I redeemed the GC on-line and they sent a mailer to me so pack up the knives. I put it in the mail and when I got home the sharpened knives were there. Pretty easy and the knives are very sharp.

Thanks, Rory. Glad you had a good experience. The FB reviews are pretty uneven. Some folks are very happy; some are very unhappy.

It is meaningless for a knife to be made sharp. Any knife can be made sharp. Even a knife that's made of wood can be made sharp:

The problem is how to make a knife sharp without destroying it.

The very best, the very expensive knife can be so easily be PERMANENTLY damaged in a fraction of a second and you will never know it. Because when you get your knife back from a sharpener, it is so sharp. You will not know your knife will no longer be able to keep the sharpness long anymore.

I don't like what Knife Aid says in their Adv, "- air cooled sanding belt--" . That can very easily kill your knife if they try to get the job done quicker.

dcarch

Which is a good reason to have Dcarch here, who makes his own knives and knows more than I do! I had no idea about that machine.

Bbstx, thank-you! My father taught me to use a stone, but I'm entirely inexpert at it and haven't been wanting to wreck my favorite knife which is approaching needing sharpening. It is a Wusthof, and $4 plus the cost to send it sounds good to me!

Hm... Did you read reviews of them? Do they use the sharpening machines they sell? Or do they sharpen by hand.

I'm not completely awake today. Sorry for rambling so much...

ETA--from their form. Is this really better?

WÜSTHOF-Trident of America invested in a new sharpening system. The new system uses a
four step process to grind, edge, polish and deburr each knife. This system is faster and more
efficient than our previous one. It creates a sharper and stronger edge and we can now sharpen
serrated knives! (Scalloped edge knives can also be sharpened, but not to the same degree.)

Okay. There are good people not so far away to whom I can take my knife, and one gives lessons that are possibly better than my father's. :)

I'm glad you brought this up. I am going to need to do something soon.

Wow! That video was fascinating!

@plllog, I don’t know how the manufacturers sharpen the knives. I’m afraid my level of knowledge is so low that it wouldn’t do much good to ask.

dcarch - that could almost be mistaken for one of your videos. So many similarities. Did he copy your style, or you his?

We’ve been taking our knives to Wüsthof in CT the last few years for sharpening (when we take our cat for her annual oncology rechecks—the veterinary hospital is just minutes away from Wüsthof—the vet thinks it’s hysterical and just a little bit scary that we always bring our knives for sharpening when we come for visits! LOL).

They do a terrific job. And yes, now they can sharpen serrated knives, which is great, as we have a few of those.

The person who normally sharpens them (Nicole) was out the day of our recent visit, but we left our knives there, prepaid to have them sharpened, and they were shipped back to us the next day. They were delivered to our doorstep the day after that.

Hi Cat_mom! Glad to have your endorsement!

Hi plllog!

We’ve been very happy with the sharpening these past years. It wasn’t cheap, but we did have a number of knives sharpened. I don’t recall if we were charged for shipping them back to us, but it’s entirely possible.

*edited to add: no shipping charge. Wüsthof items were $2 each to sharpen, non-Wüsthof items $4 each.

Been meaning to call them to see if they can rehandle two knives. One sat too close to the toaster oven so that’s my fault, but I’m not sure what happened to my chefs knife which popped a rivet then two, and warped apart.

DO NOT USE KNIFE AID!!
Stay away from shipping your knives to get sharpened by Knife Aid unless you are local and able to personally bring them in and pick them up. I feel they are getting a lot more knives and packages than they can handle in the time frame stated on their own site. Total FALSE ADVERTISING. They clearly state that they will turn around your knives within 24 hours of receiving them, but they don't. They have had my knives for over 7 days, and at this point they have no idea where my knives even are and won't respond to any emails. They went on Shark Tank without being prepared for the influx of business they would get, can't keep up with the orders they are getting and now they are a disaster. Again just find someone local to sharpen your knives. This isn't worth the time or effort it takes to deal with them as a company.

To top off everything, they have terrible customer service. No phone number, probably cause they get so many calls about their turn around time or sending people back the wrong knives, and only an email which takes them days to reply to if at all.

You are way better off finding someone locally that is able to sharpen your knives. At least this way you have a chance getting your knives back and if there is a problem having someone actually respond to you. They only want to collect your money and after that don't really care what happens.

I just received back my first (i.e. "Test") order back from KnifeAid. I am going to give them a mixed review, some good, some bad, some neutral.

First, I have owned high-end knives for most of my adult life. I own Shun, Wusthof, Kyocera, among other expensive brands. I also know how to sharpen my own knives, and own several different sharpening tools (both simple/manual and electric/fancy).

So a couple years back, some moron who was viewing my condo (which was for sale), took my prized Shun Nikiri out of my block, picked up my sharpening steel, and whacked them both together like the idiot that he was, and put a nasty 3-4 mm deep nick directly in the middle of the cutting edge of the knife. I was pissed about it ever since (I'm slow to get over acts of stupidity).

Then a couple weeks ago I came across Knife Aid's marketing materials online. What caught my eye was the fact that they offered knife repairs of exactly the type of injury that the Nikiri had suffered. Now initially, all I wanted to do was send them the one knife, and ask them to repair it, and pay for the repair. I scoured their website looking for how to order repair services, and found nothing. I finally figured out that you can't just buy repair services, but you get the repair as part of the sharpening service. Okay, fair enough, I'll send the Nikiri in for sharpening and get it fixed at the same time.

The problem is, they have a minimum order of 4 knives, and that costs $59. UGH!

Alright, I wanted the Nikiri fixed badly enough that I am willing to pay about $60 to have 4 knives sharpened. So I went through my collection and selected 3 other knives to send them as part of my initial test order. One of the knives was a Kyocera ceramic Santoku that (being ceramic) is not a knife that I can sharpen at home myself. The other 2 knives were commercial/working seafood filet/slicing knives made by Chicago Cutlery that are 2 of my sharpest knives, but sometimes they challenge my home-sharpening methods to get them as sharp as I really need/want them. I might as well see if Knife Aid can get the edge on these knives that often eludes me.

NOW FOR MY REVIEW -

THE BAD: ACTUAL PROCESS TIME DOESN'T COMPORT WITH THEIR PROMISED PROCESS TIME -

On Knife Aid's Delivery Times page ( https://knifeaid.com/pages/delivery-times ) the heading states " Get your knives returned 4-7 days after sending them to us. " and they promise the following breakdown of process times -

Packing Shipped (1-3 days)

Receive your Knife Aid secure protective envelope.

Knives shipped to our workshop (1-3 days)

We receive your knives.

Knife Sharpening (24 Hours)

A Knife Aid professional will have your knives razor-sharp and back to you within 24 hours from receiving them.

Receive your knives back to your home (1-3 days)

You will receive your knives within 1-3 days upon return shipping.

So here's how the order went.

I ordered their knife shipment packet mid-day PST on Friday April 24. They didn't even get the packet in the mail to me until the night of April 27, and it didn't even register in the USPS system until after midnight on Tuesday April 28. I finally received the packet on Friday May 1. That's 8 days, not the 1-3 days they promise on their website. Over-promised, under delivered. Not off to a great start.

On the next day (Saturday May 2) I mailed the knife packet back to them. Knife Aid states that this transit time should be 1-3 days. Using the level of USPS service that Knife Aid provides, the packet arrived at their facility on Monday May 4. USPS delivered on Knife Aid's promise. Good job USPS.

Now the important clock was ticking (in my opinion) as this was the only part of the process that Knife Aid complete controlled (the part of the process where the knives were in their hands). On their website they promise 24 hour turn around. The packet arrived at their facility at 10:35 AM Pacific Time. Okay, I should be justified in expecting the knives to go out 24-hours later. Instead, the knives were in their possession for a total of over 55 hours (the outbound knives entered the USPS stream at 6:29 PM on May 6). 55 hours is nowhere near 24 hours. And I wouldn't have minded so much if someone had at least reached out to me and said, "hey, we're running a bit behind and your knives are going to need at least another day in-house", but no, instead I had to reach out to them on the 6th and inquire why the knives had not been shipped yet. NO BUENO !

Then to top it all off, they didn't ship out the knives using a faster postal service to try to recover some of the lost process time. Instead, the knives took 5 days (May 6-11) finally arriving today.

If I add it all up, and subtract the 1 day that I needed to package and ship out my knives to them, the total order process time was 17 days. That's over half a month to get an order completed. That's a very serious over-promise, under-deliver problem.

Okay, let's get to the review of the work done.

THE GOOD: THE JOB THEY DID ON THE NIKIRI -

5 out of 5 stars for the work they did on the Nikiri. They fixed the nick in the blade perfectly, and they sent me back a knife that is as sharp (or sharper) than any knife I've ever inspected. Superb work kudos to the craftsman who handled the Nikiri.

THE NEUTRAL: THE JOB THEY DID ON THE OTHER 3 KNIVES -

I sent the 3 other knives along for the ride, since the order had a 4-knife minimum. So I wasn't considering these 3 knives to be as important as the Nikiri, and that's good, because they were returned to me nowhere near as sharp as the Nikiri. Their sharpness level was fine, but nothing better than how sharp I get my knives myself. I'm neither disappointed nor impressed. They are fine, but no better than the results I usually obtain myself.

IN CLOSING -

The whole purpose of my order was to get my Nikiri repaired. They did that and they did it well. So I got my money's worth. Did I wait longer than I had been promised? Yes, but I had plenty of other knives available to me, so the delay didn't affect any kitchen work I was doing during that 17/18-day period. No harm, no foul, but if I give any guidance to anyone else about Knife Aid, it will be that you should take their promised turn-around times with a grain of salt. Don't expect speed, and you won't be disappointed or annoyed. I would use them again in the future only if I have another repair situation. For sharpening, I will continue to do my own work here at home.

I have a variety of knives I keep sharp with my own electric sharpener. Easy to use, no mailing and no waiting. It takes almost no time—that’s why they can offer a 24-hour turnaround. I know you said you didn’t want to do it yourself but IME it’s the best way to keep a sharp edge.

@charliepalmer, Thanks for your very thorough review.

@User, I dare not have such a knife sharpener in my house. DH isn’t a detail sort of guy. I fear that he would just stick every knife in it any sort of way. As it is now, he picks up the sharpening steel and uses it on every knife with no notion of what he’s doing or how to do it.

Up thread, someone suggested that I look at sending my knives back to the manufacturers for sharpening. Regretfully, I’m a terrible procrastinator, but it is my intention to send the knives back to the manufacturers for sharpening. (And then I’m hiding the sharpening steel!)

Lol!

I just received my first order with Knife Aid back and I couldn’t be more disappointed. I can barely tell they were anywhere near a sharpener. I get that Calphalon may not be the best knives but this is ridiculous. One star. Next time I’ll use the knife sharpening service near me, keep the business local, and have a better result.

BB, have you ever practiced sharpening a knife with one of your inexpensive ones? I have two left hands and before I knew they made knife sharpeners, I used a sharpening stone DH had in his tool area in the garage, and while I always did a good job I'm so thankful I don't have to use it anymore.

Now I use a Smith's knife sharpener which I can't find online, but it's very similar to this one, and when I say I've never messed up, it's the truth.

https://www.amazon.com/Professional-3-Stage-Sharpener-Scissors-Sharpening/dp/B08F7N19LF/ref=sr_1_34?crid=DGVR3I0WX5V8&dchild=1&keywords=smith%27s+knife+sharpener&qid=1614704340&s=home-garden&sprefix=smith%27s+knife+sharpener%2Cgarden%2C217&sr=1-34

Practice with a cheapie, then hide the sharpener from your DH.

I have a Chef's choice electric knife sharpener that really works well for my needs. For my serrated knives in our Cutco collection I send them to Cutco and they sharpen them for me and I just have to pay the cost to ship them there. I've only done that once in almost 20 years and they did a good job.

I’m still planning to send my knives to the manufacturer for sharpening. It’s only been a year since I initially posted this. No need to get into a rush! HA!

Are you KIDDING me? Why are people bringing up old topics?

I take my knives to the butcher at my local grocery store. He will do my “good knives” as well as my OXOs, for no charge, while I shop. It’s not a service they really advertise, and just don’t bring them in those couple of weeks before Christmas and Thanksgiving! I had asked the fellow at the fish counter to take the skin off something for me, and I commented that he had better knives than I do, I needed to sharpen mine. He said, take them to the butcher over there, he does a good job while you shop.

My Wusthof knives do not need sharpening at this time but I have read that they are sharpened at a 10 degree angle and not the standard 14 degree. I am not sure there is a device where I could do this correctly. Wusthof does sell a knife sharpener and I wonder if anyone has tried it?

Funny you should ask! Here is my recently posted Yelp review:

Because of the poor customer service and sheer embarrasment of giving a Christmas gift certificate from Knife Aid to someone where they never received $500 worth of knives back, I would give Knife Aid zero stars if I could. Nice, premium knives were "lost in the mail" in the shipment back. There was no accountabllity. Even a simple apology would have been nice. There is no phone number to talk to someone. Reason given was "Covid" which is a silly excuse sinde you do not have to be sitting in an office to have good customer servie and contact points. Knife Aid would not even refund the cost of what we paid for in the gift certificate. Very lame! We were asked to work with post office and submit our knife receipts. Well needless to say, we do not have. Very disappointing experience. The person we gave this so called "gift" to was very excited to get her sharpened knives back. Knife Aid should NOT be shipping USPS due to their track record. Do not use them if you do not have receipts for your fine cutlery in case shipment gets lost in the mail.

I could never do that type of service. My collection of knives are so personal...sending off would create separation anxiety. Best to find a local service or learn, like we have done, to sharpen at home.

I have an expensive watch that needs service. Painful, even with shipping insurance, I have avoided for a few years to go there.

We lost two deliveries 2020. Just food...25 pounds of beans and an expensive local grass fed meat share. (pretty sure it was delivered one street over...🙄)

Food was replaced no cost to us and not personal. Painful that a neighbor I do not know has been accepting my packages. Keeping them.

(this is a local farm share with their own trucks, not ups or fed-ex). 200$ of meat. Unacceptable that a neighbor would keep that. They now take cell pics when delivered....

Elizabeth- I use a 2 stage Wusthof sharpener for my knives. I am no pro, but it works for me. I haven’t tried cutting paper afterwards. I don’t know how to sharpen a knife otherwise.

bpath - what a great idea!

"Gargamel

----------- I don’t know how to sharpen a knife otherwise."

Well, let me teach you. :-)

1. Don't ever go to a knife forum and ask someone to teach you. You will go nuts.

2. This is all you need to do -

a. Hold the knife at a steady angle relative to the sharpening stone.

b. Push up, then pull down.

c. Repeat if necessary.

That's all you need to do to have a good enough kitchen knife. I have never cooked paper, so I never tried to slice paper with my chef's knife.

dcarch

Look at the craftsmanship on these. Took perfectly nice serrated blade and destroyed it by sharpening it as if it wasn't serrated. Sharpened off all the tips and made them rounded and dull.

For the life of me I don't understand why they advertise that they sharpen serrated knives if they don't know how?