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February 24, 2017
January 17, 2019
Continuing my binge of tedious tales of consumerism:
There's this kitchen knife I bought over ten years ago,
that I like quite a bit-- not the greatest knife in Brand name:
the world, but I like it, and I'm used to it, and I use Kiwi
it all the time.
I remember buying
It was starting to get dull and dinged-up, it at the Kaimei
and I was wondering how I should sharpen it. restaurant supply
store on Clement
Knife sharpening technology is such a simple, Street in San
basic solved problem I had the thought I could Francisco.
walk into just any little hardware store and
find something to do it with-- there's a problem
with such things, though: who is going to expend
resources supporting infrequent purchases of I avoid doing internet
low-end items without much of a profit margin? orders, myself:
We're living in a world where just knowing how to NET_OF_LAST_RESORT
use a mop is becoming a rare skill, let alone
sharpening a tool. You think you're going to
pick up a *sharpening stone*? Ha.
Now, there's another type of knife-shapening tech
that's been around for at least 30 years: a small,
wall mounted gadget you drag a knife though a few
times. Not as neat as a stone, but it's quick and
easy.... you can see why that would take over the
market-- except that it's *too small and cheap*.
There's no profit margin.
What you *can* find out there are these big
clunky rotary gadgets that are supposed to e.g. at "Bed, Bath
suction-mount on a table-- I find them and Beyond"
difficult to use and ineffective. This is
an inferior tech that's taking over because
it's gotta be a whizzy gadget to sell
for enough money to justify the shelf space.
I looked in a number of places off and on
without success:
Then it dawned on me I was missing the
obvious: the Soko hardware store in San
Francisco's Japantown.
Manual, labor-intensive tools to precisely
sharpen blades better than modern gadgetry--
that's sounds pretty Japanese, doesn't it? How are you going to tune up
your Katana without them?
Soko had *both* of the knife sharpening
solutions I had in mind. The simple
wall-mounted gadgets were available
downstairs, and upstairs it wasn't a
question of finding *a* sharpening
stone, it was a question of what *kind*
of sharpening stone I was interested
in, and how much was I willing to pay?
I picked up a reasonable looking small
one for $10, plus the wall-mounted
gadget, and went home well-prepared.
But shortly afterwards I realized that
there were Chinese housewares stores in
Oakland's chinatown that carried new knives
identical to the one I wanted to sharpen,
and these were only around 4 bucks.
It was against my principles, but I bought
a new knife, and retired my old friend.
For now.
I still need to play with the
sharpening stone some time.
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