I’ve got a basic block of Zwilling J.A. Henckels knives.
They are fine? Or were they when I got them? They got dull. I bought the HORL®3 knife sharpener to bring them back to life. It absolutely didn’t work after really committing to trying to get it to. Note how I’m not even going to link to HORL®3; that’s how much I don’t recommend that thing.
I took them to one of those knife-sharpening vans that parks once a week at my local grocery store.
Cost me $25 (with tip) to do 4 knives. Seems fine.
Are they back to amazing?! You ask. No, they are not. They are a little better. But for the time/effort/money of taking them to a professional knife sharpener, the return just isn’t there.
Why aren’t they sharper than 15-year cheddar?
Do the knives just suck? Were they too far gone? Is the knife-sharpening guy just not very good? I honestly don’t know.
I do know that I have a (fairly cheap) little knife-and-cutting-board set from REI in my van. I don’t use those knives nearly as much. They are super sharp. They are sharper than your mother’s tongue.
Get a Japanese whetting stone ✅ They're affordable and you'll find lots of tutorials on YouTube. Did wonders for my mid-range kitchen knives!
My take is that the sharpener isn't very good. I took my knives that were pretty good to one at the local farmer's market and they came back almost as good as new (and he refused money to sharpen one that he deemed not in need). One was a Henckels knife, but standalone not from a block
I’m not a knife expert by any means, but I did go down a youtube rabbit hole once on manually sharpening knives with a whetstone and have no regrets.
My guess is the sharpener van wasn’t good, or your knives needed more than they did. $25 seems a bit cheap too for 4 knives, but I don’t have anything to go off of other than the effort it takes to sharpen knives manually with a stone.
I highly recommend watching a few videos, picking up a cheap $20 dual-sided stone, and giving it a shot yourself.
I find it meditative. It was a little stressful at first because it does take practice, but eventually you find your flow. And then when people come over and use your knives they’ll be all “holy crap that’s a sharp knife” and then you can casually offer to meditate and sharpen their knives too.
The van person did a poor job. Zwilling makes solid knives, we have some, they get dull like every other knife and they sharpen just fine if done properly
A coarse stone to reset the bevel, followed by a light finer pass and a strop, has been more predictable for me than gadget sharpeners. Did the van leave a clean apex, or did it just create a wire edge?
“Too far gone” isn’t a thing with most knives. And it certainly is not a thing for knives that have never been sharpened before.
I second taking some time and a cheap stone to learn the basics. It’s a good family skill to have.
Another vote for an affordable whetting stone + learning via videos. You’ll probably not get it perfectly right initially, but your knives will still be quite sharp for a while. Over time, you’ll get really good, and so will your knives.
And Rick’s take on the meditative aspect of it all is spot on.