The knife manufacturer doesn't always know best..

It is natural to assume that the manufacturer of your knife must be the ultimate authority on how that

knife should be sharpened, maintained and cared for. After all, they made it.

But manufacturing a knife and servicing one throughout its working life are two very different things.

At Blade & Butler, our experience comes from generations of knife servicing. Across our heritage, we

have sharpened, repaired and maintained knives from virtually every major manufacturer in the world from Nepal to Nuneaton.

From the inexpensive everyday kitchen knives to some of the finest professional and handmade blades in the

world. ( See below from our workshops!)

That gives us a perspective that an individual manufacturer simply cannot have.

Making Knives Is Not the Same as Servicing Them.

A knife manufacturer understandably knows its own production processes. What it doesn't necessarily

have is decades of hands-on experience servicing thousands upon thousands of knives made by

competing manufacturers.

We do.

Over time, patterns become remarkably clear. We see which knives come back year after year and

perform exceptionally well. We see which steels respond beautifully to sharpening, which blade

geometries retain their cutting performance and which designs stand up to decades of professional

use.

We also see the weaknesses.

Some knives leave the factory with blade geometry that is simply too thick. Others have excessively

heavy tapers or spines that can compromise cutting performance as the knife is repeatedly sharpened.

Certain steels or finishes can also prove more susceptible to corrosion or pitting than their marketing

might suggest.

Occasionally, these characteristics remain part of a manufacturer's product for many years. ( Hello Global knives pit rusting issue! )

This doesn't necessarily make the knife a bad knife. It simply demonstrates that no manufacturer gets

every design decision right.

Even the World's Most Advanced Manufacturers Make Mistakes

Consider the automotive industry.

Car manufacturers collectively spend billions on research, engineering, testing and product

development. Vehicles are designed by enormous teams of specialist engineers and subjected to

sophisticated computer modelling and extensive testing.

And cars are still recalled.

Design faults are discovered. Components fail prematurely. Engineering decisions are revised. Products

are redesigned.

If this can happen in one of the most technologically advanced industries in the world, there is no reason to assume that every kitchen-knife manufacturer has achieved perfection in every aspect of every knife it produces.

They haven't.

The Sharpening Advice Can Be Wrong Too.

Perhaps the clearest example is sharpening itself.

Some knife manufacturers recommend pull-through sharpening devices for maintaining their knives. ( Global knives )

We don't.

In our experience, pull-through sharpeners are among the poorest ways of maintaining a good knife.

Many remove metal unnecessarily aggressively, provide very limited control over the edge geometry

and can gradually compromise and thicken the blade rather than properly restoring it.

Yet you will still find them recommended for perfectly good knives.

The fact that advice appears on a manufacturer's website doesn't automatically make it the best advice

for the long-term health of your knife.

Some recommend sharpening exclusively on whetstones. We don't. And see here why we state that.

We See What Happens to Knives Over Decades

This is where Blade & Butler's experience is fundamentally different.

A manufacturer sees a knife when it is designed, tested, manufactured and sold.

We see what happens afterwards.

We see knives after five years, ten years, twenty years and sometimes considerably longer. We see how

different steels wear, how blade profiles change through repeated sharpening, where particular models

tend to fail and which knives continue performing brilliantly after decades of use.

We sharpen them. We repair them. We reprofile them. We correct damaged edges and restore knives

that might otherwise have been discarded using our experience gained from over a century of hard earned experience.

And crucially, we do this across brands and to Every.Single.Knife.

We have no reason to declare that one manufacturer's design philosophy must be correct simply

because that manufacturer says it is. Our judgement comes from what we actually see at the

sharpening bench.

Trust Experience, Not Just the Logo

Knife manufacturers make some extraordinary products, and there are brands and individual models

that we have enormous respect for. ( Hello Blenheim Forge ! )

But manufacturers are not infallible.

When it comes to sharpening, repairing and maintaining a knife throughout its working life, practical

servicing experience matters enormously.

Blade & Butler's knowledge isn't based on maintaining one manufacturer's knives. It comes from

generations of working with knives from across the industry and seeing, first-hand, what works, what

doesn't and what keeps a knife performing at its best for as long as possible.

The manufacturer knows how your knife was made.

We know what happens to it afterwards.