What kills a Japanese blade

A Japanese blade asks for no particular attention. It asks that six things not be done to it.

1. The dishwasher

This is the first killer, by a distance. Heat relaxes the hardening at the surface, alkaline salts attack the polish, and knocks against cutlery chip an edge ground at 15 degrees. The wooden handle swells and comes unglued.

Warm water, one drop of washing-up liquid, a cloth. Ten seconds.

2. The glass or marble board

A blade at 60 HRC is harder than the steel of an ordinary knife, but softer than glass. Every cut on a glass board tears micro-chips out of the edge. The knife comes away blunted by a single meal.

Wood, or soft plastic. Nothing else.

3. The cutlery drawer

A fine edge does not survive repeated contact with a fork. Magnetic bar, block, sheath, it hardly matters: what counts is that nothing metallic touches the edge between two uses.

4. Careless drying

Stainless steel is not insensitive. A blade left wet on the rack, especially after cutting a lemon or a tomato, develops grey marks. They are superficial and lift with bicarbonate, but there is no reason to make them.

5. The things that do not get cut

Bone, joints, frozen food, hard squash attacked by force, a bottle opened with the blade as a lever. A hard blade breaks where a soft one bends. For bone there are cleavers, and that is their trade.

6. The pull-through sharpener

It is sold as the simple solution, and it erases a 15-degree grind in three seconds by reforming a bevel at 20. A water stone and twenty minutes are worth more than an accessory that works against the blade.

What it comes to day to day

Rinse and dry after use. Store it protected. Cut on wood. Take it to the stone every two or three months. A blade kept that way still cuts in ten years, and the edge it finds again after sharpening is the one it had on its first day.

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