I am slowly replacing all my knives. By slowly, I mean I’ve been in the process for maybe 25 years. As a wedding gift we received a knife block and also a set of knives. The knives all had brown plastic handles. The set only had a paring knife, a serrated vegetable knife (supposedly for slicing tomatoes), a meat clever, a bread knife, and a fillet knife. It was a “starter” set. We also managed to acquire a 3 piece carving set as a free gift for allowing a vacuum sales demonstration. That set had plastic faux ivory handles. Coupled with the knives (wooden handles) Sparky and I each owned prior to merging our households we managed to fill (just) two knife blocks. Plastic handles tend to get brittle over time and the paring knife handle disintegrated, followed by the fillet knife. Eventually I decided that I wanted knives with metal handles that wouldn’t fall apart in my hand. My mother had a knife that was made by my great grandfather (or maybe my mother’s great grandfather?), any way it had an aluminum forged handle that was quite formidable. It is still in use and looks like a machete. It is perfect for hacking apart big hunks of meat. Anyway I’ve found at garage sales and at resale shops many aluminum or stainless steel handled knives. With each new find I replace a wooden or plastic handled blade. I was down to only the carving set as needing to be swapped out. I found a meat fork and purchased it. I’d looked all through the bins for the matching knife to no avail. A week later and at a different Goodwill, I found the matching carving knife! I was thrilled. I’ve now passed the still functional carving set to my sons. Now as you may deduce, many of the knives I’ve obtained as pre-owned are not sharp. That is however not a problem. You see when I was in college one of the skills I was required to master was sharpening knives and scalpels. There were at that time (in the ancient days of yore) still surgeons using scalpels that were not disposable. They had to be sharpened after every use. And the Veterinary Technician (now Veterinary Nurse) was responsible. I had to purchase my own hone. I still have it and use it as needed to keep my cutlery sharp. (I also got A+ in my sharpening skills tests.) As I was sharpening my newest purchase (for 19 cents) I was inspired to pen this little Nonet. If you aren’t familiar with the nonet, it is a reverse etheree but instead of the first line starting with 10 syllables it starts with 9 and each successive line is reduced by one syllable with the last line having a single syllable… Enjoy.
I know how to sharpen every knife
From paring, carving, and chef’s blade
Make it a keen razor edge
Able to split a hair
Slices paper thin
Needs no pressure
Carves off fat
Cuts deep
Wounds
A Different Perspective 