Thread: kitchen cutlery: meatpacker steel vs. leather?

I've been watching a lot of Murray Carter videos and chefs' videos in an attempt to educate myself about the honing & maintenance of kitchen knives. (My GF so far is very pleased with the results). One thing still confuses me; the use of steel rods.

Most chefs seem to agree that butcher steel (the kind with grooves, or texture) is more destructive than helpful. They recommend using "meatpacker" or "slick" steel (smooth & polished) before each use of the knife.

So why do they use steel, while we use leather?

I happen to have a very hard, highly polished steel rod on hand. It seems to do the same thing that leather stropping does, but far more aggressively. I tried steeling one knife, and stropping another on a leather belt laid flat on the counter. The steel seems to produce a slightly "grabbier" edge. But the leather isn't half bad, either.

So why don't any chefs use leather instead of steel? Is the steel better? Or is there a fear that microbes from meat will end up contaminating the leather? Or is it an accident of history? Conversely, why don't we steel our razors instead of stropping them? (I'm actually afraid to try this for fear of chipping a blade--maybe that's the reason).

Should I look for another steel on ebay to keep at her house?

On knives made out of quality steel you do not use the ribbed steel.
White 1 and 2, blue 1,2, Aogami Super, VG-10, Ginsanko, Goginko, etc all take very fine edges, if you use ribbed steel on those you are going to run the edge. Smooth steel or borosilicate rod is what you can use, but in reality all you need is once a day touch up on CrO bench strop.
The ribbed steel is ok to use on German knives though, they can't take an edge so fine to matter.

Chefs, at least most of them, use steel because that's how they are taught in culinary school. In culinary school you can't bring a fine Japanese gyuto, you will get scolded and asked to use the recommended German clunkers aka, Wusthof/Henckels.

Hey Stefan, I get that grooved steel is bad. The question is, can I use leather instead of smooth steel? Leather is much easier to come by.

Edit: this site sells borosilicate rods for $4:

http://www.onlinesciencemall.com/Sho...d/0/rid/126318

Originally Posted by Johnny J

Hey Stefan, I get that grooved steel is bad. The question is, can I use leather instead of smooth steel? Leather is much easier to come by.

I have never tried leather only, and I am sure if it was better people would use it. The popular stropping tool for knives is CrO strop.

OK, I have some scrap leather and CR02. I can make a bench strop easily enough. Maybe just out of curiosity I'll get a couple of those $4 borosilicate rods just to play with But it sounds like plain leather is not aggressive enough for kitchen cutlery. BTW all my knives are "clunkers", I don't own any Carter knives or anything.

As a side note, the DIY junkyard equipment seems to be multiplying. I made a couple really large hones out of slate. Too coarse for a polished edge (I wouldn't even THINK about using them on a razor!) but fine for knives you are going to hammer through turkey bones or winter squash. Add a homemade bench strop & you've really got a DIY kitchen!

Originally Posted by Johnny J

OK, I have some scrap leather and CR02. I can make a bench strop easily enough. Maybe just out of curiosity I'll get a couple of those $4 borosilicate rods just to play with But it sounds like plain leather is not aggressive enough for kitchen cutlery. BTW all my knives are "clunkers", I don't own any Carter knives or anything.

As a side note, the DIY junkyard equipment seems to be multiplying. I made a couple really large hones out of slate. Too coarse for a polished edge (I wouldn't even THINK about using them on a razor!) but fine for knives you are going to hammer through turkey bones or winter squash. Add a homemade bench strop & you've really got a DIY kitchen!

May be there is a misunderstanding here but borosilcate rods are pretty expensive.
Hand american used to carry them and they wer in the $70 range. Another option is Idahone ceramic rod, but I have never tried one so I can't tell how well it works.

This site is a science education supply house. They are selling the rods, no handles or anything, and the rods appear to be scrap pieces because they are inconsistent dimensions. They are apparently meant for science teachers to do static electricity demonstrations by rubbing the rod on cloth. IDK if they are "inferior quality" borosilicate (or if there even is such a thing). But for $4 I might give it a try.

Funny side note: my steel is actually salvaged from an ancient printer. Those old behemoths had a very hard, highly polished rod that the print head slides back & forth on. How's that for junkyard? Again, IDK if it is hard enough for a really hard knife, but all my knives are clunkers.

This is interesting, I work in a kitchen but I've never heard of anyone using the smooth steel rods instead of a butcher's steel. I'm not a bit fan of the butcher's steel either, but it is the most commonly used item. Historically, its intended to straighten out a 'turned' edge that you might get from hitting a bone or other hard solid material while cutting up an animal. Most people use them for general day to day knife maintenance however.

I think they're too aggressive myself. The fact is though, with the kind of use an edge gets being used in a restaurant every day, that very fine edge you put on your knife is only going to last a couple days. The butcher's steel is a quick easy way to get the knife back up to "get the job done" sharpness because of this. This is why you see them most commonly used by chef's, its practicality mainly, but also just a common standard (a lot of chefs never go to culinary school by the way). I think leather just wouldn't be aggressive enough to maintain a heavily used knife. The smooth steel rod is something I may have to look into though.

Another alternative is one of the finer diamond steels (just like a DMT but in the same shape as a butcher's steel.) They're a good choice for a quick touch-up without taking your knife to a hone. You'll want to be very careful with those though, since they can dull a sharp knife in one bad swipe. This is all from the professional perspective however, where you can expect your knife to hit a cutting board a good 300-400 times on a slow day, not even considering tougher materials you might have to cut through.

For your own home use, the less aggressive methods are probably a better choice, they'll put less wear on your knife (mainly the edge, since you're unlikely to ever wear out a knife just using it at home). Anyways, I'm not sure if any of this was actually helpful, but I'm curious to hear how things work for you so please report back!

Here it is, junkyard bench strop pasted with green compound. Works very well on my swiss army knife! The smooth steel seems to work well, too. If I buy some of those cheap borosilicate rods, I'll report back with my results.

Update: I've been fooling around comparing the results of my bench strop vs. my meatpacker steel. The meatpacker steel is not aggressive enough to fix the damage that results from banging the knife into a wooden cutting board. The pasted strop does a much better job. I remember using a chef steel (the kind with texture) when I worked in a deli as a teenager. IIRC, a professional service used to sharpen all the cutlery weekly (or was it monthly, I can't remember). As Patches says, I think the chef steel was used primarily for convenience. If you use it on very fine edges (as the sharpness fetishists in here are likely to have), you will do mor harm than good. So for home use, I recommend the pasted strop over both the chef steel and the meatpacker steel. I didn't buy any borosilicate rods to test because I don't like the meatpacker steel enough to continue experimenting with it.