This Lil' Knife Sharpener Will Transform Your Trash Knives For Under $6

Sharpen up your cutting skills with this cheap buy that'll upgrade all your old knives.

Hi, I'm Elizabeth and I'd love to talk to you about knives today. SHARP knives! They're incredibly useful for elaborate dance routines *and* cooking. After all, everyone's gotta eat.

MGM

I spend a good chunk of my professional time researching kitchen gadgets and tools. Yes, I see the benefits of an excellent salad spinner, but I have very little storage room in my tiny New York City kitchen and can't justify that purchase for myself. That goes for a lot of kitchen products I pine after but know that I don't really need. But every now and then, I unearth something that I MUST have. In short, this is a love letter to a tiny knife sharpener.

After living with several roommates over the course of 7 years (wow, how the time goes!), I accumulated an odd collection of knives that neither matched nor cut very well. Cue this little knife sharpener that'll cost you less than $6!!!

amazon.com

I read the reviews, fell for it, and put it in several stories, like things for clumsy people, products that won't be a disappointment, and clever ways to spend less money this month. Then I spent as much money as I've paid for a fancy coffee drink on it. It's called investing, folks.

It totally ~transformed~ my hodgepodge of a knife collection, and probably saved my clumsy self from lots of close calls with dull knives.

Elizaebeth Lilly / BuzzFeed

I've imagined all sorts of Final Destination-ish ways to meet my demise thanks to some dull old knife. No more!

The sharpener comes with detailed instructions and actually fits in my knife drawer. When I first received it I ~excitedly~ gave it a go on a Rachael Ray knife (similar to these). It’s a pretty handy knife, but wasn’t what it used to be back in the day when I inherited it from a friend who left NYC in 2011. I set it on the edge of my cutting board and pulled it through the coarse notch three times, per the instructions. Even though mushrooms aren’t notorious for being tough to slice through, they’re oddly shaped and move around: with my newly sharpened knife, I was able to slice through them with no effort…even the stem! I also manhandled an onion and it was sooo easy slicing through the skin.

A DECENT set of knives would be a sound investment for a 30-year-old, I know. But this little sharpener is making my hand-me-downs way more useful. And it’s so easy to use in comparison to the menacing sharpening rods that you see villains in cartoons using when they’re thinking about eating the Roadrunner or a cute protagonist.

Oh, and did I mention it has a 4.4/5 star rating and 9K+ reviews on Amazon? Take a gander at what those satisfied customers have to say:

amazon.com

"I gotta say this is the best sharpener I ever bought in my whole life. I got it today and brought it to work. I work at a Japanese restaurant as a sushi chef and I sharpened it at work and wow my knife was sharp like a samurai sword! Even my coworkers were surprised and asked me to order one for them. It was so sharp that I barely touched the knife and my pinky fingers got cut deep and I had to be sent home from work. Now I don't have to use the stone or sharpen rod that much anymore. 😎" —Rodrigo

"I decided to actually come back to this nearly two years later to review it. Since I've bought it, I've heard my husband talk about it on and off. Just yesterday with my daughter he was going over sharp knife safety, and he just said how much he still absolutely loves it. Of every gift I've ever given him, this is the only thing I've heard still get praise nearly two years later. So I figured that was worth going back to my orders, searching 'sharpener' and reviewing it. Highly pleased with it still." —Gluten Free Momma

"I bought more than a dozen Victorinox steak and kitchen knives over 15 years ago and they have been great knives. But they’ve been getting dull over the years and I believed I couldn’t sharpen them because they have the wavy blades, but i was mistaken. This stone does a fantastic job and after a quick 20 pulls across the steel (rough) and then ceramic stones my knives were 200% sharper. Now I try to pull them over the ceramic sharpener a few times each time i wash them. They’re essentially brand new knives again. Note: Put this sharpener on the edge of your counter on a 45% angle (as the underside has a 45% cut out), which promotes a positive grip and aides in the sharpening process!" —J&A

"I am a mechanical engineer. What many reviewers have mistaken for rust around the metal coarse sharpening side is actually an alloy used to 'braze' on the carbide insert that actually does the sharpening. This is stated in the product description. Look up brazing on Wikipedia. If you look closely you'll see the bronze color surrounds a rectangular block, which is the carbide sharpening material. It is set in place (into a ground out section, which is why the surrounding bronze color always fills out a circular arc) using the technique called brazing." —Amazon Customer

So stop (dangerously) using dull knives and give this sharpener a try.

Elizabeth Lilly / BuzzFeed

You won't regret it!

Get it from Amazon for $5.50 (available in three colors).

Here's to having sharp knives in your cooking arsenal:

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