---
template: single
point: 33.9448641195,-83.3885693434
location: Athens,Georgia,United States
image: 2013/shaptonstones.jpg
desc: By Scott Gilbertson
dek:
pub_date: 2013-02-09T6:12:06-05:00
slug:
title: Shapton Glass Stones Field Test
---
I did this once before, when I reviewed knife sharpeners in Wired, so I'm doing it again because I have a series of reviews coming out in Wired again, this time about various Chromebooks. This is my addendum to those reviews, which are constrained by space such that I skip things I like about the Chromebooks that are, shall we say, more philosophical.
What about a laptop is philosophical? Everything actually. The implications of every purchase you make are deep enough that Naom Chomsky would have a hard time picking them apart. Sadly, he's not the one trying to, but that's a whole other story. There is no such thing as just a tool. There is always and forever everything, all the choices external and personal that led you to that tool.
Picking all that apart isn't my goal, I actually have not interest in that, but I am interested in the Chromebook as a hacking tool. Chrome OS is spyware. It's Google's standard offering -- give us data about you and we will sell it in exchanges for some marginally useful services. Chrome OS is shit.
Chromebooks however are not shit. They're just circuit boards and RAM and hard drives. There might be compromised elements to them, google is very much in bed with the NSA, which means the firmware is likely compromisable.
Here's the thing though, you can get rid of the firmware. You can more or less completely wipe your Chromebook, crack open the case, add a bigger hard drive, more RAM (sometimes, sometimes it's soldered to the motherboard) and install your own firmware and run Linux. In other words if you spend $250 on a Chrome book, $80 in 2 8GB RAM sticks, $120 on a 256GB SSD you can have a very powerful. lightweight laptop for $400.
That is pretty amazing to me. Even if
An essay about craftsmanship (of the stones) taking the time to do things slowly, the right way as opposed to just shooting for the result.
In that reviews I cover the Shapton Glass Stones, which get the highest rating of all the various sharpening tools I tested. The high rating is partly reflected in the text about their performance, but it's also informed by something else -- these are the only sharpening tools I tested that exhibit any craftsmanship. The Shaptons, from the moment they arrive, convey a deep commitment to quality and utility. This is noticeable in part because it's so rare in today's world of material goods and tools to find anything that flimsy and half broken the minute you open it.
The Shaptons are mounted on 3/8 inch frosted glass plates, which probably makes them slightly more fragile than unmounted stones, but gives them a heft and feeling of solidity that the other stones I tested were missing.
I have no doubt that so long as you care for them, the Shaptons would never need to be replaced. This is also likely true of the other stones I tested as well, so I'll drop the brand names here and just speak of sharpening stones.
--
Now, what do you have left? $10? Buy a six pack of something nice and congratulate yourself, you have a whole kitchen setup for less than what some asshole like me would have you spend on a single knife.
There's blood on the stones and my thumbs hurt like hell, but all six of my knives have crisp, sharp edges that make a glinting sound when I flick my sore, bleeding thumbs against them. If I were better at sharpening knives this wouldn't happen, but clearly I'm not very good anymore. It's been many years since I spent my days in the kitchen with an 8 inch blade as an extension of my hand. I've forgotten how this works.
Months later my thumbs no longer rub raw and bleed when I drag the blade across the courser stones. I had been pressing too hard, to nervous about letting the blade wobble to worry about my own skin. And then I did what you do when you practice something enough to get good at it -- I relaxed. It's part of the process of learning, the move from tension to relaxation.
I came to be grinding my thumbs against these gorgeous ceramic stones because I am reviewing them, along with half a dozen other ways to sharpen knives, for Wired. The truth is though, none of the half dozen other ways of sharpening knives interests me; I pitched the review because I wanted to test a few different varieties of ceramic stones.
I can't help thinking about that bias as I write the review. There was never a chance that any other means of sharpening was going to score higher than the stones. It helps my credibility that ceramic stones really *are* the best way to sharpen a knife. But it's not just the superior results that bias me toward the stones, it's that most other forms of sharpening are simply not, to my mind, real tools. If you're going to buy something, spend you hard earned money on something let it be at least the real thing, a thing of lasting value, built well and worth your effort to use and master.
I want to put that in the intro of my review, but I don't.
I don't because you *can* sharpen knives with an electric grinder. You can even get something like an edge with those hand held things you drag the knife through. But you shouldn't. You shouldn't because those things will not last. You grinder will be in the trash can before long. It's an inelegant thing not worthy of your investment. Inelegance is unbecoming of the human existence; avoid it. Too grandiose a sentiment for a knife sharpener? Maybe. The grinder also will give you a knife that doesn't hold its edge.
The best way to sharpen knives with a ceramic stone. It will take some practice. Even if you once knew what you were doing you might end up struggling, with bloody thumbs the first time through. But keep doing it until you get it right. Try it. Just for a while. Forget the knives; there is value in learning for its own sake. There is value in practice. It teaches you about yourself. You practice, you learn, you grow a little. You practice more.
We no longer value these types of skills very much though. It's easier to hire someone to do manual things for us. We don't mow the lawn; we don't rake the leaves; we don't press the clothes; we don't change the oil; we don't even clean the house. We definitely don't sharpen knives.
Just fifty years ago we did these things. Now we do not.
Worlds change, the skills we value change. Our current world does not value the skills of manual labor or craftsmanship very much. We are no longer impressed by people that do these things. In some cases it's increasingly hard to find anyone that can do these things at all let alone do them well. Tried have your shoes repaired lately? How about fixing a broken appliance? Skills that are no longer valued are no longer honed. They disappear. Even those of us who used to be chefs forget how to sharpen knives when we don't practice.
If you don't practice you forget how to hold the knife at the proper angle to the stone. You end up using your thumbs to balance it the first time you try. Your thumbs bleed. But what's even stranger is that you'll be there by yourself and suddenly notice that you feel nervous even though no one is watching, you'll feel that tension that comes from not knowing, not knowing if you're doing it quite right so you just keep doing it and flicking at the edge listening for the almost ringing sound that you vaguely remember. So you slice at paper until a barest of effort makes clean slices, no ragged edges. Eventually that tension of forgetting or not knowing fades away, your thumbs no longer bleed though the memory of that foolishness becomes a kind of inscription -- yes, right there, now I can find the angle without thinking about it and now, three months later the skill is back. The night before I have to send these stones back to Wired1 I sharpen all my knives one last time. Then I order my own set of stones so I won't forget again.