On point: Spokane knife sharpener brings precision to the kitchen

Steve Schmauch inspects a red-handled Santoku knife under a mounted magnifying glass in his garage.

Light reflects off of the entire cutting edge, signaling the blade is in desperate need of sharpening. Indeed, it’s dulled to the point of requiring extra pressure to pierce through the skin of a tomato.

That’s not all. Schmauch points out three nicks in the grade 440 stainless steel, which – he says – has gotten “to the point there’s no point left.”

Or, in other technical terms, “very super dull.”

Proprietor and sole craftsman of Sharp Stuff on Spokane’s South Hill, Schmauch believes knives “should be multi-generational.” Regular sharpening and repair can help them last.

“A knife,” he said, “does not stop working.”

Since founding his knife-sharpening service 17 years ago, Schmauch has honed some 80,000 knives on the hand-built sharpening machine in his garage. He works by appointment only, but is fairly flexible – and busy.

He can sharpen almost 200 knives during a “long” – read: 13-hour – day. In a typical shift, about eight hours, he handles 100 to 120 knives.

Schmauch, who turns 68 in May, bills his one-man business as “Spokane’s Premier Knife Sharpening Service” and sharpens cutlery for clients from Spokane Public Schools and the Coeur d’Alene Resort to restaurants such as Anthony’s at Spokane Falls and Churchill’s Steakhouse.

On a recent weekday afternoon, Schmauch had just returned from Anthony’s in downtown Spokane – he offers on-site sharpening for commercial clients – and was starting to tackle a 16-piece Calphalon knife set and a couple of dimple-sided Santoku knives for two home-cook clients.

“There’s no doubt both of these knives have cut up chicken bones,” Schmauch said of the Santoku pair. “And I can tell they’ve cut on plates or the bottoms of pans.

“They’ve never been steeled.” (This is a good thing; Schmauch doesn’t recommend handheld, steel rod knife sharpeners.) “But they’ve never been sharpened.” (This is a bad thing; the knife sharpener recommends regular knife sharpening.)

And now the knife owner is embarrassed.

Don’t worry, Schmauch says. “They will become your favorite knives again.”

His work is guaranteed. And, he’s never had a customer return a knife for not being sharp enough. Rather, chefs who haven’t accidentally cut themselves in years, decades even, come back to tell him their newly sharpened knives have drawn blood.

“I’ve learned to make sure I have a box of Band-Aids in the house when I bring home my knives from Steve,” said customer Alison Highberger, who recently had Schmauch sharpen 14 of her knives.

The bill was close to $90 – “totally worth it to me,” she said. “You’re going to nick yourself a few times when you have sharp knives in the house, but even that is worth it.”

Highberger, 59, has used Schmauch’s sharpening service two or three times during the last five years. She bought her knives at the Williams-Sonoma store at River Park Square, where salespeople recommended Sharp Stuff.

“I never got the hang of a sharpening steel, no matter how many times I tried,” Highberger said. “I even bought an electric knife sharpener once, but it didn’t do a great job – or I didn’t do a great job with it!”

She credits Schmauch with mending a favorite paring knife she believed was beyond repair. The tip had broken off. She had almost thrown it out.

“He was able to reshape the knife and give it a sharp new tip. Now, it’s like new again,” said Highberger, who loves to cook. “Sharp knives make cooking so much more pleasurable and fun for me.”

It doesn’t matter if the knives are fancy or inexpensive.

“I take the same care with a $3 knife as I do with a $1,300 knife,” Schmauch said. “The difference is the $1,300 knife will keep sharper longer.”

He doesn’t recommend a $3 knife. But he will happily share his secret.

“The secret to knife-sharpening,” Schmauch said, “is to do the minimum to make the knife as sharp as it can be.”

Another secret is his specialized equipment, which he maintains by hand, special ordering custom replacement pieces or rebuilding them himself.

After inspecting a knife under the magnifying glass, he runs the blade back and forth across a 150-grit, 1-inch-wide, aluminum oxide sanding belt. He replaces that belt every few days. Sometimes it lasts up to a week.

“This is what shapes the blade and repairs tips or damage,” Schmauch said. “This is the workhorse.”

Round two refines the edge with a 2,000-grit, 1-inch-wide belt with an aluminum oxide base. Schmauch adds materials to it. He won’t say what they are. That’s a trade secret he won’t share.

He will say this, though: “It gives a satin finish to the steel. It refines it by eliminating micro scratches. It’s very smooth.”

He has to replace it every few months.

The final round, another trade secret, involves a 2-inch-wide, “special thick leather” belt that Schmauch fashions himself in a process that takes six weeks. The belt itself will last about five years. It removes burrs from and polishes the edge of the blade.

On average, it takes 4 minutes from start to finish to sharpen a regular kitchen knife. Depending on the wear-and-tear and length of the blade, it could take as few as 2 minutes and as many as 10.

In addition to knives, Schmauch can sharpen almost every kitchen tool with a blade – from pizza cutters and mandolins to food processors – “anything with a straight or curved blade.”

He can sharpen S-blades, scissors, paper cutters and wood-chippers, but not utensils with off-set teeth, such as handsaws. He sharpens lawn and garden tools, too.

It costs $6 for Schmauch to sharpen a regular knife. He charges $7 for the serrated kind. It’s $8 for kitchen scissors and usually $10 for pruners and blades for other outdoor equipment. Upholstery scissors cost extra.

Cash and checks are OK. He doesn’t accept credit cards. Schmauch is old-school like that. Or, as he puts it, “I like to keep things as simple as possible.”

Schmauch keeps track of appointments on strips of colored tape. He writes names, phone numbers and appointment dates and times in black marker, tears off the tape and sticks it on a work table in his garage.

“I’ve got a roll of this in my car, too,” he said, “right there on the emergency brake. It’s very efficient.”

Home cooks come to the house. Out-of-town customers, such as a meat cutter from Omak, mail their knives or make special trips to drop them off.

As he sharpens, his flip-phone rings every 10 minutes. All calls on this recent weekday afternoon are customers or potential customers.

It wasn’t like that when he started.

Originally from Kalispell, Schmauch earned a degree in geology from Montana State University in Bozeman before moving to Spokane in 1970 for a job with the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Twenty-five years later, he was one of about 1,000 employees who lost their jobs as the bureau prepared to close. Schmauch began building houses – including his – and worked for a couple of years in Texas as director of Bat Conservation International in Austin. That’s where he got an edge on his future.

“I was turning 50,” he said. “I knew I was going to have to do something. I decided to work for myself.”

After taking a knife-sharpening workshop and honing his skills, Schmauch moved back to Spokane and, in fall 1998, started sharpening knives for friends and family members. He began to build – largely by word of mouth – his business, which he officially founded in 1999.

“It’s like a pebble in a pond. But you’ve got to start somewhere,” he said. “You have to develop trust.”

It wasn’t too difficult.

“Everybody,” he said, “has a drawer full of old knives.”

Plus, “All of my work is guaranteed,” Schmauch said. A knife he’s sharpened “will be sharper than when it came out of the box.”

He proves his point by running a newly sharpened knife across his thumb, collecting tiny shavings of skin, and dragging the blade gently across his fingernail, where it leaves a thin ridge in the keratin.

For the record, he’s not a fan of hand-held rod sharpeners, although they seem to come with most wood block knife sets. Schmauch has treated warped knives and knives with uneven edges, both caused by improper use of the steel.

“It’s a touch-up tool,” he said. “It’s not a sharpener. But people force it into being one.”

Instead, he recommends a barber strap or any old leather belt – “the wider, the better” – for maintenance in between professional sharpening appointments.

“Use discreet swipes back and forth,” he advised. “This will help align the edges that are starting to curl over. It will straighten the cutting edge.”

While he works, his wife, Marty, pops in to see whether he’s had lunch. (He hasn’t.) Schmauch might know knives, but – and he makes no bones about this – he doesn’t cook.

Still, he wants home cooks to choose the right tool for the job. Don’t use a small knife to do the work of a bigger knife, he said. This ups the chance of chipping the blade.

Do wash knives by hand, slice and dice on plastic or wood cutting boards – never granite, quartz or other stone, metal, porcelain or pottery – and keep knives in a wood block. Never leave unprotected blades in a drawer.

“A knife is one of the most important tools in the kitchen,” Schmauch said, noting he can tell by looking at one whether he’s sharpened it in the past. “There’s a little bit of my imprint on it.”

Once a knife has been professionally sharpened, he said, “you have to retrain yourself to use light cutting pressure. Let the knife do the work.”

Home cooks should have their knives sharpened once or twice a year.

“It’s quite addictive,” Schmauch said. “It’s like driving a Chevrolet and a Cadillac. The both get you there. But the Cadillac is so much nicer. So is a sharp knife.”

On the way out of the garage, he might even share one of his favorite knife-sharpener jokes.

“I can sharpen everything,” he said, pausing for effect, “but wits.”