A long career in the food service industry has acquainted me with all kinds of ways to sharpen knives. As a young culinary student, I would run my knives through a pull-through sharpener. When I began to look for an even better edge, I brought my knife to Sur La Table to take advantage of its in-house sharpening services. Once I started working in serious kitchens, older cooks side-eyed this practice. They explained that mechanical grindstones and inexperienced retail assistants can remove too much metal from your knife when sharpening, dramatically shortening its life. Serious pros use whetstones to sharpen their knives, and eventually, I only wanted to use them on my precious and expensive work tools. That said, while whetstones are effective, they're time-consuming and come with learning curves.
Recently, I read about a new trend in knife sharpening: rolling sharpeners. These, like the Horl 3 Cruise I tested, couple magnetic, angled blocks with rolling, textured cylinders. Your knife snaps onto the block to be held at just the right angle (either 15 or 20 degrees) while the cylinder rolls along the sharp edge to sharpen. After finishing one side, you flip the knife to do the other. Pretty simple, right? I tested a popular rolling knife sharpener to find out.
The Tests
- Stainless Steel Knife Test: To start, I chose one of my older knives to experiment with the Horl 3. For me, it’s the Zwilling Bob Kramer Damascus. It’s made of stainless steel and takes a long time to resharpen. I pulled it out, dusted it off, and marked the edge with a Sharpie to see how much the Horl would take off. I put it to the Edge-on-Up Professional Edge Tester to test its existing sharpness, then put in some serious work on the Horl before re-testing its sharpness.
- Odd-Size Knife Test: Next, I wanted to see if the Horl could work for an irregularly shaped knife like a meat cleaver. Again, I used the edge tester, sharpened the cleaver, and then tested its edge again.
- Carbon Steel Knife Test: Finally, I grabbed a softer carbon steel knife to see how the Horl could perform on a different material. I used the edge tester before and after to determine the results.
What We Learned
Rolling Sharpeners Leave the Training Wheels On
People have used whetstones to sharpen knives for centuries, and the design hasn’t changed much. You hold your knife at an angle and run it across a textured stone to remove some material and refine the edge to a point. Repeat on the other side, and you get a sharp edge. Electric sharpeners were invented to save time and decrease the amount of skill needed to complete this task: Rotating textured wheels or belts spin around an angled valley the user drags the blade of the knife through.
Rolling sharpeners combine elements of both methods. Instead of using an angle guide or relying on feel, the rolling sharpener has a magnetized block that snaps onto your knife to hold it edge-side-up at the proper angle. A coarse, textured cylinder rolls next to the blade and along its edge to refine it. In theory, this process reduces the amount of skill needed to maintain the proper angle while sharpening and doesn’t take off as much material as an electric or pull-through sharpener.
The Rolling Sharpener Sharpened Well—But With Limitations
After about 10 minutes of sharpening my Kramer blade (roughly 100 passes on each side of the blade), the Horl made significant progress. To start, this knife registered at 1044 on the edge tester. The manual for the tester recommends a professional regrind for any blade scoring above 1200. After using the Horl, I was able to get the sharpness down to 600, or a “moderately rolled edge.” Because the Kramer has chips along the blade, I would need to continue far beyond just getting the edge sharp to get a completely straight blade. Ordinarily, I could use a whetstone with a coarser grit to make shorter work of this process. The Horl only comes with one grit grade plus another side for honing. Whetstones come in a wide variety of grits and textures designed to pair with whatever results you are looking for. Essentially, trying to remove chips from a stainless steel knife using the Horl is akin to chopping down a tree with a serrated knife. Sure, it can do it…eventually. But you could make more progress with a better tool.
That being said, I was able to finally remove the chips with enough elbow grease and time. By the end, I had managed to get the sharpness to 239, as sharp as a double-edged razor blade and most high-end cutlery out of the box. Consider me a happy camper, as it can cost as much as $40 to get it repaired by a professional just once and the Horl can be used again and again.
Save Your Odd-Size Cutlery For A Whetstone
While you can sharpen almost any kind of knife on a whetstone, the Horl is limited by the shape and size of the rolling component. A larger cleaver is too wide to make contact with the textured surface of the sharpener without requiring you to jury-rig some kind of elevated surface on one side. Paring knives were a non-issue and carbon steel knives with typical bevels (double, 15 or 20 degrees) sharpened just fine.
The Verdict
If you want to be a bit more serious about the long-term care of your knives but are too intimidated to delve into mastering a whetstone, the Horl (and rolling sharpeners like it) offers a clever solution. Understand that this kind of sharpener will never be able to do what a full assortment of whetstones can, but maybe that’s not what you want anyway. Quick, effective sharpening will give you a much more enjoyable user experience when slicing and cutting, and that’s what the Horl delivers.
The Pros
I enjoyed using the Horl 3 Cruise and will admit that it's easier than a whetstone. The Horl does not need to be soaked before use and makes no mess. It’s compact and portable. While it’s not quite as intuitive as a pull-through sharpener, I was still able to get my non-culinary sister to sharpen her dull knives to a satisfactory edge without a lengthy instruction period. Maintaining the correct angle is virtually foolproof with the heavy-duty magnet, which did not release the knife during sharpening at all no matter how much pressure I exerted.
The Cons
The Horl is not as versatile as a set of whetstones would be. It only has one type of grit coarseness and two angle settings, though Horl is releasing a model later this year with more options and exchangeable grinding disks. With a whetstone, the choices for angle are essentially limitless and you are free to customize your edge the way you want. That is still going to be the best possible option for knife nerds.
Key Specs
- Grinding material: Diamond
- Weight: 1 pound
- Grinding angles: 15 and 20 degrees
Why We're the Experts
- Taylor Murray has been working in food and food media for over 10 years, including at award-winning restaurants.
- She has tested numerous items for Serious Eats, including tagines and deep-dish pizza pans.
- For this review, Taylor sharpened a variety of knives using the Horl 3 Cruise. She tested the edge before and after sharpening using a professional edge tester.
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