HOUSTON – Dull kitchen knives make cooking and preparing food more work than it has to be. But buying high end chef's knives is expensive. Consumer expert Amy Davis is testing the Bavarian Edge Knife Sharpener, whose makers claim it can make your old knives razor sharp in seconds.
It costs $19.88 at Walmart. The commercial makes some pretty wild claims that we wanted to test ourselves.
As the announcer says, "Introducing the Bavarian Edge, the innovative knife sharpener with independent spring action arms that will make your old blades razor sharp in seconds," you see a man toss a tomato a foot into the air above a knife sharpened by the Bavarian Edge. The blade cleanly slices the tomato in half when it touches the blade.
Channel 2 engineering manager Vince Moreno tried to recreate the trick after sharpening his own knife with the Bavarian Edge. Each time he tossed a tomato into the air above the blade, it bounced off and rolled away in one piece.
Moreno uses a honing steel on his kitchen knives at home. They come with most knife sets. It's a long piece of steel that helps to realign your blades, making the knives cut smoother and easier.
The makers of the Bavarian Edge claim two pieces of Tungsten carbide strengthen, hone and polish the blades of your knives as you pull them through the device.
Moreno used three different knives from his home, testing them first before they were sharpened, and then after pulling them through the Bavarian Edge. He sliced a tomato with the first knife. You could tell the blade was somewhat dull by the effort Moreno made to prevent the tomato from just squishing under the blade instead of slicing. When Moreno tried to slice another tomato after sharpening it with the Bavarian Edge, he did not notice a difference.
"Still cutting the same way," he said, while demonstrating. "This is a really old knife, but there was no improvement."
It was not at all like the transformation described in the commercial. In another part of the ad, a man slices right through a pineapple with one whack of a knife that was sharpened by the Bavarian Edge.
Moreno was able to duplicate the trick twice, with a knife he sharpened with the device and with one he did not sharpen.
In the last test, Moreno sharpened the edge of a credit card with the device and then used it to slice a tomato. It worked, but Moreno said he was not impressed.
"It does the same exact thing as the steel," he said, referring to his honing steel.
Moreno also believes the Bavarian Edge is dangerous because you have to steady the device with one hand while using the other to sharpen your knife.
"You have to open it before you put the blade in," he said. "You stand the risk of stabbing yourself with your own knife."
The Bavarian Edge does work, but Moreno thinks a honing steel is just as effective and safer.
